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The subconscious mind is a very strange place. Sometimes, I think of mine as a large props room, littered with detritus from different historical stage sets. There’s a lot of red velvet tufted furniture from a Victorian drawing room, Augustan busts for those Queen Anne scenes, and the odd doublet left by a passing Elizabethan. Beau Brummel is frowning at his reflection in a mirror while John Knox is preaching hellfire and tugging at his beard stage left. This historical detritus, this furniture of the mind, has been piling up in there for a while. I’d like to claim that I went about acquiring it in a logical and responsible way, textbook by textbook. In fact, most of the jumble was acquired far earlier, from a far more haphazard source: historical fiction. Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M.

Once more, my perennial apologia: Although I love the material specifics of history, I don't have much of a gift for it. Too many primary sources and I'm gobsmacked by the messiness, ditzed and dizzied by real life's overabundance of detail. And though old documents are thrilling, there's all that handwriting to get through. So I get most of my history from novelists, who have to employ some principles of selection. From good novelists -- when I can, from the great ones, the women of the nineteenth century, who so fully and so movingly comprehended a world of property -- landed and intellectual both -- in which they weren't full citizens. Like Jane Austen's "acquisitive, high bourgeois society... interlocking with an agrarian capitalism... mediated by inherited titles and the making of family names." The literary historian Raymond Williams, in The Country and the City , continues that Austen's "eye for a house, for timber, for the details of

My uncle Irving Heymont, retired U.S. Army colonel, WWII hero, and stern patriarch with a sense of humor you needed special genes to locate, passed away last Tuesday evening at the age of 90. I mentioned him when I replied to Mary’s post the other week about her ancestor, Major General Lord Blayney. Irving Heymont, with my husband Scott and me, at the celebration of Irving's 90th birthday. Taken April 6, 2008 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC We write about war (and other) heroes and heroines and how character shapes their actions and actions shape their character. What I learned from even the briefest research on my uncle is that this was very much the truth. And yet, sometimes it isn't until someone passes away and the mourners take a trip down Memory Lane and revisit the life and achievements of the deceased, that long-held myths are exploded. As a child I always thought he was “very Jewish”—as in more strictly religious than the rest of the family. And yet, I was wron

I’m a history nut, I admit it. Lately I’ve been reading ancient history (Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Persian Empire, etc.). For thousands of years in the Middle East, ever since the Sumerians settled between the Tigris and Euphrates river and ancient Egypt recognized a need to protect trade routes and control the Fertile Crescent, armies have been invading the flat, invitingly fertile lands of what is now Egypt, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and Israel. Such conquering forces were seeking a better life and they attained it by force. The Semitic Assyrians overran the peaceful non-Semitic Sumerian civilization, which fell to the Babylonians, which succumbed to the Assyrians... and on and on until by the 14th century B.C. three empires controlled the area now termed the Middle East: Egypt, the Hittites (Syria), and the Assyrians. Ever since then, the maps of the Middle East have been constantly redrawn as various kings jockeyed for power. Every nation wanted to survive, and war was the path.

My friend and fellow writer Penny Williamson and I spent a wonderful afternoon Saturday at a party of Dorothy Dunnett readers (that's Penny and me left in Edinburgh, on a trip where we went to a Dunnett-related conference). Dunnett readers tend to be a fun, well-read, and extraordinarily nice group of people. Over tea and wine and a delicious array of food Saturday we talked about books by Dunnett and others as well as favorite television series. There’s something about Dunnett’s books that particularly lends them to discussion and analysis. They’re so complex and multi-layered. The books aren’t mysteries, but there are mysteries running through both the Lymond Chronicle and the House of Niccoló which provide endless food for debate and speculation. Even now both series are finished, plenty of unresolved questions remain. Add to that vivid historical context, rich literary allusions, and a fascinating cast of characters, and it’s hard to read Dunnett and not want to talk about th

Surfing again, researching life in the 1500's for a new WIP and I came across this interesting bit on canopy beds. I've always wanted one...so much for the romance. ;-) CANOPY BEDS In the middle ages and earlier, there was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence. Canopy beds actually date back to 13th century Europe. In most castles and manor houses and in some town dwellings, materials such as wood, clay tiles and stone were used for roofing. All served even better than thatch to "stop things from falling into the house." Poor peasant folk, who were the most likely to suffer the annoyances brought about by an ill-kept thatch roof, commonly slept on straw pallets on the floor or in a loft. They did not have canopy beds to keep