I’m thrilled to announce that my latest historical novel, The Absent Heart, the story of Frances Sitwell, enigmatic muse to Victorian Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson will be published early in 2025 by Linen Press. Followers will know this book has been a while in the writing and rewriting and I’m delighted it has found … Continue reading NEWS! ‘The Absent Heart’ to be published by Linen Press.
I was introduced to Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Christmas Sermon (first published 1888) at an online lecture in December 2020 by Stevenson expert amd fan Robert Louis Abrahamson. If I’m unconsciously replicating any of what RLA (whom I’ve since met) said, apologies and also thanks to him. Thanks too to Debbie Young for inviting me to … Continue reading Kindness at Christmas: R.L. Stevenson’s ‘A Christmas Sermon’
When I visited A New Power, the Bodleian Library’s photo-history exhibition which ran earlier this spring, I was fascinated to learn how daguerreotype images were used to produce wood engravings which then became the basis for newspaper illustration, an application of the daguerreotype process of which I had been totally unaware, and so I turned … Continue reading More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs
‘Truths needn’t depend on facts for their expression.’ The quote is from Tom Crewe’s author notes for his novel The New Life. It’s a book I think will be noticed for its unselfconscious depiction of sex between men, but I also admire it as an example of how history can be melded into create great … Continue reading ‘Desire and the search for freedom in Victorian England’: The New Life by Tom Crewe @TomCrewe1
P. L. Travers and Walt Disney Farther to my recent thoughts on biopics, over Christmas we recorded Saving Mr Banks and watched it a few nights ago. As most of you probably know (spoiler alert!) this tells the story of Walt Disney’s attempts to get P.L.Travers’s agreement to let him film Mary Poppins despite her … Continue reading Believing Mr Banks: a lesson in how to link fiction and history
Ali Bacon, Author 