I’ll be sharing with you topics from the Anglo-Saxon and Mediaeval periods, as well as from Normandy and Moorish Spain that I researched for The Book and the Knife novel series, or have come across on my travels/reading, plus work or discoveries I’ve heard about, or anything else that I hope you’ll find interesting.
16 Feb 2025
In my blog on the Silk Roads exhibition, I said that the book in The Book and the Knife series stands for the knowledge of the Islamic scholars such as Alhacen, who made huge advances in science in the East, Africa and Spain, during what we often refer to as the ‘dark ages’ in [northern] Europe. Alh...
14 Jan 2025
If you watched the Digging for Britain programme on BBC2 last Tuesday you will have seen the fantastic 5th and 6th century finds from a dig south of Canterbury in Kent. This Anglo-Saxon cemetery site has revealed a sword described in the Guardian by Duncan Sayer, the professor who leads the team of ...
31 Dec 2024
The Silk Roads exhibition runs at the British Museum until 25th February 2025. Stunning and thought-provoking, its central theme is rather than a single route from east to west along which goods such as silk were traded (and the term ‘silk road’ was not coined until the 19th century), there was a we...
15 Dec 2024
In Sandwich at the weekend for the Mediaeval Baebes concert. What a great ensemble they are – fantastic vocals and a wide range of early or early inspired music from many lands and cultures. Great range of period instruments too, some played by them and some by their small but highly skilled backing...
25 Nov 2024
Some 50 people came to the village hall in Wye on Friday 22nd November for the launch of Thegn of Berewic, Part One of The Book and the Knife novel series.
After a glass of wine, the audience settled to hear me talk about 'My Writing Journey' - what in my origins on a Yorkshire Dales farm and my wor...
