• Hello

• Bodiam Castle

• Anniversary Preparations

• Launch of Paid Subscriptions

Hello

Hello, and welcome to September! It feels like Autumn has arrived without preamble in the UK, as we finally have seen some rain and a break to our endless heatwave. I’m sorry that I didn’t manage to get an August newsletter out to you all, but it’s because I’ve been busy working to organise all of my anniversary fun for October. But more about that later on!

Bodiam Castle

Before we get tucked in, I thought I’d mention that last month I had the pleasure of visiting Bodiam Castle in Sussex. Perhaps one of the most iconic English castles, I’ve seen photographs of the castle for years and years, so I was so excited to finally lay eyes on it myself. It fit in well with my upcoming Richard II book, as it was built during his reign in the wake of the Peasants’ Revolt. This area of the country had been one of the hotbeds of rebellion, and so it was no wonder that Richard granted its owner, Sir Edward Dallingridge, permission to fortify the manor house that was on the site.

The castle was slowly dismantled after the English Civil War of the 17th century, and the following century it became a popular destination for artists, the moat and ruins capturing romantic inspiration. Today it is owned by the National Trust, and whilst the outer fortifications are still incredibly formidable, most of the interior is gone. It was a fantastic visit nonetheless, and you can still climb the walls and the towers. There are also some maternity roosts of bats, and it was great to hear them all squeaking in the attic! The ice cream was also particularly welcome on a hot day…

Anniversary Preparations

As mentioned, I’ve been busy making plans for Just History Posts’ 10th anniversary in October. I plan to release a new blog post every week to celebrate, centred on some of my favourite series across the years. This also includes a blog post that I spent weeks researching last August and then never wrote up!! Better late than never, as they say…

I’m also planning something extra special, to suit this extra special event. It’s something I haven’t done before, but I’m really excited. I hope to have further details for you in the next week or two, but that brings me onto my next point…

Launch of Paid Subscriptions

I have now added the option for you to support my work by paying a monthly subscription on Substack! For years, I have had a little ‘buy me a hot chocolate’ button on my blog posts, which generous readers have donated to. But that is very ad hoc, and I know many people want to be able to provide me with more regular support. For £5.00 a month, or a reduced annual fee, you can subscribe to this newsletter as a paid supporter, helping me to be able to spend more time working on Just History Posts and my books.

As a thank you, paid supporters will get occasional exclusive content, and they will also receive my blog posts before they go live. And those who sign up now will also be the first to hear about my exciting anniversary plan I teased you about a few paragraphs ago!

If you’re interested in providing me with some monthly support, then you can press the button down below. If you are already a free subscriber, just go to your profile settings, find my newsletter, and press the upgrade button.

Subscribe now

Thank you all so much for reading, and for all your support over the years. I am bowled away that I even get to be able to plan my tenth anniversary.

I will speak to you again very soon with my anniversary announcement, so don’t go far.

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• Hello

• Latest Blog Posts

• Writing Isn’t Over When The Manuscript Is In

• History in Greenwich

Hello

Hello and welcome to July’s newsletter! We’re just about squeezing it in before August – has the summer flown by for anyone else? After a few months of exciting personal events, I feel like I’m slowly starting to get back into my normal routine. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to start producing more blog content across the rest of summer, so you may hear from me a little more often.

Latest Blog Posts

First up, as usual, is a reminder of the latest blog post, and this time we have two since we last spoke. In June I had a chat with Aidan from Epoch bracelets about his new business selling bracelets that you can scan to receive daily history facts. It was really interesting hearing where his inspiration came from, and new ways in which technology can make history more accessible to people. You can read our interview here.

Secondly, I really enjoyed this month’s post from someone at the Drones as a Service team, as it was all about LiDAR. I’m not an archaeologist, but as I used to be an avid Time Team watcher, I was certainly familiar with the technology. I’ve also heard increasing reports in recent years of big discoveries of new archaeological sites, or changed understanding of already-known sites, due to uses of LiDAR. In this post, our lovely guest covers what exactly the LiDAR technology is, and some great recent sites where it has completely changed our understanding of past civilisations. Do make sure you catch up on it!

Writing Isn’t Over When The Manuscript Is In

I think the subtitle says it all for this section. This month I have been busy going through the next batch of copy edits and proofs for my upcoming book, Richard II: King, Culture and the Court of Venus. As it’s been a few months since I handed in the manuscript, this is always a great time to do the editing. Your brain has had time to settle and somewhat forget what you have written, so you can come to the editing process with a fresh mind. This makes it much easier to spot mistakes, or to read the flow of the prose how your readers would read it, rather than you who knows the story back-to-front. It was great seeing how all the different strands come together, and to see improvements to my writing as time has gone on.

This is definitely one of my favourite parts of book writing – when everything is almost done, and you can see the finish line, taste what the book will actually be when it is a physical entity in the world. My jacket proofs also came through, and it’s been lovely reading the fantastic endorsements from the book! I’ve shared a couple of them below. If you haven’t pre-ordered yet, now is a great time to do so! Pre-orders do so much for authors, as it shows bookshops and sellers that there is an interest in the book, and it can encourage them to buy more copies, and place it more prominently in shops when it is out. So please do consider it.

History in Greenwich

A few weekends ago I visited Greenwich, which is brimming with history. I still need to visit the observatory – which stands on the site of a tower built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and his wife Eleanor Cobham, who both feature in my first book, Royal Witches – but this time the location of my visit was Queen’s House. The Queen’s House is just one part of Greenwich’s UNESCO World Heritage Site. The house sits on the grounds of the former Greenwich Palace, which was originally built by Humphrey and Eleanor in the 15^th century, then enlarged by Margaret of Anjou and the Tudors. King James I gifted the site to his Queen, Anne of Denmark, in 1613, and within a few years famed architect Inigo Jones was commissioned to design a new, modern palace. Unfortunately, Anne died before it was finished, and it lay incomplete for years before Queen Henrietta Maria resumed work on it.

Finished in 1635, the Queen’s House was a brand-new era of royal lodging. Although it was not a royal home for long, it still was a hub for the area, with lodging for courtiers and royal servants – later serving the Astronomer Royals who worked up on the hill. In later years, it then also took on a strong naval association.

Today, the House is free to visit, which I think is really great, as it makes it so much more accessible. It’s very much a free-flow visiting experience, with lots of different rooms of artworks, with modern art installations within several of the rooms. The building is beautiful, and I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across Queen Elizabeth’s wonderful famous Armada Portrait. I also noted how well they had considered children there – there was a leaflet free for children, where it gave tasks and games that could be done in different rooms, that also accounted for whether the child wanted to do something energetic or more calm and reflective. We also had some tasty ice creams in their cafe, and the shop was small but had some lovely little pieces within. With the house being free it puts a lot less pressure on the visit, that you can wander as quickly or slowly as you like, and pop in and out whilst seeing other parts of the site. It’s certainly a visit I can recommend.

That’s all for today. Thank you for catching up with me as always, and here’s hoping the rest of summer can be filled with more history!

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• Hello

• Latest Blog Post

• Just History Posts’ Anniversary

• Guest Posts and Other Considerations

• Using Smells in Museums

• Thicket Launch Code

Hello

A warm June welcome to this month’s newsletter! The weather in the UK has been more spring than summer-like, with fluctuating temperatures and flipping between sun and rain, so you never know what kind of clothes to wear on a given day. Last month was very busy with exciting personal life things, and now that my next book has been announced too, I’m hoping this summer is a time for me to have a small bit of quiet and focus back on Just History Posts. As such, I wanted to do a bit of a look forward to the second part of this year (how are we now halfway through already?). We also have a couple of fun things to share from external companies at the end that I hope will be of interest. On we go!

