By sending the Irish party there – it was, after all, on their route back to Ireland – he could kill two birds with one stone. There were men there who would welcome a foreign expedition. They could report back on the likelihood of such a venture achieving success. Continue reading Men With Grievances.
How often did either party wonder if tomorrow would be the day when everything changed? Continue reading A Summer of Nervously Waiting: Ireland in 1170.
Generally speaking, most Brits are not great flag-wavers – except on special occasions. Continue reading V.E. Day 75 years on.
I think fiction must feature settings that are taken from the author’s imagination, whereas historical fiction must, by its nature, be set in real places in order to lend authenticity. Continue reading Open Book Blog Hop, 20th April
The UK’s 68 million is but a tiny proportion of the total number of individuals, many doing the same as those former refugees from UK famines and epidemics, seeking a better life elsewhere. Continue reading Monday Musings – the Inevitability of Migration
everyone thinks they can do better than the current crop of politicians at all levels of government. . . It was not long before I [discovered] that it is not as simple as it seems from what you read in the papers. Continue reading Monday Memories – Finding a Middle Way
The pattern of local elections in that part of the country at that time was as follows: in Grimsby one third of the councillors stood down in each of three successive years, in Cleethorpes the whole council was re-elected every four years as was the whole of the county council. Cleethorpes elections took place midway between county elections, which occurred on the year without a Grimsby council election. In case that’s difficult to follow: County Council elections took place in 1981, 1985 and 1989. Cleethorpes Borough Council elections in 1983 and 1987, Grimsby Borough Council elections occurred in 1982, 1983 … Continue reading Monday Memories – Campaigning Begins
Northern Ireland remains the only part of the UK where same sex marriage is forbidden. It is the only part of the UK where politics is defined by religious extremism. Continue reading Britain and Borders – A Bloody Legacy
the narrative arts – theatre, film and literature – are the windows through which the rest of us are enabled to experience the lives of others. If those lives are miss-represented then it creates the cultural attitudes that drive some men to behave inappropriately toward women Continue reading Saturday Sound Off – #METO and the difficulty of creating believable characters.
You will not be disappointed, either by plot, by character development or by the sheer quality of the writing. Continue reading Buy This Book: Help Veterans and Horses
