Both my husband and I have French Huguenot ancestors. Each of our mothers carried the original immigrant’s Huguenot surname, though anglicized. Not long after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, his mother’s ancestor emigrated from Normandy, France, to the Northern Neck of Virginia. He arrived sometime between 1687 and 1693. It is thought […]
This week I’m continuing my reviews of fiction about women across the ages who’ve had an impact on the history of the British Empire. Two weeks ago I reviewed Cathie Dunn’s novel Ascent, focused on the Viking invader Rollo’s hand-fasted wife, Poppa. Poppa is the great grandmother of today’s impactful heroine, Queen Emma. When I […]
Since I wish to focus my next spate of Book Reviews on women across the ages who’ve had an impact on the history of the British Empire, where better to start than the hand-fasted first wife of of Rollo, the the Viking invader of Rouen, whose whose great-great-grandson conquered England in 1066? Historical fiction author […]
I’ve said elsewhere that I learned almost nothing in any of my history courses about the western world before the Renaissance. In recent years, I’ve read widely in both fiction and non-fiction about the British Isles throughout the millennium between the exit of the Romans (roughly 400 A.D.) and the onset of the Renaissance (1400 […]
Did you devour C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series as a kid? Or perhaps, like me, you read the books out loud to a child. My husband and I started a chapter a night when our son was about 8 years old, after we’d all been enchanted by a community theater production of The Lion, […]
Code Girls, by Liza Mundy, is the third book in my current series of book reviews featuring the role of women in the WWII Allied victory. The first two books – The Atomic City Girls, and Daughters of the Night Sky – are historical fiction based very closely on actual events and characters. Code Girls […]
This review is the second book in my three review series (so far!) on women who won the war – women without whose contribution we could so easily have lost. Daughters of the Night Sky, by Aimee K. Runyan Goodreads Review The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard Goodreads Review Code Girls, by Liza Mundy […]
Apparently I’m a sucker for good WWII books – particularly if they feature more heroism than gore, if they’re true, and most especially, if they highlight the amazing women whose efforts and support were so crucial for the Allied victory. The more I read, the more it becomes clear we could not have won the […]
Book Lovers is a serious book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fabulous RomCom, with countless laugh out loud moments. But it is never trivial, always raw and honest. Emily Henry has turned a classic trope upside down and given us the other woman, the other man, who don’t abandon the fast-paced city and don’t […]
On my side of the pond, the history lessons I grew up with were woefully inadequate when it came to England. My college Western Civ history began with the Renaissance, as though nothing that came before either was known or would have mattered. I knew nothing about the Norman Conquest or the tribes and kingdoms […]
Copyright © 2026 | WordPress Theme by MH Themes