Latest Blog Post

To start, a look back at the last blog post (before the book announcement) in case you missed it, which was a fun little ‘brief moment of history’. Listening to a podcast a while ago, I heard the story of the “world’s littlest skyscraper”, an early 20th-century building in Texas which was the result of a simple but effective scam. If you want a lesson in reading the fine print, then this story is for you! Make sure to catch up here.

Just History Posts’ Anniversary

Only a brief mention of this for now, but within the past week or so, I suddenly remembered that this October marks the tenth anniversary of the Just History Posts blog! It is incredible to think that it has been running for almost a decade now, and all the things that have happened in the interim. I will be planning a variety of ways to celebrate, which I’ll share more about closer to the time, but I hope that there will be lots of ways for people to get involved, to help me properly mark this milestone.

Guest Posts and Other Considerations

Somewhat related to the previous point, is that this year I have found a huge uptick in the number of people and businesses approaching Just History Posts for guest posts, publicity, and collaborations. These range from history students and authors just starting out, looking to practice their writing and share their work, to companies looking to sponsor me to promote their products, to people sharing projects and events, and more. In fact, just the past few weeks I’ve had so many requests coming into my inbox, that I’ve now had to add an auto-reply to my email address, as I am struggling to reply in a timely manner!

This is no bad thing. It shows that Just History Posts a decade in is still growing, and is gaining a reputation as a place to platform history of all types. I know how hard it was starting out as a historical blog owner/author, and have supported other authors and history students for many years on the blog now. Indeed, I still require support from other history blogs to promote my own books in a highly competitive industry. As such, I am also happy to extend this support to history-themed businesses that I think could have relevance to my readers.

It does create some difficulties for me, though. Although I have always done research into those I platform, with an increase in commercial enterprises approaching me, this increases my workload. I also have to think carefully about how many people I feature on the blog. Although it is great that Just History Posts can become a more vibrant community with guest posts, and you can all learn about a wider variety of pieces of history from those who know more about their specialism than I do, at heart this is still my blog, and I don’t want to lose my own voice in it. I also want to make sure we do not become over-saturated with promotions.

I therefore want to make sure I balance these guest posts and promotions with my own work, but at the moment the requests are coming in thicker and faster than I can hope to write my own pieces to be interspersed! I can imagine it may well take a while for me to learn how best to balance this, especially if the requests continue to come in over the next few months at the same rate. So I hope you can all bear with me as I figure out the best way to proceed as we enter the next stage in Just History Posts’ existence.

I have believed for many years now that websites and blogs will make a big comeback as people move away from social media, which I have discussed before in previous blog posts and newsletters when making my decisions to come off various social media platforms. If this is so, then the next decade of Just History Posts may see it evolve into a new form of community, perhaps more akin to online history magazines like BBC HistoryExtra, or the Medievalists.net community, where it becomes a much more collaborative effort. Or maybe this is just a temporary buzz, and things won’t change much at all! Who knows where the future will take us. But if you see an increase in guest material in the next month or two, then you now know why.

Using Smells in Museums

On that note, I am really happy to share an upcoming online event that may be of interest to you. Many museums and galleries continue to look for innovative ways to engage visitors, particularly to exhibitions. One way I have certainly noticed becoming more popular in recent years is including the sense of smell; the British Library exhibition on medieval women that I visited last year had some cupboards of scents, for example.

On Saturday 25th July, Sofia Collette Ehrich from The Olfactory Contractor and Liam R. Findlay from International Themed Smell Day, in collaboration with the Fragrance Alliance Network, are hosting an international event, Using Smells in Museums. Speakers from a variety of organisations across the USA and UK will speak about projects from museums, cultural attractions, and heritage institutions that utilised scent, and the challenges and successes of this.

I imagine the event will be of the most interest to those working in the heritage industry, but if you are interested in how organisations plan their exhibitions then I’m sure you will also find lots to intrigue you! Tickets cost $25.00 and more information can be found here. NB, I am in no way affiliated with the event, and have not been paid to promote it.

Thicket Launch Code

Earlier this year, we were kindly sponsored by Thicket.com, a new online learning platform focused on Humanities subjects. They have now launched, and classes are in session! From Ancient Greek and Roman medicine, to Shakespeare and politics today, to empire and modernity in Japan, there are so many great courses to choose from. The guys at Thicket have been incredibly generous to us, and are offering a 50% discount code on their classes for Just History Post readers. Just use the code “JUSTHISTORY26” at checkout! Please note, this code expires on 31st July, so make sure you don’t miss out. NB whilst Thicket sponsored a newsletter and blog post, I have no affiliation with the website, and am not receiving any monetary gain from this discount code.

That is all for todays’ bumper newsletter! It’s been so nice to chat to you all again, and if you have any thoughts on anything I wrote about today, please do write a comment below.

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All of my previous books have been focused on medieval women, and so this book is a slight departure for me, being centred on a king. But women were actually at the heart of my attraction to Richard II. Whilst researching the Ladies of the Garter for another project, I was surprised to find how the majority of women bestowed this honour in the medieval period received the position under Richard. A little more digging revealed a plethora of women at Richard’s court throughout his reign, wielding a lot more power than you might expect; several women were officially banished from court during a tumultuous period in Richard’s reign.

This officially piqued my interest in Richard. Why was he so fond of women, and how were they able to carve out such a political bubble at this time? I found an incredibly fascinating story within. Growing up in the south of England, the Peasants’ Revolt was widely taught, and is probably the most memorable part of Richard’s reign. Second most infamous, of course, is that he was eventually overthrown by his cousin, the future Henry IV. But what happened in between these two events is surprisingly less known. Despite these two fundamental points in history, Richard II is something of a hidden king, overshadowed by his relatives: his grandfather Edward III, who started the Hundred Years War; his father, later known as the Black Prince, famed for his military prowess; his cousin’s son, Henry V, hailed for his victory at Agincourt.

Richard was no warrior king. He did not necessarily shy from fighting quite as much as has previously been portrayed, but he was not interested in waging long, bloody battles and conquering his foes. Instead, Richard was interested in culture, refinement and luxury. His father-in-law’s cosmopolitan Bohemian court was his inspiration. He wanted to be an emperor, surrounded by beautiful women, stunning palaces, the most sumptuous clothes, and subjects who adored and exalted him.

Richard came to the throne as a young child and was brought up being told by everyone around him that he was chosen by God to lead the English to a new golden age. This fundamentally impacted his world view and approach to power. His youth was constantly held against him, with the men at court who disagreed with his plans using it to wrestle control. His close friends, who partied long into the night with him, were derided as “knights of Venus” who had “more prowess in the bedroom than on the field of battle”, and the prevalence of women did little to help this reputation.

Ultimately, Richard descended into a tyranny, hell-bent on enacting revenge on his enemies and trying to claim absolute power. This was to be his downfall. Today, he is perhaps better known through Shakespeare’s plays. In Richard II: King, Culture and the Court of Venus, I try to take a different look at this king, by turning to his wider court. Whilst in essence a biography, at times we turn our attention to other key figures of Richard’s court, looking at the role of women and household knights, the influence of Richard’s family, and how the Hundred Years’ War impacted religion and foreign policy. Through understanding these wider puzzle pieces, we can understand Richard better, and how his reign devolved so extremely.

If this all sounds tantalising to you, then it is available to pre-order from Amazon and bookshops now! And I look forward to sharing more with you. Thank you for all of your support.

Waterstones: pre-order here

Foyles: pre-order here

Amazon: pre-order here

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• Hello

• Latest Blog Post

• Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold Exhibition

Hello

A long-overdue hello to all of you lovely subscribers. I am terribly sorry it has taken so long into this year to finally speak to you all again, but finishing off my fourth book took a little longer than expected, and my brain somewhat went to sleep afterwards! I am so excited to be back chatting with you now, though, and to sharing more about the book closer to its release towards the end of this year.

