Thanks to the incredible support of Discover Egypt, four of us were able to go to Luxor to make a short video trailer for my new novel The Sacred River. I knew I wanted actress Sarine Sofair to play the part of Harriet Heron, the main character in the book. …
Like Your Jacket
What makes you reach for a book in a bookshop? Prompts you to turn it over to read the jacket copy on the back then open up the book, your attention caught… It may be true that you ought not to judge a book by its cover but the jacket …
Isle of Avalon
In the south west of England, Glastonbury Tor is visible for miles all around, rising up like an island out of the surrounding flat and marshy lands of the Somerset Levels. St Michael’s Tower stands on the top of Tor, and on this spot – in 1539 – Henry V111 had …
Catherine Jones: WONDER GIRLS
Wonder Girls tells the story of Ida Gaze, the first woman to swim the Bristol Channel, and her friend Freda Voyle. Seen partly through the eyes of the elderly Ceci, it is an exploration of the span and course of women’s lives and friendships, in the context of the changing times …
On Writing
I was recently invited to talk to some people about how I moved from journalism to fiction, and wrote a piece to try and gather my thoughts. Here follows my longest-ever blog post – a personal account of what led to the publication of The Painted Bridge in 2012 and this …
Bluebell Line
The characters in my new novel make two railway journeys, including one from London to Southampton at the start of their journey to Egypt. Wanting to experience riding on a steam train, to have a better feeling of what it might have been like for them, I went for a …
‘Be very persevering…’
Gad’s Hill is the name of the house in Kent where Charles Dickens lived at the end of his life, where he wrote works including Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood - and where he died in the year 1870. As a boy, Dickens had …
Squatter’s Cottage
This cottage, part of the Blists Hill Victorian town museum in Shropshire, is a reconstruction of a real squatter’s cottage, using the original materials and design. Victorian squatters were typically people who’d come from other parts of the country looking for work in the coal and clay pits, the brick …
Sarah Whittingham’s FERN FEVER
Sarah Whittingham’s book on the Victorians’ passion for ferns – FERN FEVER The Story of Pteridomania, is a readable, beautiful and authoritative hardback. Thoroughly researched, wonderfully illustrated with period photographs and illustrations, and some contemporary images, the book immediately convinces as a classic text on the subject. Dr Sarah Whittingham, better …
Writing Retreat
I have left London for a week and come here to mid-Wales, to be with my new book, Magic for the Living. I say ‘be with’ because I have found that although writing is part of what books require, they also need other forms of attention. Magic for the Living …