The Golden Hour by Kate Lord Brown

Reviewed by Stephanie Williams

I must have been about thirteen when my imagination was first captured by Akhenaten, the legendary pharaoh who brought the revolutionary idea of one god to Egypt in the fourteenth century BCE.   His wife, rumoured to be his sister, was even more romantic:  the beautiful, powerful and mysterious Nefertiti.  

 

Bust of Nefertiti, Nofretete Neues Museum

My source was a wonderful historical novel by someone like Mary Renault, who I was devouring at the time — but it wasn’t … whatever the book was, it is long gone, leaving me with an enduring fascination with Egypt.  Last year, I was lucky enough to float down the Nile to see the Valley of the Kings and the temple of Karnak at Luxor — where, in the days when it was ancient Thebes, Nefertiti may once have walked.

‘Fair of face, great of charm,’ Nefertiti represented the female element of creation, while her husband was a living god — their source, the sun, worshipped by holding up a disc to the sun.  Through your prayers to them, you would have access to the true god. Together Akhenaten and Nefertiti overhauled the state’s religion, based on a pantheon of gods and their henchmen.  The king’s feet never touched the earth, their whole life, from daily worship, to the marital bed was a religious act. 

A house altar showing Akhenaten, Nefertiti and three of their daughters. 18th dynasty, reign of Akhenaten

After 17 years, Akhenaten died. What happened to Nefertiti afterwards is a matter of dispute.  Did Nefertiti rule briefly as a female pharaoh? Oversee the kingdom as regent? Akenhaten’s son – DNA testing suggest Nefertiti was not his mother -- was the legendary child pharaoh, Tutankhamun, whose golden sarcophagus has entranced millions around the globe.  He repudiated his father’s sun worship, and reinstated the old gods.  

 

When did she die?  One thing is certain, despite generations of strenuous efforts, her tomb has never been found.  

 

The quest to find Nefertiti’s tomb is the inspiration behind Kate Lord Brown’s new novel, The Golden Hour. 

Archaeologist Dr Lucie Fitzgerald has travelled to the Lebanon in March 1975, to visit her dying mother, Polly.  Beirut is emptying; it is the eve of the civil war. Polly, whose life has been consumed breeding Arabian horses on a farm west of Cairo, and after the war, outside Beirut, knows that it is time to tell her daughter the truth about her close friendship with Lucie’s godmother, Juno Munro.

 

The narrative weaves back and forth between 1975 Beirut and 1939 Cairo and the Valley of the Kings where Juno, an archaeologist, is part of a team searching for the tomb of Nefertiti.  Juno has a particular gift for recording hieroglyphs and scenes from the walls of the tombs they uncover. Disaster intervenes, war descends on Egypt, the dig is closed.  Thirty-five years later, Lucie too is on the track of Nefertiti’s tomb. Professor Brandt, who oversaw Juno’s dig, turns up at Lucie’s lecture on the myth of Osiris in London on the eve of her departure for Cairo.  And we wonder...

 

But the centre of the action is Egypt, and the louche life of the European communities in Cairo at the outbreak of the Second World War.  It is a period which Olivia Manning brought so vividly to life in The Levant Trilogy, later turned into The Fortunes of War, a BBC series from 1987, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson – still out there on DVD.

 

Manning, of course, had lived what she wrote.  Kate Lord Brown has absorbed Egypt. The details of how you run a dig.  That as a pre-war archaeologist you draw, not trace hieroglyphs.  The scent of rosewater, sandalwood, men smoking shisha, coloured glass, carab rings, the golden light at sunset.  Dust. She’s good on horses, the backstreets of Cairo, the old clubs and the Mena House and the vanished quarter of Ezbekiyya.  But I wished for more of a sense of war-time tension. 

 

This is a quick fun read, full of romance, the friendship of women, mysteries and tragedies.  Love and desire:  Polly and Fitz, Juno and Max, Lucie and her handsome Australian, David.  At its heart is the secret on which Lucie’s life turns.    

 

Take it on holiday and enjoy.

 

Stephanie Williams is the author of Olga’s Story,  and Running the Show, The extraordinary stories of the men who governed the British Empire.  Her latest book, The Education of Girls, will be published in the US on 23 May and in the UK later this year.  For more see www.stephanie-williams.com and https://stephaniewilliamswrites.substack.com/

 

Capital Folly by Kate Lord Brown

Gloriously eccentric, and somehow quintessentially British, follies see reason give way to imagination and sensation as prosaic water towers, bathhouses and dairies are transformed into evocative structures, similar only in their diversity and magic. Arbiter of taste and amateur alike took the fundamental human desire to adorn one’s home to new heights of fancy during the eighteenth century, the great era of architectural folly building. As with many fashions, the capital led the trend.