Latest Blog Post

Last week I was able to get the first blog post of the year up, which was a really interesting interview with filmmaker Leon Mitchell. Leon has been working on a dual documentary and fiction novel about Empress Matilda, daughter and heir of Henry I of England. Matilda should have become England’s first queen regnant, but was challenged for her throne by her cousin Stephen, leading to a lengthy civil war known as The Anarchy, which we have discussed on the blog before. She is a truly fascinating character who deserves more public attention, and so it was great to pick Leon’s brains about how he approached her, and what story he wanted to tell. If you haven’t seen it, make sure to have a read here.

Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold Exhibition

I recently visited the Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold exhibition at Battersea Power Station in London. The exhibition includes 180 artefacts loaned from the Egyptian Museum Cairo, and centres on the life and reign of Ramses II, pharaoh from 1303 BC – 1213 BC. Ramses is considered one of the most powerful, successful and famous Ancient Egyptian rulers, and there is certainly lots to unpack of his nearly 67-year reign.

I must start on a negative, but bear with me. The tickets are sold by half-hour time slots, and so we arrived promptly about 10-15 minutes before our time. Security is high, with bag searches and body scanning in effect, but we were very near the start of the queue and so got inside swiftly. To begin, you enter a room with a large screen, and over the minutes people slowly gathered, waiting for what was evidently to be an introductory video. Here was where the problem started: they made us wait for what appeared to be every single person in the line to enter the room before starting the video. Considering every person had to go through security, then also climb up a set of stairs, and had the opportunity to have a tourist photo taken, this meant that we were waiting in the room until 15 minutes into our time slot. At this point, we had been standing around for half an hour in total.

The video was a decent little introduction to Ramses’ reign, why he was important, and some of the key themes the exhibition would explore, but it lasted only around 4-5 minutes. Then, the doors to the exhibition opened and everybody had to funnel through into the exhibition, where you were met by a single huge statue head of Ramses. This artificially created a huge bottleneck, where we then had to queue for many more minutes for all of the people in the room (I would estimate up to 100 people) to get through the door, see the statue, and pass into the exhibition room; it also meant you had to queue to see any case in the first room of the exhibition, as everyone was huddled together. It was only from the second room onwards that the crowd thinned as people took different lengths of time, and you could actually enjoy the exhibition.

This seems like a huge oversight on behalf of the organisers. If they instead just ran the movie several times throughout the time slot, then those first in could have viewed the movie and entered the exhibition and began looking whilst the next lot watched the movie, and thus this bottleneck would be avoided, and it would also stop those at the front of the queue waiting for quite such a long period of time.

Regardless of this poor start, the rest of the exhibition was very well done. There was a big variety of objects, and they were well spread to allow maximum viewing: some were in the walls, some in free-standing cases, and there were multiple statues dotted around the middle of the room to allow good flow. Exhibition signage was clear and informative without overfacing visitors with walls of text, and many cases had wonderful videos running above them which gave an in-depth look at a particular item within the case, providing close-up shots and further context, which I really appreciated. There were other screens throughout the exhibition, some showing interviews with historians and archaeologists about dig sites or events of the reign, others showing video footage of Ancient Egyptian ruins, which transformed into digital recreations of the sites in their hey-day. There were also a few models of some of the sites.

The only criticism I have of the setup, as a history buff, is that none of the artefacts had dates written on their labels – instead, everything was labelled with which dynasty it came from. As someone unfamiliar with Ancient Egypt, I found this very frustrating to be unable to place the era or timescale of the artefacts I was viewing, including how close in time they were or were not to Ramses.

Many, if not most, of the artefacts in the exhibition did not directly relate to Ramses, but instead were used to fill in information about politics, culture, religion, and other aspects of society that would have been familiar to him. For me, this was not a big issue; I learnt snippets of Ramses’ life throughout the exhibition through the signage and films, and I enjoyed simply seeing the breathtaking items on display. Others, though, may be disappointed by this, considering Ramses is the leading name of the exhibition – the person I visited the exhibition with, for example, said that they felt the title of the exhibition was misleading, as there was not much of Ramses, nor of gold.

There is certainly plenty to see. The website suggests a typical visit takes 60 to 75 minutes. Not counting the long wait for the introductory film, I spent almost exactly 90 minutes in the exhibition, though I looked at every artefact, read every sign, and watched every video (surprised, anyone?). This estimate is probably therefore pretty fair for the average attendee, and keenos like me would know they were likely to take longer in any case. There is also a VR experience at the end through the shop, which we did not partake in, though may interest others. Tickets are a little over £20 for adults, and group and family options are available. Considering the price of many London exhibitions, and the treasures within – which you would otherwise have to travel to Cairo to see – I think this is a reasonable price, though understand this will be expensive for many (a family bundle for 2 adults and 2 children with 2 audio guides comes to over £100, for example).

Despite my complaints, then, I would still definitely recommend seeing this exhibition, if for no other reason than as I mentioned it is a rare chance to see these items in England. The artefacts are astounding, the research is thorough, and the exhibition is clearly well thought-out. The exhibition lasts until the end of the year, so there is plenty of time to see it.

With that lengthy review, I shall sign off with a promise that I hope to return to monthly newsletters and blog posts, as we managed last year. There is certainly plenty brimming in my mind. Thank you for sticking by as I poured everything into my new book, and hope you will all see it was worth it when it is out!

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Thicket.com hosts live online classes in history and other humanities subjects, led by experts from universities around the world. Their classes are designed for casual learners who want to explore the humanities in an approachable setting, just for the fun of it—no tests, grades, or prior knowledge required. Classes are capped at 15 participants and cover a range of topics in history, literature, film, art, and philosophy (they already have some great classes on ancient Chinese history, Greek philosophy, Japanese literature, and French film listed on their site).

Thicket is still in pre-launch mode and will be opening classes for enrollment soon. In the meantime, they reached out to Just History Posts to see if our readers have suggestions for future classes. You can go to Thicket.com, sign-up for early access, and leave them recommendations for class topics. They’ll do their best to develop more classes that history enthusiasts like us love.

It certainly sounds like a great platform to dip your toe into a range of interesting topics, and I’m looking forward to them telling us a little bit more about Chinese history in an upcoming blog post, as it’s a real interest of mine! Keep an eye out for that, and make sure to check out their website. Until next time!

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• Hello

• Latest Blog Post

• Heists and the Vulnerability of Heritage Collections

• Seasonal Posts

Hello

Hello, and welcome to our final newsletter of the year! With Christmas and the New Year fast approaching, I’ve been busy trying to squeeze in present buying amongst finishing off my Richard II book. Extreme balancing skills are required! If you have a break during this time of the year, then I hope you have a restful one.

Latest Blog Post

This month I was able to share with you all a post I actually wrote a couple of years ago for the Areas Grey treasure hunting website. Due to personal reasons, Areas Grey has had to shut down, so they kindly let me publish it on Just History Posts so it can live on! It was a fun topic to write about, as it’s not one I’ve done much of before – either in theme or in time period. I took a look at the reign of King John, and an extremely well-known event in treasure hunters’ eyes: the potential loss of the English Crown Jewels. Just weeks before John’s death in the midst of civil war, his baggage train was lost in The Wash in the east of England. Possibly much of the Crown Jewels were buried beneath the waves and sand – but exactly what? And could it ever be found again? Catch up here!

Heists and the Vulnerability of Heritage Collections

Not exactly a festive topic, but one I felt I couldn’t really ignore. Museums and other heritage collections have always been a target for thieves, this much is not new. But the past year or so certainly feels like there has been an incredible spate of them – or perhaps our reporting of them has just increased. Obviously, there was the extremely high-profile theft at the Louvre recently. But just this week, a huge theft at Bristol Museum Archive was made public, having occurred back in September. Over 600 artefacts were stolen by four men, a huge cultural loss. You can read more about this recent theft here. This is hot on the heels of a brazen daylight theft of eight Matisse paintings from a library in São Paulo also this week.

