Quick disclaimer: I don't like to give star ratings in my reviews, or to try to grade the book. I simply talk about what I liked and didn't like. Let me just say - first book of the year, done! And I'm very pleased about it, because this reading slump has been long. Long long.… Continue reading Review – Viking Britain: A History, by Thomas Williams
Blog
So I Bought An Old Coin
It's been a while since I wrote a history blog post - so long in fact that I wouldn't be surprised if, reading this now, you had no idea I did them at all (since you most likely came from Twitter and my account is much bigger now than it was when I did history… Continue reading So I Bought An Old Coin
Recalibration
Hi! Okay, first things first: I'm fine, don't worry. This is hopefully a good post. So our beloved Jess posted a blog recently about how we only show the positive side of ourselves on social media, so people don't see the real us. It chimed with me. I think this attitude is as harmful to… Continue reading Recalibration
Dark Coffee
He strode past the shopfronts with his hood up and his hands in his pockets. Rain pounded down, dripping off the tips of the sloped roofs, sparkling like diamonds in the headlights of the cars that rushed past. The rain nearer to him had a rainbow sheen. Was that reflective of the many-coloured neon signs… Continue reading Dark Coffee
The World Doesn’t Always Move Forward
In 1964, a king brought together a committee of experts. Their task, he told them, was to draft a constitution worthy of a modern country. Though democracy was a relatively foreign concept to this country, they planned to inch towards it. The experts, most of them educated in foreign lands, set about their work. The… Continue reading The World Doesn’t Always Move Forward
Review: The Garden of the Golden Children
Garden is a haunting book. It deals with some heavy topics, specifically child abuse - and I'll be talking about that part of the book. Just a heads up. (Side note: I appreciate that the publisher put a specific warning about this in the front matter. We should see this more often.) Between the experimental… Continue reading Review: The Garden of the Golden Children
My Q and A
Do you have a favourite compass rose? Use the same in all your maps? Or design them different for each style/type of map you're creating? Some are definitely prettier than others, but no, generally I make a new one for every map I draw! If money and location were no object, what would be your… Continue reading My Q and A
A Year As A Freelance Mapmaker
I've talked about this before, but I want to briefly go over how I ended up as an illustrator. After falling out of uni with an English/History degree and no plan whatsoever, I ended up freelance writing for basically peanuts. That dried up, I had a months-long crisis of drafting a novel and no income… Continue reading A Year As A Freelance Mapmaker
Why Did The Queen Speak To Parliament?
A new parliament started yesterday, so I thought I'd talk about parliamentary beginnings, endings, and the history of how this complicated system came about. Yesterday was the Queen's Speech, which takes place every year in the spring. It's usually a day of great pageantry and ceremony, though because of the coronavirus, today's speech is going… Continue reading Why Did The Queen Speak To Parliament?
How Medieval Guilds Worked
Guilds are a staple feature of fantasy fiction, especially video games. Players enjoy rising through the ranks by doing missions for the guild, eventually becoming guildmaster. But how did they work in real life? St George's Guildhall, King's Lynn, built around 1428. Funnily enough, fantasy gets some stuff right here. They usually use the terms… Continue reading How Medieval Guilds Worked
Dewi Hargreaves 