From My Blog
Why I like Victorian murderesses
This week, I’m happy to say, my book about the history of detective fiction is out in paperback. A bargain, if I may say so myself, at £9.99 (or even less from the Evil Empire). To get you in the mood, I’m posting an extract from one of my favourite chapters, which is about Victorian
New TV series The First Georgians: what it’s all about
My article from the paper today tells you roughly what it’s all about… ‘Our most calamitous Kings, the troubled lives of our Hanoverian monarchs are revealed in a fascinating new series. – a new series will explore the lives of the British Hanoverian monarchs – it marks the 300 years since George I ascended the
My book Courtiers, and How I Came To Write It
I’ve quite been proud and pleased to see big piles of my book Courtiers, which I published in 2011, on various bookshop tables over the last few days – and indeed, I have been quoting from it at length in our upcoming TV series on the Georgian court. Here is a re-post of an interview I did
In which I bid a fond farewell to the Georgians
Today, for me, marked if not the ‘beginning of the end’, then the ‘end of the beginning’ for the Georgian tercentenary. The three-hundredth anniversary of the start of the Georgian age in 1714/2014 was something we started thinking about five years ago or more. In fact, when I started researching and writing my book about
In which I reveal my Innermost Self
Regular readers of this blog will know that the general tone is amusing self-deprecation. (You didn’t realise it was supposed to be amusing? Oh. There’ll be a momentary pause while my crest falls.) However, in this blog we are not afraid to Get Serious on occasion, and in this case, very serious indeed. This interview
‘New Worlds’: brand-new C17th historical drama on tonight
The new Channel Four drama ‘New Worlds’ begins tonight, and you can watch the trailer here. I was amused to discover that the cast of young actors were made to read my book Cavalier for background about the seventeenth century. As one of them, Jamie Dornan, has gone on to be cast as Christian Grey
Britain’s funniest, cleverest and fattest queen ever: Queen Caroline
Hello! I’ve been a bit quiet for a fortnight because I have busy hurling myself round the globe: in last two weeks I have laid my head in Istanbul, Northern Ireland, Ludlow and Oxford. While I’ve been away, though I gather that trailers have been spotted for the BBC’s eighteenth century season, including my own
When a geek goes to Fashion Week
In case you missed it when it was in t’paper… ‘My first thought on hearing that ES [The Evening Standard’s glossy magazine] wanted to send me to London Fashion Week to lose my fashion-show virginity was glee. As a curator at London’s Historic Royal Palaces, I look after a vast collection of gowns, and BBC
Take my Tudor test!
How well do you know your Thomas Wolsey from your Thomas Cromwell, and your Thomas Cranmer from your Thomas More? To find out, take my Tudor test…answers below, along with my assessment of your performance. Question One: An easy one, to warm up. Complete the rhyme: Divorced, Beheaded, Died Divorced, Beheaded … a. Bee-hived b. Alive
I am in the same room as many, many celebrities
The other night I invited to the Radio Times Covers Party in the ballroom at Claridges. What is a Covers Party, you ask? Well, anyone who has been on the cover of the Radio Times in the past year is invited and is given a special framed copy of that week’s magazine. And that’s it.