It is no surprise that heritage collections are a valuable target for criminals. Often highly valued simply for their materials, such as being made from precious metals and gemstones, or for the names of their creators, in the case of well-known artists and authors, they can also have increased value from their historic importance and rarity. A lot of money can be made from selling pieces on, either whole or broken into parts. Add to this the lessened security in comparison to other highly valued pieces in society, and it makes it a much more enticing prospect.

There’s no real pithy summary to this. Heritage is chronically underfunded across the world, and even basic services are a struggle to provide, let alone paying for highly expensive security systems and guards. But it feels like such a profound universal cultural loss every time these thefts happen. Sometimes, items can be recovered, oftentimes not. And whilst these pieces are just money for the thieves, for communities they can be an intrinsic part of heritage, of history, of identity. When so much of this is already under attack the world over, through wars and government policies, these thefts just pile on even more.

Seasonal Posts

I’m afraid with a deadline looming, I don’t have much time to expand this newsletter further, but I thought I would leave you with a suitable list of some of my most festive blog posts, should the desire hit you to read something historic at this time of year. Otherwise, thank you all for reading this year, and I wish you all the best for 2026. Until then!

• Have Yourself a Merry Little (Medieval) Christmas

• Happy New Year, or End of the World? Early Modern Apocalypse Predictions

• When The Thames Froze Over: The ‘Little Ice Age’ Thames Frost Fairs

• New Year, New Me: A History of Calendars

• “Dazzling in the Extreme”: Ice Skating in the Victorian Era

• When People Posted Babies

• Wilson Bentley, The Man Who Photographed Snowflakes

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• Hello

• Compiling History

• Latest Blog Post

• The Queen and the Mistress - Paperback

Hello

A wintery welcome from me in England. After a very mild Autumn, the chill finally hit and we even had a brief bit of snow. The afternoons are dark - perfect to curl up with a book (or, in my case, write one). With my book deadline rapidly approaching, I’ve been thinking about what it is to compile a history book.

Compiling History

I always remember one particular seminar I had early on in my Masters - it was one of those existential ones that makes you question why you even write history in the first place. It was about the construction of history, and how bias is so intrinsic in everything we do that we can never get to an objective truth. We all know about bias - it’s something you’re taught early on at school in your history lessons: this person wrote this source, but they were friends with the king so they would say that, and so on. But far less are we taught about our own bias as historians. Bias isn’t necessarily bad. I am a woman, interested in women’s history, and want to write more of it to represent all those who have been ignored by historians for centuries. I have my own spin on things from my own perspective that is unique to me. But it does shape everything that we do.

What also struck me was the seminar’s explanation that even the way we construct history - that is, put the pieces in order and choose what we do and don’t include - completely changes the story you are portraying. If you were writing a history of the Hundred Years’ War and ended with the stunning victory of Agincourt, and Henry V’s deal with France to make him the next king, you would come away thinking of the glory of the English. If you instead finished that history several decades later, with an infirm Henry VI, much of England’s territories in France lost, and a civil war, you would come away with a much different picture.

So much happens in a year, that you can never tell a complete history of anything or anyone. You can’t write about every single battle that happened in the Second World War, every single piece of legislation Elizabeth I enacted, every thing that happened to everyone at court that in the endless cogs of life influenced wider events. So, as historians, the bits that we do choose to include changes the narrative we are giving.

These thoughts have been circulating in my mind recently as I finished reading another biography of Richard II to complement the ones I’ve already read. Each book is telling a tale of the same man, and includes many of the same events. But each historian went into different depths, put emphasis on different events, brought in small details the other didn’t. After finishing each biography, I came away with a different impression of the man than I did the last. When my own book comes out, it will be another perspective again.

It certainly makes interesting the now-common cry “you can’t just rewrite history”. Rewriting history is all any historian does.

Latest Blog Post

I really enjoyed this month’s blog post, as it looked at a part of history I rarely feature on my blog: the Second World War. I spoke to author Victoria Panton Bacon who just this month released her first children’s history book about the war, and it was fascinating to hear how one goes about writing about such a traumatic, tragic topic for kids. If you haven’t read it yet, make sure to catch up with it now!

The Queen and the Mistress - Paperback

In other news, I’m excited to announce that at long last, The Queen and the Mistress will be getting a paperback version! I’ve been busy the last few weeks re-reading it in anticipation of the new edition, seeing if any edits or updates need making, and I have been really enjoying it if I do say so myself. Re-acquainting myself with Philippa of Hainault and Alice Perrers has been a joy. It won’t be out until February, so will just miss the Christmas rush - but don’t let that stop you buying it as a gift for others! It’s currently 25% off on Amazon…

Thank you as always for reading, and let me know in the comments your thoughts on how we write history!

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• Hello

• 9 Years of Just History Posts

• Latest Blog Posts

Hello

Hello lovely readers, and can you believe it’s nearly the end of October already? I think I’ve said this in almost every newsletter, but this year is really flying by. This weekend saw the clocks change here in the UK, so we’re now firmly into dark evenings, and the weather has also drawn in - I’ve had to put the heating on for the first time, too! The start of this month saw the nine year anniversary of the creation of Just History Posts, so I thought like last year we could dedicate this newsletter to that.

9 Years of Just History Posts

It was really interesting before sitting down to write this, to look at the newsletter I sent this time last year for Just History Posts’ 8 year anniversary (you can find it here if you’re interested). Although I knew that this year I had really aimed to do one blog post and one newsletter every month, I had forgotten just how much I had struggled with everything last year. Last year had been the slowest year for the blog, with the fewest posts I had ever written, and this newsletter hadn’t fared much better.

Compare that to just a few months later, the start of this year, where I decided to do a huge shake-up of things (see here). I came off all of social media for the blog, and made my pledge to keep the blog and newsletter more active. I really wanted to rejuvenate Just History Posts, thank it for everything it has done for me and my career. I am so happy to say that my hard work has paid off. I have managed to succeed and even exceed my goal, and at the time of writing I have posted 12 blog posts so far this year, double what I had in the whole of last year.

One big thing that has helped my goal, beyond dedicating more time to writing posts myself, is that this year has really seen an uptick in exposure for Just History Posts. I’ve always had several blog posts which feature on the first page of Google search, or even in the top few results, but now if you type in “history blog” to Google, mine is usually within the top 3 results. This means I’ve had a big increase in companies and individuals approaching me wanting to feature on the blog, and so I’ve been able to bring you a lot more guest posts this year. I’ve been keen not to overwhelm things too much, and want to sprinkle enough of my own content in between, but guest posts are something I’m passionate about from several perspectives.

As an author, I know how important it is to be able to spread word about your work on different websites, and remembering what it was like as an early career historian, I also want to support others who are just starting out - I am so happy this year to have featured several students who had just graduated or who are still studying, letting them share their research and giving them some tips about beginning their own historical careers. But I also think there is a benefit to you as readers, too. Not only do you get to hear some different voices, but you get to hear some experts, too. I try my best to do decent research for my articles, but obviously I am not an expert in everything I write about. Getting guests on means that you can get excellently-researched articles from people who have studied a topic extensively.

Already this year, the blog has surpassed last year’s views, and we’re on track to hit a huge milestone in views. I have also been able to spend some time redesigning the blog after the old theme stopped being supported, and created a brand new book hub. In contrast to last year’s despondent 8-year celebration, I’m so happy that I can now write this far more positive post this year. Next year will be a whole decade of Just History Posts, and I can’t wait to see where we are then.

Latest Blog Posts

On the heels of all that news, it is perhaps no surprise that this month I was able to get out two guest blog posts for you. The first was written by recent graduate Catherine Williams, exploring white women in the Early Modern American South who owned slaves and plantations. A lot of what I know about slavery in America comes from later periods, particularly around the Civil War and the abolition, and so it was really interesting to hear about earlier periods, and how the lack of available, suitable, wealthy white women for marriage to other settlers gave these women a real chance at power and equality - at the expense of the enslaved people they owned. If you missed it, be sure to catch up here.

