This week, we finally managed to install our new (not new ) item of furniture - a mid-18th Century grandfather clock. It's not bright and shiny like more modern ones, but a dark oak with a warm patina which the beeswax polish is drawing out. In order to set it up, we had to do a certain amount of research - how to hang the pendulum, where the weight went on the endless chain - and it got me thinking... where and when did certain divisions of time come from? The time periods which I have written either had household clocks or didn't, I have not written novels from the time of their invention. Clocks have been around for a long time, and the obsession with measuring time in an ordered fashion dates back to at least the ancient Sumerians. It was they who established a circular reading of time and, I imagine, the sixty seconds/minutes came about as much because it was an easy way to divide a circle as anything else. But it wasn't until much later that the precision of seconds ...
I'm delighted to be welcoming Judith for her second series of blogs. This one is about drawing inspiration from film and television, and it begins with that thought all writers can't help but consider: who would be perfect for my character..? In this series of blogs, I am hoping to look at some historical fiction films and tv series which have inspired different stories – either my own or a guest blogger. The first thing I should say is that I don’t consider myself a historical fiction writer: that is something which belongs to Virginia in our household. The research she conducts is meticulous and marries historical fiction with, well, historical fact. By contrast, I look for gaps in history and just attempt to plug them, sucking in little details here and there to make them seem as plausible as possible. Plausibility is an important consideration for me because I write magical realism. One of the key challenges of this genre is that age old consideration for all scientists an...