Books and bits

As you'll see from my Events and Titles blog, http://elizabethchadwickevents.blogspot.com/ I am going to be fairly busy over the next couple of months visiting various libraries up and down the country. I hope this won't put too much of a downer on my Living The History posts, but bear with me if I post less frequently for a few weeks.
However - good news! My very good author friend Sharon Kay Penman has agreed to be interviewed on my blog in the soonish future. As soon as we've organised a Q and A session, I'll be posting our talk.
Next time round I'm going to post about some interesting details I've been able to dig up that add more circumstantial evidence to the lost Newbury Castle being sited at Speen. Some interesting peripheral jigsaw pieces have come to light.

For now, I've just taken a delivery of a few more research books, so I thought I'd post this latest haul.




I was after this one all the time I was writing A Place Beyond Courage. I'll read anything Professor David Crouch writes. It has now been re-issued in paperback and it's going to come in big time when I write my Empress Matilda novel. Did I mention that the Empress was on the cards? It's down to them being shuffled around slightly and the Empress has come to the top of the pack.
I've started Akashic work on her already and some very interesting and useful details have been emerging.












A general overview of cosmetics down the ages, but written by someone who knows their stuff. I particularly like the Old Irish 'nail varnish' and the minty Medieval mouthwash (authentic!)



















This one, like another on the list, was reccommended to me by my good friend, author Sharon Kay Penman. It tells us how the Medievals saw their world in terms of Geography - the names they gave to places etc. I had to obtain this one from Abe Books.
















Robert Bartlett is another of my favourite authors along with Professor Crouch. The first of 2 book on my list by him and intended for general reading and hopefully an increased understanding of the medieval European stage as a whole.














2nd book by Bartlett and I hope it'll help give me more understanding of mindsets - so important to the historical novelist who wants to get it right.
















Fiction reading here. A book highly recommended to me by Sharon Kay Penman who thought it was terrific and that it got above mentioned mindset right. Apparently it's a film too!
http://www.arnmovie.com/