Charlotte Betts

Welcome to guest author Deborah Swift, who writes here about her new book The Poison Keeper. Over to you, Deborah! My main character Giulia Tofana was supposed to have caused the deaths of 600 men in 17th Century Italy. To find out why, I had to research women’s lives at the time and find out…

I was completely swept away into the shadowy and dangerous world of Giulia Tofano in Renaissance Italy.

My mother taught me to use a sewing machine when I was eight years old and I began to make my own clothes straight away. At first I used my grandmother’s treadle Singer and when I was ten my mother gave me her ornate but ancient hand-cranked Singer.

Carol McGrath is my guest author today, writing here about medieval gardens.

I’m writing this post on the 23rdMarch 2021, the anniversary of the beginning of the first lockdown in the UK, and reflecting on the changes it made to my writing life.