Books that have enriched my life
The Stars Over Rome is set against the twilight of the Belle Époque era and the ensuing chaos of World War I. The story explores themes of love, ambition and upheaval in one of the world’s most timeless cities. When the story begins in 1913, Rome was a city caught between its historic past and …
In the early 1900s, Italian and British societies alike imposed strict limitations on women’s roles, particularly in the public and professional spheres. Gabriella Santorelli, my fictional heroine of The Stars Over Rome, is the daughter of an English father and an Italian mother. She is brought up with the intellectual freedom of Edwardian London but, …
[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 …
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 …
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.