Follies are built entirely for pleasure, and some extraordinary trends emerged during the Georgian era. For example, the ultimate accessory for a landowner’s folly was an ornamental hermit. At Richmond, the thresher poet Stephen Duck lived with his library in Merlin’s Cave, a peculiar Palladian structure with a thatched roof and ogee door designed by William Kent. If a suitably solitary occupant such as Duck could not be found, a waxwork or clockwork hermit would, apparently, suffice.

Follies suited the informal picturesque ‘jardin anglais’ perfectly. Their location within a landscape is as instrumental as the structure itself in enchanting the onlooker. What could be more romantic than rounding the corner of a leafy path and discovering a tranquil temple partially hidden among the undergrowth, or a dramatic vista leading to a ruined tower? As Alexander Pope advised Lord Burlington:


‘Let not each beauty ev’rywhere be spied

When half the skill is decently to hide.

He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,

Surprizes, varies and conceals the Bounds.’



Such follies not only disguise the prosaic, but also offer perfect resting spots for contemplation and the unique enjoyment of a fanciful interior space in the heart of the landscape. Pope’s own grotto in Twickenham is encrusted with luminous minerals, ores, and stalactites shot down from Wooky Hole by his friends. As ever, fashion concedes little to practicality. Grottoes are cold, dark and spiky, yet they were good selling points for homeowners while the trend lasted. Shells were avidly collected in the eighteenth century, and grottoes were popular diversions for the amateur, as well as influential figures like Pope, whose home in Twickenham was a welcome retreat from town.

The desire to find a refuge from the stresses of the city, close to one’s work is not a new one. In the eighteenth century, this corresponded with the idea of creating ‘rus in urbe’, an ideological and aesthetic turn towards nature, health and beauty. It found its public expression in the parks and pleasure gardens of the capital. Those who could afford it built predominantly private retreats beyond the city. The imaginative use of follies unites three such estates – Chiswick, Kew and Strawberry Hill in Twickenham. Although London has now engulfed them, they were once situated in the heart of the countryside, known to the public through visits and popular printed maps.

At Chiswick, Charles Bridgeman (1716-24) and William Kent in the 1730’s created an essay in Palladianism for Lord Burlington. The house was greatly influenced by Palladio’s Villa Rotunda; he had described a villa as a place ‘where the mind, fatigued by the agitations of the city, will be greatly restored and comforted, and be able quietly to attend the studies of letters and contemplation.’ It is a romantic notion, creating an Italianate setting so close to England’s capital. By the imitation of the ancients, Burlington believed that ideals of nature and beauty could be achieved. Burlington used the house and gardens primarily to entertain his friends, and the gardens are still occasionally used for their original purpose with events staged in the ‘amphitheatre’.

While Chiswick embodied a single, classical ideal, Kew Gardens epitomised the vogue for eclectic exoticism. From 1751 William Chambers designed a conscious ‘world tour’ for Princess Augusta. He delighted in chinoiserie in particular, advocating it not as a style equal to the antique but because ‘variety is always delightful, and novelty attended with nothing inconsistent or disagreeable sometimes takes the place of beauty.’

There were over 25 garden structures at Kew, ranging from the ruined Triumphal Arch, (an imitation of a Roman antiquity), to the ten roofed 163ft high Pagoda. The enormous size and lavish decoration of this structure enchanted close to and acted as a landmark for the estate. Other follies included temples of Aeolus and Bellona, the house of Confucius, the Alhambra, Queen Charlotte’s Cottage and a Chinese bridge. Many of these delightful structures can still be enjoyed today during a visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens.

While the great estates such as Kew, Gunnersbury and Osterley contain a considerable number of the follies in west London, it was a private home that first revived the interest in gothic architecture as a native style. Although Horace Walpole was quick to condemn the rash of gothick follies inspired by his house at Strawberry Hill, he described his own home as: ‘the prettiest bauble you ever saw … set in enamelled meadows with filigree hedges.’

Strawberry Hill was both a romantic and an intellectual project, and between 1748-90 Walpole consciously assembled a literary work, using ecclesiastical forms in a domestic environment. In 1738 when John Carter painted watercolours of the interiors, a new trend was set. Walpole produced a minutely detailed guide to his home, and received visitors from noon to 3pm from 1st May to October by advance tickets. Garden follies illustrated at the time included a fanciful shell seat by Mr Bentley. The Chapel in the woods by Mr Gayfrere can still be seen today.

