The other day at Crowvus HQ, we were discussing our favourite Jane Austen novels. Amazingly, for saying there were four of us with a positive opinion, each person had a different favourite. Jane Austen's books, of course, are not historical fiction, but books written contemporaneously to what is now an historical era. But! All the multitude of spinoffs which her books have invoked are historical fiction. Pride and Prejudice is not my favourite Austen story, nor my second or third, but I absolutely love the series Lost in Austen . People hear the phrase "fan fiction" and immediately think lesser of it, but this is a little unfair. Fan fiction is not a new thing, it is how folk stories grew into legends, adventures becoming more daring with every telling. But what has changed is the way in which these stories are retold and the care which is now (quite rightly!) taken to preserve and protect the rights of the original author. In the case of Lost in Austen , this is not t...
I absolutely love this song! I don't know whether it is that I know more Tom Jones and Welsh songs which the Owain Glyndŵr song calls on, or whether it is just more my sort of music, or that - which I think is another consideration - this is about a historical figure who drifts into the realms of legend. At the moment, I am rereading my family saga and I came across this line: That man will be a legend until the day he dies, and an inspiration beyond. When I decided to write today's blog on Owain Glyndŵr, this quote fitted rather well. The man being discussed in the book was not a real figure from history but - after sharing more than 400,000 words with him during the course of my family saga - it certainly feels like I know him better than any of his real-life contemporaries! When I was researching Owain Glyndŵr for this blog, I was surprised to find just how long his reign lasted. I had assumed it was almost a flash-in-the-pan uprising, similar to those we had in Scotland se...