Secondly this month, we had another student, Talia, write for us. Talia is just starting her own career in history alongside studying at university, and she took us back quite a few more centuries to look at the origins of the Hundred Years War between England and France. This is a period that has come up a lot on my blog and in my writing, as Edward III (centre of my second book, The Queen and the Mistress), is the one who kicked it off, and it all came crashing down during the reign of Henry VI (the war featuring heavily in my first book, Royal Witches). Talia showed us that the conflict between the countries went back even centuries before that, really originating with William the Conqueror’s, well, conquering, of England. You can read her thoughts here.

It’s been great to speak to you all as always, and to reflect over what’s been a busy year for me. Until next month!

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• Hello

• Conferences Galore

• Latest Blog Posts

• History in the News

Hello

Hello and happy Autumn to my northern hemisphere readers. I’ve just about managed to get this out whilst it’s still September. It’s been a very busy month for me, as I knew it would be, so we’ll hurry up and get on with the newsletter!

Conferences Galore

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, I went to two conferences across the end of August and start of September, which was intense to say the least! The first was the Archives and Records Association conference, which I went to through my day job, and is the big industry conference for archives in the UK. There were so many interesting talks from the sector, including amazing schemes to increase inclusivity and accessibility of history and heritage. A lot of the talks looked at the use of AI, as it is of course the buzzword of the moment. In a very environmentally-conscious sector, there was a big focus on the environmental cost of this technology.

One talk that particularly struck me looked at the environmental impact of the entirety of our digital footprint, not just AI. It really struck me how much we don’t consider our digital footprint, when we spend our days on phones, computers, and using TV. But every tiny thing we do online generates CO2, uses water and energy, and leads to electrical waste. What was particularly stark, was how most of what we use is one-time only, but we don’t tend to declutter our digital lives in the way we might the physical items in our homes. Some key facts that hit me were:

• One email emits, on average, 4g of CO2 = the carbon footprint of a light bulb turned on for 6 minutes

• 90% of all data is never accessed 3 months after it is stored

• In just one year (2007), one zettabyte of data was created worldwide. By 2010, this had doubled. In 2035, we will create more than 2,000 zettabytes. To print out one zettabyte of data you would need the paper from 20 trillion trees. There are only about 3.5 trillion trees left on the planet, so that is not possible

The host of the talk highlighted the initiative Digital Cleanup Day, which basically encourages people to do a Spring Clean of sorts with their data - deleting old emails and photos you don’t need any more, uninstalling software or apps you never use - so that we can reduce some of this data that is sitting in data centres using up energy for no reason.

I know that none of this is particularly history related, but considering you are all receiving this digital newsletter as an email, reading it on your devices, and hopefully also reading my blog which is also digital, it certainly still has relevance! So maybe consider having a little clear out of your own digital lives.

The other conference I went to was an online conference run by the Women’s History Network. The conference was free, which is incredible for how much time and effort it must have taken to organise. There were so many talks to go to, and every single one was fascinating, particularly as a women’s historian myself! The stories that people manage to uncover to shed a light on the lives of women past is so inspiring, and so interesting too. The network is open for anyone to join, and they hold plenty of other events and resources, so definitely check them out if you’re interested: Women’s History Network.

Latest Blog Posts

Since we last spoke, I have managed to get two blog posts out to you. The first was the long-promised post about Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire. One of the most important castles in the country throughout the medieval period, it was purposefully destroyed after the Civil War having never had its defences fail. The castle saw the death of the imprisoned Richard II, and was reputedly the site of the start of Catherine Howard’s affair. Even in its ruined state it contributed to the history of the country through its time as a liquorice farm. Make sure to catch up if you missed it!

Meanwhile, this month I was really excited to publish a post about the Victorian fashion for electric corsets and belts. Electric corsets are something I posted about on my blog social media pages many times over the years, so it was so much fun to finally go in-depth about the topic. The 19th century saw such a revolution with electricity, as people were finally able to harness the power. Often we think about this in terms of the industrial revolution and advances in technology, but Victorians were keen to apply electricity to any aspect of their lives. It was thought that electricity could heal and enhance the human body, and so electrified fashion became a way to improve the well-being of men and women. Read more here!

History in the News

And to finish, a couple of pieces of history from the news in recent weeks. First up is a fairly depressing report from Cadw, the body that preserves Welsh heritage, which says that criminal damage to historic sites is on the increase. They said that this year could see the highest ever number of reported crimes of damage and vandalism at some of Wales’ ancient sites. This has included destroying signs, graffiti on a 5,000-year-old passage tomb, and theft. If you want to hear more about their report, you can read the article here.

If any of my readers are multi-millionaires, then you may be interested to hear that it’s been announced that in November there will be an auction of jewellery belonging to the American Vanderbilt family, specifically pieces owned by Gladys Vanderbilt in the early 20th century. The family was one of America’s most famous and most wealthy families at this time, and the jewels are expected to sell for a fortune. If anyone wants to buy me a Christmas present, now is your chance. Read more about the pieces here.

And finally, many - myself included - were enraptured at the start of the month when a famous painting stolen by the Nazis surfaced in Argentina. It is well known that many high-profile Nazis fled to Argentina at the end of the Second World War, one of whom was Friedrich Kadgien. Just weeks ago, one of Kadgien’s daughters put her home up for sale, and Dutch investigators who have been working for years to locate stolen Nazi loot found the listing - and spotted an 18th-century painting which was on their missing list. The daughter quickly tried to hide this oversight, taking down the listing and hiding the painting when police came to investigate. Thankfully, the painting was eventually located, alongside other artefacts stolen from Jews. The couple have been charged, although it is not yet clear what will happen to the painting. Read more here.

That’s all for this month. Thank you for reading, and I look forwards to chatting to you next month - when it is Just History Posts’ 9th anniversary!

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• Hello

• Sutton Hoo

• Latest Blog Post(s)

• All the History

Hello

Happy August lovely readers! The weather has been very inconsistent here, from heatwaves to grey, rainy weeks, but one thing that has been consistent is me being surrounded by lots of history. This month I’ve gone to a multitude of historic sites, written and researched lots of blog posts, and have been beavering away at my Richard II book too. Let’s get tucked in.

Sutton Hoo

Just over a week ago I had the pleasure of going to visit Sutton Hoo for the first time. I’ve wanted to see this site for years, and like thousands of others I very much enjoyed watching the film The Dig during the Covid lockdown. I thought the entire site had clearly been extremely well thought out and planned. There was a lovely shop and restaurant section, a little second-hand book shop, and a statue representing the famous ship from the burial, which was really great to get an appreciation of scale.

The historical site was split into three sections which each worked really well. By the entrance was a museum-type building which had a handful of items, some replicas of artefacts, and a little side room with some information about the film and some of the costumes and props from it. There was lots here to engage children or people who like more hands-on history, with a dress-up station and a short film of a few minutes which was a fictionalised portrayal of preparing the king for his burial, slipping in references to the historic change at the time like the introduction of Christianity. There were also several stands where people could touch replicas, play games, and otherwise get involved with the physicality of the history.

Further into the site was the house where Edith Pretty lived, and this was a fantastic set of rooms. The house was nicely preserved, but rather than being a historic house style set up, the rooms were set up as exhibition rooms. There were cases with artefacts related to Edith and the dig, with a really nice amount of information about Edith herself, who is so central to the story. Then side rooms had projections of original film footage from the excavation, as well as loads of the photographs taken, which was really fantastic to see. It made it come to life so well.

