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 cal...

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 re...

In The Butcher’s Block , the second full-length Dan Foster Mystery, Dan is working undercover in Southwark in a case that sees him crossing paths with body snatchers, blood-thirsty revolutionaries, French agents and British spies. In the eighteenth century Southwark was a smelly, noisy, dirty place, crammed with shipping and its associated wharves and warehouses handling coal, timber, pipe clay, corn and a myriad other goods. Many of its industries were not the sort we’d like to live next door to, such as slaughter houses, leather tanning, brewing, soap and candle making. There were workshops and factories producing hats, glue, sugar, needles, watches, guns and coaches. There were flour mills, distilleries, and breweries such as that owned by Henry Thrale, husband of writer and diarist Esther Thrale. There were markets at Borough and St George’s Market, and men and women on the streets selling food, drink, ballads, ribbons, flowers, bread, and other goods. There were beef ...