cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

I'm working on the second book in my Lively St. Lemeston series, Crimson Joy , and I just did something that I've done before, that I'll probably do again, and that I always feel conflicted about: I'm stealing a story. I'm taking something that happened to a real person, and giving it to my heroine. In this case, it's this anecdote, cited in a footnote of Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England , concerning “treating,” or the practice of patrons providing free food and drink for electors prior to a poll. I had a vague recollection of this anecdote... he ran out of ale, so he opened up his expensive French brandy?  I couldn't remember where I'd seen it, but I thought I might have posted it on my blog. After backreading for half an hour, I almost gave up. I don't need the real anecdote,  I thought. It's fiction. Maybe I can improve on it, make it even better than the real thing. Then I found the real thing. There is no improving on this. This is p

A short while back I made mention of the fact that for the foreseeable future I'd be having less time to research and write the blog. I also mentioned the possibility of "Guest Posts", if anyone had anything they knew about or were researching, and felt like sharing. After all, that's how this blog started -- I was doing my own research for fun and decided to find a way to share what I'd found with anyone who might be interested. I'm happy to say that I've already received several responses, and this post represents the first such Guest Post on the MCH History Blog. It was written by Dave Olsen, who often runs across lost history, off the beaten path (literally). He's the one who showed me the Plumgrove Farm ruins last year. Here's what he came up with: The David Wilson House While running earlier this past winter, I happened to turn off of Brackenville Road into Hockessin Valley Falls .   As I headed around the outside loop of the neighborhood

   One of the greatest accounts of the last Atlantic crisis, or fourth turning, are the first two volumes of the diaries of Harold Nicolson, covering the years 1931-9 and 1939-45, respectively.  They were brilliantly edited and published by his son Nigel in the late 1960s and I have returned to them many times. Nicolson, like his father, was a leading figure in the British Foreign Office who left his position in 1931, when he was still in his forties.  Ironically, he did so for the reason so often cited by disgraced American officials today: to spend more time with his family.  His family by then was of a somewhat unusual kind, since he and his wife, the author Vita Sackville-West, had after the birth of their two sons both turned to homosexuality, but they were intensely devoted to one another emotionally all the same.  Until her death in the early 1960s she lived at their country house, Sissinghurst, while he worked in London as a journalist and, from 1935 through 1945, as a member o

   I want to be the first person to break this story.    I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh but I check his transcripts from time to time.  On Tuesday, I found this :    "We all owe a debt to a smoker.  A guy in his house wanted to smoke a cigarette.  His wife would not let him smoke the cigarette inside.  So he went out in the backyard, and while he was smoking his cigarette he's looking at his boat.  And he said, "There's something strange about that boat."  Something didn't look right.  It was his boat, so he climbed up on his boat while he's out in the backyard smoking a cigarette, he unzips the protective winter cover that he has on his boat, and he sees the bleeding, half conscious Boston Marathon Muslim bomber.  Remember that old saying, for the want of a nail the kingdom was lost, something like that? "This guy wants a cigarette.  We hate cigarettes.  We hate smokers.  But, if not for this guy being a smoker, if not for this guy being

Recently, I did a very fun interview on Word Wenches with the wonderful Cara Elliott/Andrea Penrose about the release of The Paris Affair . Cara asked some wonderful questions, in particular about the themes of loyalty and betrayal that run through my books and why I chose the Napoleonic Wars as a setting for those stories. As often happens, those interview questions caused me to mull over things in my books. I've been thinking about it a lot in and around promoting The Paris Affair , finishing my WIP, and getting ready for the Merola Opera Program's annual Benefit (where I am with Mélanie above). I first gravitated to the Regency/Napoleonic era through my love of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. But I also love spy stories, both James Bond adventure and the sort of intricate chess games and moral dilemmas John le Carré dramatizes so brilliantly. The Napoleonic Wars offers are a wonderfully rich setting for both types of story. So many different sides, so many different f