The instinct to adorn one’s home with decorative structures is as popular today as in the eighteenth century, with conservatories and elaborate statuary gracing the most modest homes. Perhaps one would more commonly go to Chiswick or Strawberry Hill to see the enchanting houses, or Kew for the botanical specimens, but in visiting them today, we also see inspirational follies and garden structures that embrace serious academic Palladianism, novel exoticism and whimsical Georgian Gothick. In their time they were not only private gardens but educative aesthetic and artistic creations. Their creators would be delighted to know that their plots of enchanted earth continue to inspire today.

Town and Country by Kate Lord Brown

The thought of a flock of sheep running wild in Cavendish Square seems bizarre to say the least, but in the eighteenth century it was all part of the trend to create ‘rus in urbe’. Then as now, the emulation of country life was promoted as a soothing therapy for the stresses of life in the capital. Not everyone was convinced. As John Stuart said of the Cavendish Square fiasco in 1771‘to see the poor things starting at every coach, and hurrying round their narrow bounds requires a warm imagination indeed to concert the scene into that of flocks ranging in fields with all the concomitant ideas of innocence and pastoral life … The ‘rus in urbe’ is a preposterous idea at best’.

Some would say there has always been a strong element of the country in town – you only have to look at the number of 4x4s, Labradors and Barbour jackets in Fulham. Indeed, it is over two hundred years since the great royal parks, garden squares and pleasure gardens came to life. The parks still enjoyed today were famously described as the ‘lungs of London’ by William Pitt in 1808, and the face of the capital was transformed by the eighteenth century fashion for all things picturesque and rustic. At Richmond, Charles Bridgeman turned the royal gardens into a pastoral idyll, introducing ‘cultivated fields and morsels of forest appearance’ according to Walpole. John Nash inspired the exodus to the suburbs with his developments at Park Villages East and West. Soon speculative developments of lesser villas were springing up all around the fringes of the capital, capitalising on the burgeoning desire of the middle classes to live like the gentry in country houses near to town.

In the eighteenth century, the rural idyll became a panacea for urban ills, restoring and comforting the body and mind of the frazzled Londoner. Trips to holiday villages like Islington were immensely popular. Those who could afford it built themselves rustic cottages and follies, such as Dr Johnson’s summerhouse at Kenwood. As ever, some had a naïve view of the delights of country living. James Malton described in 1798 how ‘the greatly affluent involuntarily sigh as they behold the modest care excluding mansions of the lowly contented.’

As a major capital London still has the benefit of some of the best green public spaces in the world. Lose yourself on a spring day on Hampstead Heath or Wimbledon Common and you feel like you are a million miles from the centre of town.

Look at a map of London, and you will see that the heart of the city is alive with green areas. The other half of Dr Johnson’s famous quote about the capital says ‘there is in London all that life can afford’. Nowhere is this clearer than where town meets country. There may no longer be sheep in Cavendish Square, but ‘Rus in urbe’ is a luxury we can't afford to be without.

Alhambra by Kate Lord Brown

Few places seem as paradoxically familiar and exotic as the Alhambra. The romantic paintings of the Orientalists and the eulogies to nightingales and moonlight, to silver mountains and Moorish gold that spilled from Washington Irving’s pen have lured thousands. I was not expecting surprises from one of my favourite places in the world, but meandering down the Cuesta de Gomérez from the Palace I suddenly experienced a lingering sense of another place and time entirely.

Perhaps it was the rain, so unexpected in Andalusia, the old fashioned streetlamps at dusk or the softness of the deciduous trees cloaking the hillside and the water rushing down to the River Darro. Some strange genius loci joined the last Spanish Moorish kingdom and the seat of Durham’s Prince-Bishops in my mind. The monumental silence of the Muslim palace/fortress towering above me precisely echoed the presence of the Christian cathedral/castle as you walk along the banks of the River Wear from Prebends’ Bridge. Both are awe-inspiring World Heritage Sites, medieval monuments of faith and power, equally blessed with amazing natural settings that enhance the sense of external strength and internal brilliance. Architecture this coherent traverses cultures, faith and time to touch your soul.

Further down the narrow road into Granada, real life reclaimed me as knick-knacks and the smell of pot and patchouli spewed from the mouths of tourist shops like the fruits of seedy cornucopias. The cheap mirrors in mini versions of the Alhambra’s sublime arches have a noble genesis, more to do with the sympathetic thirst for knowledge of the traveller than the voracious hunger for novelty of the tourist.

