'... Pokahuntas. To whom my hartie and best thoughts are ...' Rebecca's Tale (Part Two) Heacham is a holiday resort in the county of Norfolk. Situated on the shores of the Wash, it is the English centre of lavender farming and distilling, and boasts 100 acres under cultivation. The village was of sufficient importance in …
Category: British History
From Jamestown to Gravesend
'... the Kings most dear and well-beloved daughter ...' On looking back, I see that I first wrote this series of articles about four years ago. Time goes by so quickly and I felt compelled to introduce to (hopefully) a new audience what, for me, is a romantic and poignant true life story. **** Rebecca's …
Holy Fool?
The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory A review I have always found Philippa Gregory's historical fiction enjoyable, and The Queen's Fool is no exception. Set at the Tudor court like so many of her other books, it gives us an 'up-close' of Queen Mary through the eyes of Hannah Green (or Verde), a teenage girl …
Return to Kingsbridge
A Column of Fire by Ken Follett A Review 'The fire continued to burn, and the dead body of Philibert turned into a blackened ruin ...... I did not know how men could do such things, and I did not understand why God would let them.' It's nearly twenty years since Ken Follett surprised many …
The Last Tudor
by Philippa Gregory A Review '[Katherine] turns to me and her blue eyes blaze with the Tudor temper. She has pride, just like me. "You don't deserve my love for you," she says, with her own silly logic. "But you have it anyway, when you least deserve it. Because I see the trouble you are …
Not 'arf cut ……
Interview with local writer Rupert Ashby Rupert Ashby is the author of Izzie, the novel about a young girl growing up on the waterways of southern England. About the story: In the years before World War II, Isobel Horne is a boat girl with a burning ambition to learn how to read. Encouraged by her …
Who Do You Think You Are?
Blood of the Isles by Bryan Sykes A Bookheathen Review I became fascinated by genetics back in my student days. The science was still at an early stage then. We knew about DNA but were still a long way from using it to solve crimes, and an even longer way from sequencing the human genome. …
The Other Queen
by Philippa Gregory (A novel of the captivity of Mary, Queen of Scots) Mary Stuart must be the most written about person in the whole of history, and with good reason. Pick your side: she was either a hopeless (and foolish) romantic, a woman too trusting for her own good, a victim of one conspiracy …
The Taming of the Queen
by Philippa Gregory ' "....He is a madman, Kateryn, he has been mad for years. ....And you will be his next victim.' " This is the stark warning delivered to Kateryn Parr by Thomas Seymour in Philippa Gregory's brilliant novel reconstruction of the marriage of Henry VIII and his sixth wife. Set in the 1540s, …
Jane's History
The History of England from the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st by Jane Austen [Henry the 8th] ' . . . [his] last wife contrived to survive him, but with difficulty effected it.' [James the 1st] '. . . had some faults, among which & as the most …
Bookheathen Scribblings 