Finally, furthest away were the mounds themselves. One of the mounds had been reconstructed to its full size, which was really great to see just how significant they originally were, but the other mounds were still fairly visible. You could walk around the outside of the mounds, but most people gravitated to the viewing tower which had been constructed next to it and gave you a significant eagle-eyed view of the mounds. This really helped to put the scale of the site in context, and made it easier to see all of the mounds together. The only thing which seemed a shame was that there was no lift in the tower, and it was quite a few steps (I can’t remember the exact number but it was perhaps in the 70s) - this meant it was very clearly inaccessible to people with buggies/young children, or any accessibility needs, which I felt was quite an oversight.

Overall it was a fantastic trip, and I was so happy to visit. I would definitely go back again, and recommend it to others!

Latest Blog Post(s)

In the last newsletter, I promised you that this month I would be publishing a blog post about Pontefract Castle, after my trip to the site. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog (if not, don’t worry we’ll go into it in a moment!) then you’ll have noticed I’ve published a post this month which is not Pontefract Castle. Well, worry not! I have had more time recently to write some blog posts, so I decided that this month I would treat you all to a double post. The post about Pontefract Castle will be up in two days time, so make sure you go and find it.

Meanwhile, earlier this month we had a great guest post from jeweller Samuel Mee, who took us through a whistle-stop tour of famous pieces of jewellery from history. He explored key artefacts that changed fashions, like Tutankhamun’s funerary mask, the power of various royal artefacts, and how jewellery could be used to champion social change. If you missed it, make sure to catch up on it here.

All the History

This past month I have felt like I’ve been absolutely swimming in history. That describes most of my months, to be fair, working in the heritage industry, running Just History Posts and writing my books. But August has brought a bit more quiet and so I’ve had more time than usual to focus on my blog and book work. As mentioned, I’ve been able to treat you to two blog posts this month, instead of our aimed-for one, and I’ve got my research done for next month’s post which is just awaiting writing. I’ve also been able to dedicate more time to doing more in-depth research for the blog posts, which hopefully means you get higher-quality posts with much more academic research to them.

Book research has been chugging along in the background, and the next few months are going to be intense as the January deadline looms ever closer. I’m hoping to get the last few blog posts of the year sorted within the next few weeks so that I know that we’re all covered on that end and I can just focus on the book.

I’ve also been able to visit quite a few historic sites this month - alongside the Sutton Hoo visit, I’ve also been to the British Museum and to Windsor, seeing the outside of the castle and having a wander round the historic town. I’m also going to two conferences across the next two weeks, which will be a great opportunity to connect with heritage professionals and historians and find out latest best practice and research. It feels great to be so immersed in history in so many facets of my life!

Thank you as usual for reading, and I look forwards to seeing you next month.

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• Hello

• Kirkstall Abbey

• Pontefract

• Latest Blog Post

• History in the News

Hello

Hello and welcome back to another newsletter! After a third heatwave here in the UK, this weekend has been rainy and stormy, providing some much-needed relief. So, tucking myself away in the cosiness of the indoors was a perfect time to chat to you all. This month I had a weekend away in the north of England, with of course a few historic sites dropped in, and we have another blog post to read, and another dollop of historical news.

Kirkstall Abbey

So to start, my trips. First on the weekend was Kirkstall Abbey, a beautiful ruined Cistercian monastery near Leeds. Founded around 1152 by Henry de Lacy, Baron of Pontefract and Clitheroe (his family comes back later) it took around 30 years to finish building. A significant monastery in the north, it was one of the many victims of Henry VIII’s Dissolution. Over the following centuries, much of the stone was removed to use in other local building projects, and it was in ruins by the 18^th century. At this time, though, many British artists were drawn to painting landscapes and ruins in the country, and Kirkstall became a popular site for such pictures. For a time, the main road to Leeds ran directly down the middle of the church, and the columns in the nave still have graffiti carved into them from travellers.

In the late 19^th century, the abbey’s fortunes began to change. The abbey was bought and presented to Leeds City Council, who undertook a huge restoration project and opened it to the public a few years later, in 1895. Over the next few decades, extensive excavations were undertaken, particularly during the 1950s. Today, it is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled ancient monument, with a dedicated visitor centre and plenty of events. A public park surrounds the abbey, and there is a complementary Abbey House Museum across the road.

I had a wonderful time visiting Kirkstall Abbey, on a day that there was a local Kirkstall festival taking part in the grounds. It was lovely to see the place so busy and clearly well-loved by the community. The ruins are surprisingly vast, with plenty still standing, and it was amazing to see the scale and grandeur of it, particularly of the main abbey church. Entry is free, and there are a decent number of signs around explaining the different areas and functions of the abbey. I can certainly recommend a visit if you’re in the area.

Pontefract

The second day of my trip I travelled to Pontefract, and I had two brief historic visits here – one to the local museum, and one to Pontefract Castle. I won’t say much about the castle, as that is going to be the topic of next month’s blog post! But I will say that the castle was built by the de Lacy family, mentioned earlier as the founders of Kirkstall Abbey, and that it was one of the most important castles in Northern England.

However, I will relay a few brief thoughts about the town’s small museum, which was a surprising little gem to visit. As these local museums tend to be, it was only a few rooms in size, but it was a really well done family museum. There was an interesting room all about the glass industry, which was of significant importance to the town’s livelihood, and there was an exhibition room which at the moment looks at the history of local pantomimes. This was quite an interactive room, with videos, audio, and dress-up opportunities.

Then the main room took a wider lens of the history of the town from the medieval period onwards. Many of the later cases were very interesting, looking particularly at working class histories, but the earlier history fell a little short – the medieval case did not have any labels for any of the objects inside, so although there were maybe two dozen artefacts inside, all you could do was look at them! However, once again the clear effort to involve and engage children was there, with a station where they could play at shops, surrounded by snippets of records from past shop owners in Pontefract, another station to write and draw, and various other bits and pieces. The museum was free as well, so is definitely worth a short stop if you are in the area.

Latest Blog Post

This month’s blog post picks up one of my favourite series on Just History Posts, which is that of mythical creatures. Folklore and legends have been such an integral part of human history, and I personally find it fascinating looking at where stories of mythical creatures came from, and how the stories change over time. In the past I’ve looked at werewolves, vampires, mermaids and more, but this month I picked up unicorns. It was really interesting researching the medieval stories of unicorns, and seeing how surprisingly stable the legend was. Many of my previous posts show legends developing overtime, but for centuries the story of the unicorn remained unchanged. Acting as a metaphor both for courtly love and the story of Christ, these creatures had a surprising importance in medieval society – so make sure to catch up on my post if you haven’t read it yet!

History in the News

And finally, a few bits of historical news to round us off. Firstly, the exciting news for us in the UK that the Bayeux Tapestry is finally set to come on loan in 2026 for around a year. Talk about such a loan has happened for years, but never come into fruition, but a deal has finally been agreed as the Bayeux Museum is being closed for renovation. The UK is lending some of its important cultural artefacts back to France in return – artefacts from Sutton Hoo and the Lewis chess pieces. The embroidery will be on display at the British Museum in London. Read more here.

Turning back several hundred thousand years, archaeologists in China have uncovered a collection of wooden tools dating to between 250,000 and 361,000 years ago in the south west of the country. Although it is thought humans have used wooden tools for over a million years, they rarely survive as they decompose. These were found in a low-oxygen clay deposit, lending them their survival. Read more here.

Back to the UK, and a new historic home is opening to the public in Lincolnshire. Grantham House in Grantham dates back to the 14^th century, but was still in private hands until recently. The National Trust acquired the property and has spent more than £200,000 restoring it and its five-acre garden, creating a café and a second-hand bookshop too. Admission will be free – find out more here.

And finally, archaeologists in the Maya city of Caracol, Belize, believe they have found the tomb of the city’s first leader, Te K’ab Chaak, who ruled from 331 to 349 AD. His burial chamber was discovered in the Northeast Acropolis behind a burial chamber first explored in 1993. The tomb was decorated with red cinnabar, reserved for the highest-status individuals, and was filled with artefacts including a mosaic jadeite death mask. Read more about this incredible find here.