The Alhambra remained a dream for many in the nineteenth century, so the restorers of the Palace devised a way to educate and inspire those yet to visit. European connoisseurs and architects marvelled at ornate scale models of the palace created by craftsmen such as Don Rafael Contreras y Munoz. Born in Granada in 1824 into a family of artists, Contreras became architect of the Alhambra. The Plaques recall in miniature the elegant colonnades, the ceilings with lapis lazuli pigment clinging to muqarnas, and the ornate mosaics. In the World Exhibitions in London, (1851), and Paris, (1855 and 1867), the models were awarded many prizes, and others went to the Academy of St Petersburg as well as museums in London, Paris and Vienna. The Alhambra Plaques were true cultural ambassadors.

Christies

I have never seen two plaques the same. Old silvered mirrors sometimes glint behind the alabaster arches - you can glimpse your face softly reflected like Gulliver or Alice. Some have heavily scalloped arches like the Patio de los Leones, or rich polychromatic decoration in deep reds and blues. Occasionally one still comes up for sale in London, or can be found tucked away in a corner of Drouot. The simplest are often the most beautiful: stone coloured plaster, and a marquetry frame inlaid with the Arabic phrase repeated throughout the Alhambra: Wa-la ghalib ila Alá: ‘There is no conqueror but God’.

It is sobering to reflect how regularly civilisations rise and fall. Though, as Irving points out the Moors “reigned in elegance and splendour in Andalusia, when all Europe was in comparative barbarism”, their kingdom fell, and the declarations of Moorish infallibility on the walls of the Palace poignantly recall Ozymandias’ proclamations. However, their palace walls still enclose an enchanted kingdom where the branches of trees are weighed down by pomegranates, the fountains’ mist is still drenched with the scent of jasmine and rose, and a court of cats lazily suckle their young beside ponds full of fish. Life flows on without them.

Leaving the Alhambra is always cause for regret. Who has not sympathised with the exiled Boabdil, whose mother famously rebuked him: ‘Do not weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man.’ It is only when our complacency is shaken that we begin to realise what we hold dear. The coherent beauty of the Alhambra, and the powerful memories of Durham it unexpectedly evoked spoke volumes across the ages. Any man of any age or culture would instantly know the power of these monuments. If there is one thing travel teaches you it is humility.

NEW HISTORICAL FICTION for Spring 2016 – Elizabeth Fremantle

A selection of historical titles to look forward to in the coming months:

                                    

THE QUEEN'S CHOICE – Anne O'Brien (Mira, Jan 14th)

One Question. Two paths. A choice that will make history.
France 1399: The Duke of Brittany is dead and his widow, Joanna of Navarre, has inherited control of their land - a testament to her intellect, integrity and political prowess.

Then comes an unprecedented proposal from Henry IV, King of England. And the price of becoming his Queen? Abandoning her country by marriage, leaving her children and sacrificing her independence.

What will Joanna choose? And how will she face the accusation of witchcraft and necromancy?

FOR THE MOST BEAUTIFUL – Emily Hauser (Transworld, Jan 28th)

Three thousand years ago a war took place that gave birth to legends - to Achilles, the greatest of the Greeks, and Hector, prince of Troy. It was a war that shook the very foundations of the world. But what if there was more to this epic conflict? What if there was another, hidden tale of the Trojan War?

Now is the time for the women of Troy to tell their story.

Thrillingly imagined and startlingly original, For the Most Beautiful reveals the true story of true for the first time. The story of Krisayis, daughter of the Trojans' High Priest, and of Briseis, princess of Pedasus, who fight to determine the fate of a city and its people in this ancient time of mischievous gods and mythic heroes.

In this novel full of passion and revenge, loyalty and betrayal, bravery and sacrifice, Emily Hauser breathes exhilarating new life into one of the greatest legends of all - in a tale that has waited millennia to be told.


A BRIEF AFFAIR – Margaret Leroy (Sphere, Feb 11th)

September 1940. England is at war and London has become an ever-fragile place for widowed Livia Ripley and her two young daughters. When Livia meets charismatic publisher Hugo, she is hopeful that her life is about to change for the better. But as clouds gather in the clear autumn sky, the wail of the siren heralds the arrival of the Luftwaffe. As the raids intensify, Livia reluctantly volunteers to become a warden, at the invitation of the intense and enigmatic Justin Connelly.

Here she experiences the true reality and despair of war, a contrast to the world of comfort and cocktails provided in fleeting afternoons at the Balfour Hotel with Hugo. And it’s during these dangerous nights that Livia discovers a strength she never knew she had that will give her the power to save those she loves. A stunningly captured story of a woman finding herself while the world is at war.


THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER– Carol Drinkwater (Michael Joseph, Feb 11th)

The annual grape harvest at the Cambon family's vineyard is always a cause for celebration. But not this year. When an accident destroys the crop, leaving the estate facing ruin, Clarisse Cambon knows exactly who to blame – her daughter-in-law Jane.


It's just the latest incident in a decades-long feud whose origin both women have concealed and going back to Algeria in 1962 during the dying throes of the War of Independence.

THE SILVERED HEART – Katherine Clements (in Paperback, Headline, Feb 11th)

1648. Orphaned heiress Lady Katherine Ferrers is forced into marriage for the sake of family honour … but with Cromwell’s army bringing England to its knees, her fortune is the real prize her husband desires. As her marriage becomes a prison and her privileged world crumbles, Katherine meets her match in Rafe – a lover who will lead her into a dangerous new way of life where the threat of death lurks at every turn…

Enter Kate Ferrers, highwaywoman, the Wicked Lady of legend – brought gloriously to life in this take of infatuation, betrayal and survival.



WATCH THE LADY – Elizabeth Fremantle (in paperback, Penguin, Feb 11th)

Penelope Devereux arrives at Queen Elizabeth’s court where she and her brother, the Earl of Essex, are drawn into the aging Queen’s favor. Young and Naïve, Penelope, though promised elsewhere, falls in love with Philip Sidney who pours his heartbreak into the now classic sonnet series Astrophil and Stella. But Penelope is soon married off to a man who loathes her. Never fainthearted, she chooses her moment and strikes a deal with her husband: after she gives birth to two sons, she will be free to live as she chooses, with whom she chooses. But she is to discover that the course of true love is never smooth.

Meanwhile Robert Cecil, ever loyal to Elizabeth, has his eye on Penelope and her brother. Although it seems The Earl of Essex can do no wrong in the eyes of the Queen, as his influence grows, so his enemies gather. Penelope must draw on all her political savvy to save her brother from his own ballooning ambition and Cecil’s trap, while daring to plan for an event it is treason even to think about.

Unfolding over the course of two decades and told from the perspectives of Penelope and her greatest enemy, the devious politician Cecil, Watch the Lady chronicles the last gasps of Elizabeth’s reign, and the deadly scramble for power in a dying dynasty.


FAITH AND BEAUTY – Jane Thynne (in paperback, Simon & Schuster March 10th)

Berlin, on the eve of war…

As soldiers muster on the streets, spies circle in the shadows and Lotte Franke, a young woman from the Faith and Beauty Society – the elite finishing school for Nazi girls – is found in a shallow grave

Clara Vine, Anglo-German actress and spy, has been offered the most ambitious part she has ever played. And in her more secret life, British Intelligence has recalled her to London to probe reports that the Nazis and the Soviet Union are planning to make a pact.

Then Clara hears of Lotti's death, and is determined to discover what happened to her. But what she uncovers is something of infinite value to the Nazi regime - the object that led to Lotti's murder - and now she herself is in danger.

In a drama which traverses Berlin, Paris, Vienna and London, Clara Vine tries to keep her friends close, but finds her enemies are even closer.

DEATH IN BAYSWATER: A Frances Doughty Mystery – Linda Stratmann (History Press March10th)

London 1881: Bayswater is in the grip of panic as a ruthless murderer prowls the foggy streets of the nation's capital.

Residents live in fear, rumors and accusations abound, and vigilante groups patrol by night. It is not of course, a suitable case for a lady detective, but when a friend falls victim to the killer's knife, Frances Doughty cannot help but be drawn into a sinister new case. Myth and reality collide in another thrilling mystery, and Frances must untangle the truth from the lies in order to solve her most difficult case to date. 

THE LEGENDARY GARRETT GIRLS – Y S Lee in a new anthology of historical fiction and historical fantasy, A TYRANNY OF PETTICOATS (Candlewick Press, March 2016)

Crisscross America — on dogsleds and ships, stagecoaches and trains — from pirate ships off the coast of the Carolinas to the peace, love, and protests of 1960s Chicago. Join fifteen of today’s most talented writers of young adult literature on a thrill ride through history with American girls charting their own course. They are monsters and mediums, bodyguards and barkeeps, screenwriters and schoolteachers, heiresses and hobos. They're making their own way in often-hostile lands, using every weapon in their arsenals, facing down murderers and marriage proposals. And they all have a story to tell.


