Did Jane Austen ever visit Tenby?

I’ve just come back from visiting family in Pembrokeshire, Wales. I always love a trip to Tenby where there is a gem of a bookshop at the bottom of a medieval passage. The Tudor Merchant’s house is well worth a visit too – you have to pass it down the steps to get to the [...]

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Cassandra Austen, Thomas Fowle, and Kintbury

Sometimes life hands out a little happiness and surprise from most unexpected and unsuspected sources. Yesterday I went to a particularly pretty part of Berkshire with my husband to meet a client of his for lunch. I hadn’t really asked where we were going, I was very happy to be going out into the countryside [...]

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Denzel Washington, Bob Marley, and Mrs Jennings

An unlikely trio, I hear you say, but here they all are in my post today. I found these pictures of my cats, Denzel and Marley, who love to listen to me talking about Jane Austen – yes, really. I’m not certain if Jane Austen liked cats, I suspect if the Austens had a cat, [...]

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My Love Affair Continues…

Regular visitors to my blog know that I have a long-standing love affair with the City of Bath. We know that Jane Austen lived here from 1801-1806 and that her feelings about the place may well have been very mixed as time went on. I can feel a whole other blogpost coming on about Austen’s [...]

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Researching Willoughby’s Return: Exeter and the New London Inn

Anyone who stops by to read my blog will know how much I enjoy researching for the books that I write. Willoughby’s Return is set in Devon, Dorset and London so I spent a lot of time reading about these places as they were in the 1800′s. Marianne is married to Colonel Brandon and they [...]

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A Favourite Walk in Bath, photos from my album

One of my favourite walks in Bath starts at Jane Austen’s house at no. 4 Sydney Place and takes me through the gardens opposite where we know our favourite novelist walked. Although the gardens do not look the same as they did in Jane’s day, they are still a lovely place for a stroll or [...]

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Mystery Solved! Why Jane Austen favoured Captain Wentworth’s name – amongst others.

This is in response to a post I blogged about earlier – I was doing some research on names and discovered the village of Wentworth in South Yorkshire where the aristocratic families of Wentworth, Watson, Woodhouse and Fitzwilliam ruled over the area. As these names are all connected with characters in Jane Austen’s novels, I [...]

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Fitzwilliam, Wentworth, Watson and Woodhouse – Jane’s characters have more in common than you might think!

I’ve been very busy writing a new book which always involves a certain amount of research. I was looking for a surname for a character of my own; it had to be linked to the name Wentworth in some way, so I decided to put in a search in google. I hit upon a site [...]

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Photos from my album! Chatsworth, Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy’s Secret

Here, for your delight is an extract from Pride and Prejudice with accompanying photos of Chatsworth! The weather was lovely up until the time I got the camera out – wouldn’t you know. My sister and I visited Derbyshire last year all in pursuit of research – Mr Darcy’s Secret is my next book which [...]

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February 1st, a letter in Persuasion

I make no apology for reproducing this letter in full – it is a masterclass in Jane Austen wit and hilarity. It’s February 1st today and here is the letter that Mary Musgrove sends to her sister Anne Elliot whilst she is in Bath on that day in 1815 in Jane Austen’s wonderful novel Persuasion. [...]

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