It must have been very difficult to research the hard facts in a novel before the internet. Of course, not everything you read on the internet is true, but the gathering of initial ideas does not require slogging around libraries and buying reference books. (more…)
Tag: victorian
The English Middle Classes in 1844
We all know how it was in Victorian times – we’ve seen innumerable films and BBC series showing precisely how they lived. But the households shown are large, with many servants, children going to boarding schools, the parents nobility or upper classes. (more…)
Family Matters
It occurs to me that in my new mystery the railways play a substantial part, and yet I voluntarily live on an island which has none. During the British rule here, of course, they built one, but practically nothing remains of it. After all, Malta is so small you can walk from end to end in a day or two. The line was proposed in 1870 and opened in 1883. It was seven miles long, from the new capital Valletta to the old one Mdina. Not surprisingly it never prospered and finally died when the state got tired of subsidising it in 1931. (more…)
Work in Progress
In the first two books most of the characters were associated with computers and software, and the action was set in London and the home counties (apart from a murder on a jolly to Barcelona) – and maybe in the last decade or two of the twentieth century.
The next book moves back over a century to Northamptonshire in 1844, (more…)