ALTAR OF BLOOD – Anthony Riches (Hodder & Stoughton, March 10th)

The Tungrians have no sooner returned to Rome than they find themselves tasked with a very different mission to their desperate exploits in Parthia.

Ordered to cross the river Rhenus into barbarian Germany and capture a tribal priestess who may be the most dangerous person on the empire's northern border, they are soon subject to the machinations of an old enemy who will stop at nothing to sabotage their plans before they have even set foot on the river's eastern bank.

But after their Roman enemy is neutralised they face a challenge greater still. With two of the Bructeri tribe's greatest treasures in their hands they must regain Roman territory by crossing the unforgiving wilderness that was the graveyard of Roman imperial strategy two hundred years before. And capture by the Bructeri's vengeful chieftain and his warband can only end in one way - a horrific sacrificial death on the tribe's altar of blood.

THE ENGLISH GIRL – Katherine Webb (Orion, March 24th)

Joan Seabrook, a fledgling archaeologist, has fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit Arabia by travelling from England to the ancient city of Muscat with her fiancé, Rory. Desperate to escape the pain of a personal tragedy, she longs to explore the desert fort of Jabrin, and unearth the treasures it is said to conceal. But Oman is a land lost in time - hard, secretive, and in the midst of a violent upheaval - and gaining permission to explore Jabrin could prove impossible. Joan's disappointment is only alleviated by the thrill of meeting her childhood heroine, pioneering explorer Maude Vickery, and hearing first-hand the stories that captured her imagination and fuelled her ambition as a child.

Joan's encounter with the extraordinary and reclusive Maude will change everything. Both women have things that they want, and secrets they must keep. As their friendship grows, Joan is seduced by Maude's stories, and the thrill of the adventure they hold, and only too late does she begin to question her actions - actions that will spark a wild, and potentially disastrous, chain of events.

Will the girl that left England for this beautiful but dangerous land ever find her way back?


THE HOUSE OF DREAMS – Kate Lord Brown (Macmillan, April)

In 2000, Gabriel Lambert is a celebrated painter who hides a dark secret. Sophie Cass, a journalist struggling to begin her career and with a family connection to Lambert, is determined to find the truth about his past and the little known story of the real Casablanca.
In 1940, an international group of rescue workers, refugee intellectuals, and artists gather in the beautiful old Villa Air Bel just outside Marseilles. American journalist Varian Fry and his remarkable team at the American Relief Center are working to help them escape France, but "the greatest man-trap in history" is closing in on them. Despite their peril, true camaraderie and creativity flourishes - while love affairs spring up and secrets are hidden. At the House of Dreams, young refugee artist Gabriel Lambert changed the course of his life - and now, sixty years later at his home in the Hamptons, the truth is finally catching up with him.


SHAKESPEARE'S GHOST – Mary Hoffman (Greystone Press, April 23rd)

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream onwards, Shakespeare’s plays are often peopled by fairies, witches, ghosts and apparitions. In Shakespeare’s Ghost Mary Hoffman imagines why that might be, by giving the poet a familiar spirit who urges him to include more and more paranormal events and characters in his work.

Meanwhile, Ned Lambert, a boy player in Shakespeare’s own company, The King’s Men, is having inexplicable experiences of his own, with a beautiful and elusive woman in green, who is not of this world.

It is 1610 and Jacobean London is full of dangers, from the plague to plots and revolutions. And Ned – now a man on and off stage – is caught between fears and temptations. The poet is his friend, as is the popular young Prince of Wales, but is Faelinn friend or foe?


BACK HOME – Tom Williams (Accent, April)

In 1859, John Williamson returns from India, broken by his experiences in the Mutiny. England has become a country he hardly recognises.

Industrialisation at home and military expansion abroad have made Britain into a dynamic political and economic power that dominates the world. Yet, in London, he finds the same divide between the poor and the rich that he saw in the Far East. Once again, is caught between the machinations of the powerful and the resistance of the powerless. But now that he is back home, can he escape the cycle of violence that has dogged his life?

OPERATION GOODWOOD: The 5th Mirabelle Bevan Mystery – Sara Sheridan, (Constable and Robinson, April)

1950s Brighton. WWII is over but Mirabelle Bevan's time in the backrooms of Whitehall has made her the most stylish sleuth in Brighton.

When Mirabelle is rescued from a fire at her home on the Brighton seafront she's lucky to escape unharmed - but the blaze takes the life of her neighbour, Dougie Beaumont, a dashing and successful racing driver living in the flat above and it isn’t long before Mirabelle finds herself drawn into the mystery surrounding his death….

