The ‘Surplus’ Women of WWI

[IMG: War Graves Commission] When the slaughter of the Great War ended in 1918, the nation was left in mourning for a ‘Lost Generation’ of young men. It didn’t take long before girls, who had grown up with the expectation of a future as a wife and mother, realised there simply weren’t enough potential husbands …

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Venice – the City of Water

The most astonishing fact about Venice is that it exists at all. This ancient city is built on a series of low mud banks off the coast of mainland Italy that are subjected to frequent tidal flooding from the Adriatic sea. Using impermeable stone, timber piles and larch wood, early Venetian builders evolved a unique …

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Summer 2022 Newsletter

Welcome! A warm welcome to my VIP’s newsletter.  As a VIP you’ll be the first to know what’s going on in my writing life. I’ll give you a sneak peek of new book covers, snippets of the current Work in Progress and advance notice of new books. Summer 2022 At last it’s summer again and the garden is …

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Letting in the Light

Letting in the Light – Excerpt

It’s Publication Day for the paperback of Letting in the Light. A standalone story, this is the third book in the Spindrift trilogy, set in an artist’s community during WWI.

The Post Office in the Great War

I first became interested in how the postal service operated during the Great War when I came into possession of a handful of letters written by my grandfather to my grandmother in 1918, soon after they were married.