That’s all for today’s bumper newsletter. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading, and I’ll see you again next month!

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• Hello

• Just History Posts Redesign

• Latest Blog Post

• Book Hub

• History in the News

Hello

Hello and happy June everybody! I say that on the cusp of July. This month’s newsletter is much later than usual as I have spent the month busily redesigning the blog and creating a new feature, and I wanted to get everything live to be able to share with you now. Drawn out of necessity, I’m pretty happy with how it’s gone, and although there may be a little more tweaking going forwards I hope you like it all.

Just History Posts Redesign

Unfortunately, the theme of my blog which I have had for quite a few years now and really liked was discontinued, and that meant that whilst the blog was still up and running, a lot of the functionality had broken. If you ever tried to scroll down the homepage, you will have noticed lines of code appearing overlaid across the screen. I had been dealing with this for months, as I knew redesigning the website would take a lot of time, and one evening this month I decided to take the plunge and give it a go! Over the next week or so I did all the tweaks needed to make it functional and look presentable. There may be a few more edits as I settle in to the new look and decide certain things might not be quite right, but hopefully you will like its new look. It’s a shame to lose out on the half-page picture it used to have on the desktop version, as it added a nice bit of colour to it, but if you read the blog on mobile you wouldn’t have seen this anyway!

Latest Blog Post

This month’s post was a really fun one to research and write, though the topic perhaps hit a little close to home for some, as it was looking at what has been dubbed “the worst year in human history”. No, it’s not any time in the last few years, but 536 AD. A devastating volcanic eruption led to decades of turmoil, from starvation, to extreme weather events, to plague. The post proved exceptionally popular with readers, and it got picked up in the wider media too; last Saturday, 21st June, I had the pleasure of speaking to Darryl Morris on Times Radio here in the UK all about the events, and whether today fares better or worse. So, if you missed out, be sure to catch up now!

Book Hub

Darting back to the website redesign, after I had fixed Just History Posts I was on a bit of a blog roll, and I decided to implement an idea for the blog I had recently. Over the years, I have had many authors feature on Just History Posts, writing guest posts for their book tours, answering interview questions, or through my book review series. I know lots of people are always looking for their next read (myself included) and whilst it is great to be able to wander shelves of bookstores, it is also useful to have recommendations on our phones which are ever-present in most of our lives.

I thought rather than have all of these amazing posts and authors hidden in the depths of the blog, it would be great to have a central Book Hub where everything can be in one easy-to-find place. Now, when you visit the website, you’ll see the Book Hub along the top menu so you can always get there from anywhere else on the blog. Within the Book Hub you can read the blog posts authors have featured on categorised by fiction or non-fiction, or if you’re wanting a quick master list of books and authors, then you can instead head straight to the book list. Please do check it out, I hope it is a useful feature, and we will only be adding to it over the years!

History in the News

More joys have been coming out of various ongoing excavations in London, and this month some stunning Roman wall frescoes have been unveiled. One of the biggest collection of wall paintings to have been found from Roman London, they covered around 20 walls. Archaeologists have been painstakingly piecing together the crumbled pieces, which did not survive intact, since its discovery in 2021. You can see some of the photographs and learn more on the BBC.

Over in Poland, some exciting scientific analysis has re-dated a mammoth tusk boomerang found in the 1980s, and it is now believed to be the oldest surviving boomerang in the world, dating to around 40,000 years ago. It is thought to have been used for ceremonial purposes, due to it being polished and covered in decorative incisions, and thus aligns to the time in human history where people started to create art and make symbolic items. You can read more about the re-dating project and the boomerang on The Smithsonian.

That’s all for now, and it won’t be too long until our next newsletter. Chat to you next month!

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• Hello

• Researching for Books

• Latest Blog Posts

• A Visit to Pompeii

Hello

Happy May everybody! Here in the UK Spring has truly sprung, and in fact Summer seems to be taking over. My May has been pretty busy with work, talks, and holidays, so we’re a little later than usual this month, but that just means we have more to chat about.

Researching for Books

I’ve ramped up my research for my Richard II book in recent weeks, with next January’s deadline looming ever closer. I want to make sure I have many months for writing everything up, as I think it will need a lot of thought and work to pull everything together, so that means I really need to finish up my research soon. Doing research for a king has certainly been a much different experience to my previous three books, centred on women. Out of the six women my first two books were focused on (bearing in mind that these were royal women or otherwise at the centre of the English royal court) only three had already had a full-length biography written of them (and “full-length” is questionable for Alice Perrers), and so research was very different. It felt like I could “complete” research for them – I could more-or-less read every book and article that I could get my hands on which focused on them, and as they appeared rarely in primary sources, I could feel like I’d read most of the important bits of those, too.

But being a king who ruled for over two decades, Richard II is a different kettle of fish altogether. There are still surprisingly few full biographies of him, and early searches on journal websites like JSTOR normally brought up many results based on Shakespeare’s play before articles about the real man himself. This was no surprise, as it was one of the appeals of writing about him for me. But still, there was a lot more out there to read, and primary sources were on another level. Although medieval government was of course run by many people, pretty much everything was issued in the king’s name, meaning theoretically I could read every single order ever issued – every Pipe Roll, every Patent Roll, every line of every wardrobe account – before even considering Parliamentary records, chronicles, and so on…

That, of course, only scratches on Richard himself. My book aims to bring in other figures from the court and the royal family, and so that opens up all those sources all over again for each new person. The research for this really could be endless, and honestly this could have been a decade-long project rather than a year or two. Whereas my challenge for my previous books was looking for evidence and figuring out how to write about something or someone where no records survive, this book will be the opposite. When do I stop the research?

Latest Blog Posts

Because this newsletter is a bit later than usual, we have not one but two previous blog posts to chat about!

Last month we had a guest on the blog, author D E King whose interest is in medieval court jesters. He wrote an introductory post for us outlining what role jesters played at court – and I myself was surprised to find that they had roles outside of entertaining, such as messengers. If you haven’t caught it yet, then make sure you take a look here.

Having a busy month ahead of me, I was a little worried about getting a blog post of my own up for this month, but luckily I was contacted by another person who wanted to guest star on the blog: Molly Lindo. I was so excited when I heard Molly’s idea was all about Catholic Baroque art. Her piece explores how the Catholic Church and its artists used artwork in the Counter-Reformation to inspire their followers and push Catholic doctrine. Make sure to catch up if you missed it!

(Did you know you can sign up to email alerts on the blog, so that you are notified as soon as a new post goes live? Just scroll to the bottom of any blog post and pop your email in the little box near the end).

A Visit to Pompeii

So, I mentioned at the start that I was on holiday a lot this month, and one of these places was the bucket-list visit to Pompeii. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who does not have an interest in this incredible historic site; to have a virtually uniquely preserved architectural site like this (alongside Herculaneum) which can give us a stunning insight into Ancient Roman life on a single day in time is hard not to find appealing. Everything frozen in time, from bread left in ovens, to workmen’s tools in unfinished renovations, to stunning artwork on the walls and mosaics on the floors.

I was only able to spend one day there – they do offer three-day passes – but wow, what a day. I walked almost 30,000 steps and still didn’t see everything, though I sure did try my best. I admit, I never realised just how large the site is, or just how much is excavated. It was incredible to walk the streets, buildings towering over me, peeking through doorways. We arrived for opening and straight away headed to the colosseum on one of the outer edges of the site, and this meant we were lucky enough to see some of the streets completely empty of people before the hordes descended.

There was also one building, an Insula (sort of like an apartment block), in the midst of excavation, so they had a metal walkway erected above the site for visitors to walk through and witness. Unfortunately they did not allow any photography of this, which felt such a shame as a historian because it was so cool to see it in progress, so you’ll just have to take my word for the magic of the moment.

