The Palm Palace


My wonderful, innovative web designers and friends, Greg and jim, had the idea a couple of years back of filming an interview of me talking about the background to my books, which they then edited into clips that I could post on my website. The interview we filmed for Vienna Waltz, my April 2011 release, deals a great deal with the historical background. So it occurred to me that these clips might also be of interest to History Hoydens readers.

Here's one where I talk about the Palm Palace, where two real historical women, Wilhelmine, Duchess of Sagan, and Princess Catherine Bagration, both had lodgings during the Congress of Vienna. In Vienna Waltz, my fictional Princess Tatiana Kirsanova (who was called Tatiana Volkonsky at the time we filmed the interview) also lodges in the Palm Palace. Like Wilhelmine and Catherine, Tatiana is also involved with both Tsar Alexander and Prince Metternich.

I couldn't, unfortunately, figure out how to embed the video in Blogger the way I do in Wordpress, so here's a link to the clip on You Tube.

What real life buildings play an important role in your favorite historical novels? Do you ever look for information about the buildings in which scenes from an historical novel are set after you finish reading the book? Writers, what historical houses and other buildings have you particularly enjoyed writing about? How do you go about researching them?

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