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Discovering Diamonds: An Entertaining Interlude for Christmas

I hope you’ve not been missing out on the Discovering Diamonds Christmas blogs – but if you have you’re in for a treat when you catch up! This “entertaining interlude for Christmas by a variety of authors” organised by Helen Hollick on the Discovering Diamonds blog is a bulging Christmas stocking full of tiny treats. With stories that take you on journeys around the world and into different eras, it’s a bit like a tin of assorted chocolates with something for everyone.     Follow the links in the titles if you want to read one of these stories. Diamonds by Richard Tearle The first Diamond Tale, a short story set in 1960s Friern Barnet . Who remembers Jet Harris, bass guitarist of The Shadows? A lovely tale on the power of a song to evoke memories.  When Ex-Lovers Have Their Uses by Helen Hollick A rearranged excerpt from the third Sea Witch Voyage, Bring It Close , by Helen Hollick in which that devilishly wicked pirate Jesamiah Acorne calls on an ex-lo

The Unconventional Heroine in Historical Fiction

  This is an edited version of a talk I did for Bristol Literary Festival 2017 (‘Stories of Strong Women: Unconventional Heroines’). The original talk also considered the ‘feisty’ heroine, which I’ve written about in a previous blog - Xena Warrior Princess v Patient Griselda . Historical fiction loves unconventional heroines. I take such a heroine to be unconventional both because she kicks out against the conventions of the time and place in which she exists, and because she challenges the reader’s image of women in the past. She does work that’s deemed to be masculine: a quick scout around the internet turned up historical romances about a newspaper reporter, geologist, astronomer, and mathematician. She refuses to accept the subservient role foisted onto women: she says no to arranged marriage, she makes her own choices about where she goes and who she sees. Or she wears men’s clothes, and in donning them she also miraculously assumes knowledge of male spaces and ma

Very Poor, Very Rich, or Very Bad: A Tour Around Bristol Archives

I had a fantastic afternoon at the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network behind-the-scenes tour of Bristol Archives on 17 October 2017. Archivist Allie Dillon explained that Bristol had been keeping records since 1381, when a Bristol Ordinance was made by the corporation stipulating that records should be kept under lock and key in the Guildhall. The earliest records in the collection date back to 1191. The Bristol Archives Office was established in 1924, and was only the second Archives Office to be established. At that time all of Bristol Record Office’s four archivists were women, including city archivist Miss Elizabeth Ralph, who was the first female chair of the Council of the Society of Archivists. A tree in the grounds was dedicated to her in 1991, and it was recently rededicated by the Bristol Soroptimists –  you can find out more about Miss Ralph’s career on their website. Initially, the Archives Office mainly looked after Bristol corporation record