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Category Archives: History

The thing with science fiction

21 Thursday Oct 2021

Posted by la Clarina in History, Stories

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

china, formosa, murray leinster, Science fiction, taiwan, time tunnel

Over the years, and very much by trial and error, my rather difficult relationship with science fiction has come to work essentially like this: I give a very, very wide berth to everything dystopian and pre/post/apocalyptic; I’ll let myself be tempted by some carefully chosen, strictly past-bound time travel* now and then – and that’s it.

Now, please, let’s not go into whether time travel is proper sci-fi or something else or its own genre, shall we? Let us just observe that my last foray, Murray Leinster’s Time Tunnel,** was published and marketed as such in 1964 – and leave it at that. Continue reading →

Where were you?

11 Saturday Sep 2021

Posted by la Clarina in History

≈ 2 Comments

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9/11

Where were you twenty years ago today?

I was at work – another work, another life, really. I ran my family’s smallish timber-trading company, back then, and I was working in the office when my cousin called. She was sobbing. “Look at the news. Look at the news!” was all she said. Continue reading →

Quote

The Eve of San Marco – a treasure hunt

27 Friday Aug 2021

Posted by la Clarina in Books, History, Stories

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George Soane, Gothic fiction, Sir John Soane, The Eve of San Marco

I am looking for a book.

“Well, you are always looking for a book – or three,” my mother said when I told her – and she isn’t entirely wrong. But the fact is that, this time, I’m a bit stumped. Even the all-encompassing Internet, so far, isn’t helping much. Continue reading →

There was an elephant from Cremona…

12 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by la Clarina in History, Stories

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elephants, Frederick II, Malik al-Kamil, Matthew Paris, World Elephant Day

And it is World Elephant Day, so… Elephants!

Last year I wrote a post about the general lack of fictional elephants, in which I mentioned the historical but nameless elephant given by the Sultan of Egypt to Emperor Frederick II, and gone down in the chronicles as the Elephant of Cremona… * Continue reading →

“The author of a detective story…”

10 Thursday Jun 2021

Posted by la Clarina in Books, History, Scribbling

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Elizabethan espionage, History, John Bossy, The Tom Walsingham Mysteries, writing

You know those moments – those moments when a book speaks to you? When you read something that might have been written exactly for you to find it? Well, I had a rather peculiar moment of that kind, yesterday… Continue reading →

#StoryADay, week 1: maps, rabbits, and Napoleons

06 Thursday May 2021

Posted by la Clarina in History, Scribbling, Stories

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#StoryADayMay, digital maps, Gerogian London, John Rocque, Napoleon, rabbit holes, Richard Horwood

Well, not quite a full week, if you like, as today is just the sixth day… But I have to say: so far, so good. Last night, quite late (after the loveliest Alice rehearsal) I completed the draft of my fifth story, and took a few notes for things to come… Continue reading →

Margaret Skea: Turn of the Tide

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by la Clarina in History, Stories

≈ 2 Comments

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audiobook, Dave Gillies, Margaret Skea, Munro Saga

For the first time in ages, I’ve listened to an audiobook. No, really – audiobooks and I… I absolutely love the idea in principle, only I find myself easily distracted by details. I begin to wonder about the exact lie of the land, the pigments that would have been used to dye a particular kind of silk, the sort of face this or that character would have… and by the time I come back from my wanderings, the narrator has gone ahead.

And this is why I usually regard audiobooks the way I would a tiger: fascinated but wary – from a safe distance.

Then I had this email exchange with Margaret Skea, who told me about having her Munro Saga turned into audiobooks, and described the fascinating process of choosing a reader and working with him rather in the way a stage director would… I was so taken with the whole that, when Margaret very kindly sent me a copy of Turn of the Tide’s audiobook, I was more than ready to face my tiger… Continue reading →

French museums and tarring brushes

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by la Clarina in History, Scribbling

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France, historical novel, Montreuil-sur-Mer, museums, research, Road to Murder, writing

A few months ago, as I was working on Road to Murder, I found trouble in the form of a French town called Montreuil sur Mer.* Well, for various reasons, my sleuth Tom Walsingham finds himself spending a night there, much against his inclination, and I needed to have a good idea of the place for that… Continue reading →

Sometimes it is the small things

28 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by la Clarina in History, Scribbling, Stories

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Historical fiction, murder mystery, Sapere Books, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Henry Cobham, writing

 

They stopped Walsingham and Paulo, my Italian, whom they seemed resolved to rob [… and] another Englishman in his company, called Skeggs, as I remember.

On the twelfth of November 1581 Elizabeth’s Ambassador in Paris, Sir Henry Cobham, wrote to the all-powerful Secretary of State – and spymaster – Sir Francis Walsingham . It was almost in passing that the ambassador slipped in this bit of information about the misadventure of Sir Francis’s much younger cousin, nineteen-year-old Thomas, riding as a diplomatic courier between London and Paris. Continue reading →

John Ballard, SJ

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by la Clarina in History

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Bernardino de Mendoza, Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots

Not quite Ballard as Black Foskew – but… an approximation

What can I say? Much as I love Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush, I can never watch Elizabeth without cringing at what Hirst, Kapur and Craig together managed to make of Father John Ballard – in terms of both historical accuracy and characterisation. Continue reading →

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