The Lore of Lapidary by Kate Lord Brown

Researching the history of jewellery making for 'The Christmas We Met' gave me a wonderful excuse to explore the world of gems. One of my favourite discoveries was lyngurium (pictured above), which is referred to by Theophrastus in his 'Medieval and Early Modern Lore from the Classical Lapidary Tradition'. A fabled stone created from solidified lynx urine, it was, apparently, prized by alchemists. I rather love the idea mooted by Theophrastus and Pliny that the lynxes hid the mythical stones because they had a grudge against mankind. Although detailed descriptions of lyngurium appear in all early lapidaries, by the seventeenth century it disappeared from view. It seems it never existed.

Other stones more familiar with us today have had magical powers attributed to them down the ages. I wrote about Sir Richard Burton's legendary asteria sapphire, which was apparently so potent it brought good luck to anyone who even so much as looked at it. 

We still attribute qualities to the gemstones associated with natal months - January is garnet, signifying constancy, fidelity, patience, for example. The wearing of birthstones first became fashionable in eighteenth century Poland. The idea of twelve gems exerting a collective power is not unique to birthstones, but can be traced back to the breastplate of the High Priest.

In many texts about gemstones such as Kunz's 'Curious Lore of Stones', reference is made to their powers. He recalls the tale that Satan saw Eve was captivated by the bright flowers of Eden, and he imitated them with precious stones - which is why they are so often the source of crime and greed. There are some wonderful, mythical jewels like the Stones of Memory and Forgetfulness in the 'Gesta Romanorum' which allow the reader to forget a painful episode.

Chaumet

The novel was inspired by a convertible tiara I saw on the Antiques Roadshow - it was one of those lightbulb moments, wondering what might happen if the two brooches which formed the tiara became separated during World War 1, shortly after the tiara was made. Often not only did the stones encode a hidden message - Amethyst for Devotion, Diamond for Forever, but the jewellery expressed emotion through the Language of Flowers - Laurel for the Triumph of Love, or Ivy for Marriage. The tiara I wore for my marriage was rather more modest, (courtesy of Angels and Bermans on Shaftesbury Avenue), but there is something magical about these pieces of jewellery. It was extraordinary to read that Monsieur Boucheron, who created some of the most inventive, dazzling tiaras (one a recreation of Hokusai's wave), destroyed any tiaras which did not sell after a period of time. I was lucky enough to talk to Geoffrey Munn during my research, and as he said the most poignant thing of all is that while the women who these pieces were commissioned for are long dead, the jewels live on, still carrying their coded messages of enduring love.

The Christmas We Met has just been published.

In Olden Days by Kate Lord Brown

I am still a 'new girl' compared to many of the illustrious HGs, but the more I write, the more it feels publication is a case of letting go. Studying English in the 80s, our teachers went on endlessly about Barthes' concept of 'the death of the author', that work and writer are unrelated. The author doesn't count, (allegedly). Once a book goes out into the world, do you think it belongs to the readers, or does it still have something to do with you? 

Along the way to publication what does an author let go - in editing, a character or two? a passage they particularly loved? the title? When writing is going well and you are in a flow state, frankly it feels less like it has anything to do with you, than that you are chanelling something which exists quite perfectly already without you. Maybe that's where the frustration you feel comes from - an inability to quite conjure this world, these people and their story in all their perfection.

I've been thinking a lot about how this relates to historical fiction, and Mary's post the other day dealt with defining the genre. What is historical fiction? Work set a generation ago - 25 years, or the 50 years and based on research rather than personal experience that the HNS suggests? So far I have written about the twentieth century. The book published today, 'The Christmas We Met', spans the whole of that century, from the Battle of Mons in WW1 through to a final chapter set in the present day.

The story embraces the flappers and bright young people of the twenties, the treasure hunts and balls, Beaton's photographs of the Sitwells, the gilded, fading youth captured by the Mitfords and Waugh.

 

But then, most of the story is set in the 1970s, whose aesthetic was in turn so influenced by the 20s. I'm in my forties so according to the HNS definition it fails the hist fic text both on personal experience and era. The thing is, though, I may have grown up in 'the olden days' as my child so charmingly put it once, but I had to do just as much research to conjure the era convincingly as I did for recreating a war diary from the Battle of Mons.