I have been travelling for the past three days. This post was drafted last Thursday morning, before the shootout and the arrests.  As it turns out, my instincts were more right than wrong.  While evidence is emerging that the bombers were also inspired by jihadis overseas, they evidently were not part of an organized group.  Had they been, I think they would have fled the country at once.  The last paragraph also seems to have been unduly alarmist, since Pakistan is not involved and the Russian government was more concerned with the two suspects--or at least one of them--than our own was.  See the other new post from this weekend, below. Three people are dead, and dozens are injured. One can only tentatively speculate before more hard information is available, but I"m afraid this is the beginning of a new and dangerous phase in our war with radical Islam. I do not intend what follows to be inflammatory, and it may be proven wrong at any moment. It is my best estimate of the sit

There was a picture I had seen a while back (shown at right) that had piqued my interest, but I hadn't gotten around to writing about it until now. The only clue to go on in the quest to figure out where it might have been was the caption attached to the picture, which reads -- " Isaac Flinn House, Price's Corner, Wilmington, Delaware, 1890's. Isaac Flinn and his family pose inside the gates in front of their home. The house had served as an inn about the time of the American Revolution. " Obviously, the mention of Price's Corner caught my eye, and while that meant it was probably a bit outside of MCH, it was close enough to interest me. Since the house didn't look like anything I recognized as standing today anywhere near Price's Corner, the only clue to go on was the name "Isaac Flinn".  The Flinn family has been in the region for quite a while, and was prominent in the 19th Century in a broad swath from Newport to Greenbank. The name shows

My sister (who knows me so well) got me A Grim Almanac of Georgian London for my birthday. It’s an amazing little book, filled with snippets of horror (pigs eating discarded babies), scandal (the Duchess of Kingston’s bigamy trial [she got away with it!!!]), duels, and murders too numerous to recount. One of the things I found very interesting was the number of killings that were found to be manslaughter rather than murder, for which the penalty was a burning on the hand (and nothing more). So, steal a handkerchief and go to the gallows (also, having sexual relations with an animal was a punishable by death!), stab a love rival in a fit of jealousy, get a burn on your hand and go about your business. Today’s entry reads as follows: 15 April 1795 Daniel Mendoza was a world-champion boxer, whose style was scientific and included many defensive manoeuveres. This incorporated side-stepping, moving around,, ducking, blocking and avoiding punches. At the time, this was revolutionary; as a r

Detail from the U.S. Government's 1818 survey of the Michigan Territory. Farms were established by Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit very soon after its founding in order to ensure its prosperity. The long, narrow plots that were laid out according to French custom have come to be known as "ribbon farms". This method granted river access to each landowner and allowed the farmers' homes to be relatively close together. The houses sat along River Road, later known as Woodbridge Street and Jefferson Avenue. Behind the house, a typical ribbon farm would contain a garden, fruit orchards, fields of wheat or corn, pasture, and finally woodland. Over the course of 300 years, what was once farm lots has ultimately transformed into the neighborhood we know today: Corktown has been shaped by a combination of the ribbon farm boundaries and Augustus Woodward's plan for Detroit. To illustrate this, it's easier to use a map of the neighborhood from 100 years ago, before urb

I have exciting news this week! My agent (Kevan Lyon) and I sold my next book, Sweet Disorder , to Anne Scott at Samhain. I don't have a firm release date yet, but it looks like it's going to be early 2014. I'm so happy! I really love this story and I can't wait to share it with everyone. Phoebe Sparks, writer of Improving Tales for children, has vowed never to marry again unless she's sure it won't turn into a bickering, resentful mess like her first marriage. The Honorable Nick Dymond has vowed never to get involved in his family's politicking. But Nick's mother couldn't care less about their vows. Nick has moped long enough about his curtailed army career and new limp, and any local resident who marries Phoebe will be legally entitled to a vote in her small town's upcoming Parliamentary election. So Nick's mother packs him off to the country with strict instructions to marry Phoebe off to the first local supporter of their political party