News & Events
Novel Crime Scenes: Twenty Deadly Landscapes
How did a beautiful Georgian house inspire Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly? Or a stretch of the East Anglian coast become the place in which a murder victim is discovered in P.D.…
Alyce Chaucer III: Murder Will Out
In the third book in my series of history mysteries inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s granddaughter Alyce and her home in Ewelme, Oxfordshire, Princess Alyce and her new secretary Tamsin Ormesby…
Alyce Chaucer I: The Serpent of Division
The Serpent of Division features murder and mystery, a charming pirate, Oxford colleges and libraries, a buxom bookseller reminiscent of the Wife of Bath and a Persian physician with a fondness…
Alyce Chaucer II: Book of the Duchess
The sequel to The Serpent of Division begins six months later in May 1467. An urgent summons from Duchess Cecily Neville, the king’s mother requires Alyce Chaucer to leave the garden…
From Mangle to Microwave
Originally titled Labour Saved, this account of a hundred years of changes in domestic technology between the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Festival of Britain in 1951 argues that…
The Canary Coloured Cart: One Family’s Search for Storybook Europe (Heidi’s Alp)
A Camper Van journey with four children around Europe in search of the settings of such classic European children’s stories as Heidi, Babar. Pinocchio, Hans Andersen’s and the Grimms’ fairy…
Behind the Scenes: Domestic Arrangements In Historic Houses
Originally published by Penguin as Home Comfort, this book was republished with wonderful images in both colour and black and white from the National Trust’s superb photograph library. I was…
Literary Trails: Writers in their Landscapes
Writing this book satisfied my two favourite occupations: reading and walking – to say nothing of a little sailing. i explored Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and Jane Austen’s Hampshire; Bloomsbury-in-Sussex and…
On the Writer’s Trail
Writers have always been inspired by place. The houses they lived in and the gardens and landscapes they walked in are often as central to the imaginative process as the…
Slice of Life: The British Way of Eating since 1945
The dramatic changes in our eating habits since World War II reflect the equally dramatic changes in society. Using interviews with both ordinary housewives and celebrity cooks, as well as…
The Future of the Family
This is one of my favourite but least known books. After spending nearly ten years researching an overly ambitious History of Twentieth Century Domesticity, I produced my conclusions in this…
Malory: The Life and Times of King Arthur’s Chronicler
Review by Eric Ormsby, New York Sun 2007 On July 31, 1485, William Caxton printed his magnificent edition of Thomas Malory’s “The Birth, Life and Acts of King Arthur, of his Noble…
Dream Babies: Childcare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford
Parents have long been bombarded with conflicting advice on how to bring up their babies: from Locke, Rousseau, and Truby King to Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford. Behaviourist warnings…
Poetry for the Winter Season
n November 2005, hundreds of people submitted recordings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Roger McGough in an attempt to win a prize—participation in the recording of this new poetry collection by…
The Pleasures of the Garden An Anthology
The Pleasures of the Garden begins in ancient China and ends on the Isle of Man; it admires both stately landscaped parks and a soap box full of red geraniums on…
The Christmas Collection
I had great fun choosing stories, poems and prose to celebrate Christmas. Shakespeare’s Bird of Dawning, Thomas Love Peacock’s Gryll Grange, John Clare’s ‘Decenber’ and John Betjeman’s jollity: old favourites and…
Arthur Ransome & Captain Flint’s Trunk
Generations of Arthur Ransome readers have asked the same questions after finishing his Swallows and Amazons books. Are the places true? Are the people real? In 1984, the centenary of…
The University of Oxford : The Official Guide
This was a delightful challenge. How to tell people everything they need to know about Oxford University in 40 A5 pages, half of them photos (admittedly gorgeous ones). The difference…
Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands
This book celebrates some of the most dazzling treasures of English literature to show how Britain’s greatest authors have been inspired by, and even redefined, their country. From Chaucer’s pilgrims…
The World of Arthur Ransome
Arthur Ransome is most famous as the author of Swallows and Amazons, but he was also a literary critic, a foreign correspondent, a fisherman and a sailor. The World of…
Pleasures of the Table
Wonderful illustrations accompany my collection of food writing. It has delectable scenes of cooking and feasting in novels and stories, poems that use food to tempt and seduce, and fine…
Pleasures of the Garden
My collection of classic garden writing celebrates the garden as a place of solace in a busy world, a retreat for lovers and an earthly paradise. Gardens have been cherished…
Writing the Thames
Thames aficionado Robert Gibbings once wrote that ‘the quiet of an age-old river is like the slow turning of the pages of a well-loved book’. My latest book Writing the…
Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings
Many beloved novels have place at their heart—and often even in their title. Novel Houses visits unforgettable dwellings in twenty legendary works of English and American fiction, exploring how Uncle Tom’s Cabin came to…