The Biba showroom became the model for Fraser Stratton's study, the winter of discontent meant historically accurate strikes and power cuts as much as easily written generic winter scenes, and in the part where the protagonist visits Chichester cathedral, the Chagall window is 'new'. I was alive when all of this happened, but I didn't experience it. So does that make it hist fic rather than personal recollection? It was pretty funny talking to schools while writing this book. I showed several classes of young children aged seven to early teens a slide of a penny farthing and a Chopper, and asked them which they thought we rode in the 1970s. Every single child chose the penny farthing.

  

Perhaps we all think we are younger than we are, but to those children the 1970s really is the olden days. 

For me, it has been fun revisiting and recreating an era remembered, of ice storms and petrol crises, when the men in the village met regularly to discuss what to do in the event of nuclear war, and we wore Kickers beneath our long broderie anglaise dresses to birthday parties (or was that just me), and danced waving our arms madly to 'Wuthering Heights'. 

Childhood is a vanished world, historical in every sense. But is this historical fiction?

The Christmas We Met, Orion, October 22nd 2015

Old Friends by Kate Lord Brown

VELLICHOR: n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Of all the things I miss in the desert, libraries and second hand book stores are high on the list. I miss everything about them - the serendipity of finding an out of print book which you didn't know you needed, or precisely the book you had been looking for for ages. I like to think of the people who've read the books before you. It's almost like their ghosts are watching over your shoulder as you browse the stacks, tapping you on the shoulder when you reach the book you need. It doesn't suit everyone. In London I spent most lunch hours writing in Chelsea Library, but the secretary in the gallery had a pathological hatred of old books (I think based on the germs she imagined they harboured). Am I imagining it, or did old library books have stamps in them about alerting the librarian if someone with a contagious disease had handled the book? Perhaps this was the root of her paranoia.

The smell of old books is a particular joy - grass, leather, almond, vanilla. It's caused by the breakdown of the compounds in the paper:

As a perfume junkie, I'm drawn to bookish smells - a current favourite is True Grace's 'Library' which is woody and smoky. One I'm dying to try is Brosius' 'In the Library', 'a warm blend of English Novel*, Russian & Moroccan Leather Bindings, Worn Cloth and a hint of Wood Polish.' He said:

"The main note in this scent was copied from one of my favorite novels originally published in 1927. I happened to find a signed first edition in pristine condition many years ago in London. I was more than a little excited because there were only ever a hundred of these in the first place. It had a marvellous warm woody slightly sweet smell and I set about immediately to bottle it."

Last time we were home, I managed to find a less than pristine first edition of an old favourite. Are there books you have multiple copies of? There are copies of 'The Leopard' in storage in two places, plus a recent Vintage reissue here, but I still couldn't resist this battered old friend with its 'withdrawn' stamps from 'John Orr's Lending Library'. Flicking through the pages in the desert, the smell transports me back to the old bookstore by the river, and the words to the first time I read it in Chelsea library twenty five years ago. Books really are magic, aren't they?

Hungry Heart by Kate Lord Brown

Even in the days of Kindle, Abebooks, Amazon and all the online book retailers there are some out of print books so rare that you have to be patient to find a copy, let alone one within budget. I had lusted after a copy of 'The Artists' & Writers' Cookbook' for years, but all the ones I'd come across were hundreds of dollars. Finally the stars aligned a couple of months ago - the (*coughs*) excuse necessity of research and a bookshop that was closing down in California brought a near pristine copy of the 1961 publication to me. I don't know about you, but I rather like the inscriptions in second hand books - it makes you feel like the caretaker rather than the owner of special books like this - Sybil Boucher had given this one to the previous owner in 1980.

It was worth the wait, a handsomely bound book on heavy stock, and it had me seduced from the dedication:

Couldn't agree more. The book was edited by Beryl Barr and Barbara Turner Sachs, and designed by Nicolas Sidjakov. The illustrations are idiosyncratic and rather wonderful, but have nothing on the recipes. Among the contributions from Alice B Toklas, Elizabeth Frink and Terry Frost ('Leeks a la Cornwall'), there is Man Ray's recipe for a Dadaist day ("Diner: gather wooden darning eggs ... pierce lengthwise. Lay the skewered eggs in an oblong or oval pan and cover with transparent cellophane"). One of the most extraordinary is Pliny's recipe for recreating blood in paint:

One recipe I will be trying out is Marcel Duchamp's Steak Tartare, if only because he says 'it can be prepared on horseback at a swift gallop, if the conditions make this a necessity'. The idea of Cossacks lovingly preparing a 'bird's nest' of the finest chopped beef, in which 'two egg yolks recline' then arranging a 'wreath' of the following ingredients while in full flight is quite wonderful:

Serve with Russian pumpernickel bread, sweet butter and tall bottles of vin rose - enjoy.