My interview with Carol Drinkwater just published. Her new novel, The Lost Girl, is set in Paris and published next month.
Stepping into medieval London
‘The only plagues of London are the immoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires’ wrote William Fitz Stephen in his account of the city in the 12th century. On a recent trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts I came across a little book called Norman London in a second-hand bookshop. The book contained Fitz Stephen’s…
A writing life in France
at Hotel Les Fleurines 17 Boulevard Haute Guyenne Villefranche-de-Rouergue, 12200 France organised by The English Library Many writers, from Joyce to Hemingway, have seen and used the value of the estranged position. Not entirely fitting in, being a bit of a voyeur is the ideal position for a writer. Not belonging can allow a…
Murder Mystery in France
My interview with author, Stephen Goldenberg, has just been published on The Displaced Nation website. Goldenberg has written and self-published a murder mystery set in France and thrillers set in Britain. He is now working on a novel about a man who modelled for the artist, Francis Bacon. Stephen and I are talking about our…
Considering historical fiction
Just back from Cluny Museum of the Medieval Age, Paris. Talking on Sat 25 Mar 10.30am at Parisot Library, France on historical fiction. Does historical fiction try to impose today’s moral values on another era? 7th century Visigothic votive crowns. Cluny Museum, Paris. Historical fiction takes time instead of…
Bodice-ripping?
Saturday 25 March 10.30am Tracey Warr at Parisot Library, 82160, France Is historical fiction bodice-ripping escapism, taking liberties with historical facts, or a genre putting flesh on the skeleton of history, and engaging with contemporary society? In this event Tracey Warr will discuss a wide range of historical fiction writers from Mary Renault to Bernard…
1,000 years back and 1,000 years forward
Some readers of my posts may feel confused by the polarised nature of my activities: on the one hand writing early medieval fiction and the other hand writing future fiction about exoplanets and other life poetics. I get quite confused by this paradox myself! However, the medieval historian Henry of Huntingdon, writing in the 12th…
Writing algae and other life
William Blake was critical of the rigid, reductive influence of Newton’s ideas, of his insensibility to vision and ethical restraint. Describing Blake’s portrait, Alan Moore remarks that: ‘Newton sits in single-minded concentration, crouched above his calculations and immune to the more fractal charm of blue and orange lichens spattering the rocky backdrop, his chill bench…
Welsh Castles
A review of Conquest: Daughter of the Last King and interview with me by Lisa Redmond has just been published in the February issue of Historical Novels Review. I told Lisa that ‘Conquest was sparked by my travels back and forth by train across the spectacular triple river estuary at Carmarthen Bay, with its string…
Tracey Warr Writing 