Deborah Swift explores how the plague was understood and treated in 17th century London. Today, people have widely variable responses to disease and its cure. I don’t think I’m alone in having friends who show hypochondriac tendencies, who use ‘alternative’ or even quack medicines, or who are convinced that a random event, real or supernatural, has […]
Animating Pepys’ Women
Four of my novels have been set in the seventeenth century, and for all of them I have used Pepys’ Diary as an integral part of my research process. In the process, I became fascinated by the women who appear as vague figures in the background, between the lines, always overshadowed by Pepys’ ebullient presence. […]
HNS Conference 2016
Deborah Swift reports on this year’s Historical Novel Society Conference in Oxford. This year’s Historical Novel Society Conference was held in Oxford, a beautiful and historic setting for what turned out to be a thought-provoking event for writers and readers of what has come to be labelled ‘historical fiction’. The conference itself was based in […]