In the suffocating summer of 1858, Sir Edwin Landseer faces the monumental task of sculpting the Trafalgar Square lions. The nation is watching, the Royal Academy is whispering, and the Queen herself expects brilliance. The press, his doctor and Edwin’s inner demons predict disaster. As the pressure mounts, beasts begin to stalk Edwin’s increasingly alcohol-fuelled […]
Feisty Victorian women
Were Victorian women feisty? As Jem Poster says, they wouldn’t have recognised the word, but they’d have known the attitude. Some were feisty enough to become detectives – like Eliza Mace, the fictional protagonist of his new book. Reviewers of our co-written historical detective mystery, Eliza Mace, have repeatedly described the book’s titular heroine as […]
Clean Minds, Dirty Books
What’s the dirtiest book you’ve ever read? Writers’ research can lead to awkward places. “Oh yes?” says my wife, glimpsing a passage of Walter’s My Secret Life on my screen. “You’re ‘researching’ again, are you?” Private Case, Public Scandal by Peter Fryer was the peculiar tome that pointed me to the explosion in the Victorian […]