I was born in Hereford, a city and county close to the border between England and Wales. I have lived in the Irish midlands since late in 2006. Not too far from my home there is a ruined castle on a hill. When I discovered that the castle had once been inhabited by a man named Roger Mortimer, a name I had always associated with Herefordshire, I was inspired to find out more. The research and extensive reading that followed culminated in the writing of my book “Strongbow’s Wife”. Along the way I produced several short articles about some of the characters and events that link Hereford and Ireland. These were originally published as a series of pages here on my website.

Now that WordPress has teamed up with Anchor to enable blog posts to be converted into podcasts I thought it would be a good idea to reissue those pages as audio episodes. In order to do so, I have had to convert the pages into posts. This is because Anchor does not recognise pages when you link your WordPress website to it. Or not yet, anyway. At the moment Anchor will see the most recent 250 posts on your blog and make them available for conversion.

There is another reason for drawing attention to these particular short pieces: Paddy’s Day is just a few days away and it seems like a good opportunity to promote the book and the real stories behind it. So today I’m posting, more or less simultaneously, a dozen or so blog posts which will also be available as podcasts via Anchor. The illustrations have been removed from each because I don’t want Anchor to pick up the captions and voice them as random inserts within each episode.