Maligning Mr Leach – the gaps are where the mysteries lie
Someone asked me the other day if the biography I’m working on will contain any fictional elements. Um, no. If it did it, wouldn’t it be a work of historical fiction, and not a biography? And yet, I do confess, the temptation to create fiction – to fill in the gaps – is strong. Occasionally…
Bombay Anna by Susan Morgan
You’ve likely never heard of Bombay Anna. But I bet you have heard of Mrs Anna Leonowens, governess to the children of the King of Siam. If you’ve ever seen the movie or stage version of the King and I, you’ve seen Mrs Anna. Mrs Anna, however, was far more than a figment of Rodgers’…
Visiting Bridgerule, Dreaming of the Past
Thanks to every TV and cinema adaptation of Pride and Prejudice it isn’t hard for a modern reader to imagine the quiet corner of England that Elizabeth Macarthur left behind. Elizabeth Veale, as she was then, was born in 1766 and raised in the very English village of Bridgerule, on the border of Cornwall and…
Stories in the Archives – the tragedy of triplets
A very kind person (although no one I know) has transcribed the Births, Burials and Marriages registers of the church of St Bridget’s in Bridgerule (a tiny English farming village in North Devon). They’re all available online. Marvellous. So I was browsing through them the other day, as you do, and a story leaped out…