Inside the sports ground they were hosting an exhibition about the women of Pompeii, so you know that I had to take a look. It was a very well done exhibition, and it was so nice to see some of the artefacts as most of the artefacts are held in various museums and not on site. They had made a point of covering women from all sections of society, and it was interesting to hear the wealth and power some of the women in the town had. I was chuffed to spot several artefacts that I have featured on my blog over the years! Seeing them in person was particularly special. I also loved all of the pieces of art featuring women, and took many a picture of those.

I’ve popped a few pictures from my trip below, but it was a surprisingly difficult place to photograph, so forgive me if they are not great!

Normally I pop some history in the news at the end of my newsletters, but I think we’ve probably heard plenty from me today, so I will save that for the next one. Thank you as always for reading, and I look forward to speaking to you soon.

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• Hello

• Latest Blog Post

• Gordon Museum of Pathology Visit

• Book Publicity

• History in the News

Hello

Hello and welcome to our newsletter for April. It’s nearly Easter, meaning we have a nice long weekend here in the UK, so I’m looking forward to getting some gardening done and also having a good long sprint researching for my Richard II book! The book has such a wide remit it means I have so many things to read and dissect, so trying to pull it all together when I get to the writing stage will be interesting – I might end up looking like this classic meme…

Anyway, on to today’s newsletter!

Latest Blog Post

I thought I’d start by reminding you of last month’s blog post – especially as our next post is coming out on Thursday! I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy of Catherine Hanley’s latest book, Lionessheart, which focuses on the life of Joanna Plantagenet, one of the daughters of medieval power couple Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. I really enjoyed reading it so decided to do a full review of it, and you can find my thoughts here. The book has been out for a couple of weeks now, so I’d be interested if any of you have read it yet and what you thought of it – leave a comment below the blog post, or at the bottom of this newsletter if you’re reading on a browser.

Gordon Museum of Pathology Visit

It’s become a bit of a habit with these newsletters for me to tell you about museums or exhibitions I’ve visited recently (I hadn’t realised quite how many I go to until I started doing this newsletter more regularly!) and so this month is no different. In March I was lucky enough to visit the Gordon Museum of Pathology, a medical museum which is part of King’s College London and its associated medical schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’. The museum is not open to the general public, because it holds live human tissue (ie tissue donated by individuals who are still alive), but I was fortunate to visit it through my work.

The museum is the largest medical museum in the UK and its purpose is to serve as an educational centre for medical professionals. Being connected to a university and several hospital trusts means thousands of students use the museum, but it is also hub for conferences and studies by qualified medical professionals too. With around 8,000 specimens dating from 1608 to 2 or 3 months ago, the museum is very much a working museum. There are artefacts there in a much more traditional museum sense – such as groundbreaking medical equipment from centuries gone by, including Sir Joseph Lister’s carbolic antiseptic spray which revolutionised operations, or Thomas Hodgkin’s stethoscope, one of the earliest versions of the instrument – but much of the collection is still used today, whether to educate or further research.

The reason specimens from so long ago are kept are not only to inform us of diseases or conditions that have become “extinct”, but to continue medical research as new technology becomes available. As the curator also pointed out to us during his talk, diseases can also come back from the brink of extinction, or resurface from new sources, so that old specimens can suddenly become of vital importance to research once more.

The museum first opened in 1826, and remains of vital importance today. I learnt so many interesting bits of history during my time there, that it might become the topic of a future blog post. If you’re interested in learning more, even if you can’t visit it, then you can find their website here.

Book Publicity

I’ve been super busy this year with a whole host of events and podcasts relating to my books. Now that my third book is out in the world (go check out Women in the Middle Ages if you haven’t yet!), I have a big pool of potential historical figures to talk about. March was a particularly busy month, giving four talks in four weeks to different libraries, museums, and local history groups, which was exhausting – but exhilarating. I’ve also been on multiple podcasts this year, and will be recording another one tomorrow. Although quite a few of these have focused on my latest book, I’ve also been able to chat about both of my first two books in at least one talk or podcast.

It's been so interesting doing so many of these bits spread across three books. It has been so rewarding to finally talk in person to people about Women in the Middle Ages, as I find you really do learn so much more about a topic by talking it over with people, and receiving questions from people with different perspectives and knowledge bases. Whenever I do a talk – even for Royal Witches, which has been out for almost 6 years now – you always get new questions every time without fail, which makes it so much fun. People will connect things you haven’t, or put a different spin on things, or tell you about something you didn’t know which relates, and I love that we can all come together to share our knowledge and passion. It’s also great to revisit Royal Witches and The Queen and the Mistress. Reminding myself of those women’s stories in advance of talks or podcasts always feels like greeting old friends, or putting on an old, well-worn cosy jumper.

History in the News

A select few pieces of history news from the past month. Firstly, a great announcement for family and social historians: millions of records relating to family history from Guernsey have been digitised and now placed online. Covering over 200,000 pages of archival material, including parish registers, conveyance documents and Second World War identity cards, the records will be available to those who subscribe to the Find My Past website. Read more about the announcement here.

A new study has called our entire understanding of the Stone Age in Asia into question. In 2019 and 2020, researchers in China found a 55,000-year-old tool-making kit in the southeast of the country. After spending years poring over the find, they have now published a study on it. Up to now, stone tools had been found from the Middle Paleolithic in Africa, Europe, and Western Asia, but never East Asia, leading to suggestions this region did not experience the same level of progress. This new tool-making kit brings all of that into question. Read more about the find here.

And finally, London Museum has announced that they received a huge donation of £20 million alongside more than 14,000 Ancient Roman artefacts from the Bloomberg Group. This marks the museum’s largest private donation to date. The artefacts were found on the site of Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London between 2012 and 2014 during building work. An incredible amount of artefacts came from the dig, including the earliest collection of Roman writing tablets in Britain, and whilst some of these artefacts have been on display in the building since - alongside their free museum of the third century Temple of Mithras which is in the basement - the bulk of the collection will now find its permanent home at the London Museum. Read more about the finds and the donation here.

Thank you all for reading, and I look forward to chatting again next month.

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• Hello

• Drawing the Italian Renaissance

• Latest Blog Post

• History in the News

Hello

Hello and welcome to March’s newsletter! It’s been a very busy month for me so I’ve been a little quiet on social media, but so far we’re on track for my goal of a newsletter and blog post every month of this year (keep an eye on the blog for a new post coming out on 20^th March). I’ve got an exhibition to recount, we’ll catch up on my most recent blog post, and there’s plenty of great history-related news to explore, so let’s get started!

Drawing the Italian Renaissance

Let’s begin with the latest exhibition I visited: Drawing the Italian Renaissance at the King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. I managed to catch this near the end of its run (so sorry, it has already finished to anyone interested!) and I was looking forward to going. Renaissance art has such a hold on the public, with so many huge names that can be recounted by most people, so the chance to see some of these works was one I didn’t want to miss.

What made this exhibition perhaps more interesting, was that it was focused on the drawings of these Italian masters – items that, at the time of their creation, were practice sheets or guides for final pieces, and were not things expected to be kept and treasured. It certainly was intriguing to see how skills and patterns developed, and being able to see these drawings as working documents, complete with sketches or notes on the back, or pin-prick holes from where the drawings were used as the template for the complete work was fascinating. It was also really good to see on many of the caption plaques reproductions of the finished works, so you could compare the drawing to the final piece.

Our visit to the exhibition overlapped with one of their guide talks, where one of the stewards gave a short 10-15 minute presentation on one of the pieces of art (in this case, a landscape by Da Vinci) which was really well done. They spoke eloquently and provided great information, and also passed out blown-up reproductions so that we could see the detail more clearly. Hearing much more in-depth information, including the wider significance of a landscape piece, added a new dimension to the artwork, and it also gave me an idea for a future blog post!

However, I must admit I came away feeling like something intangible was missing. I don’t know that I can really elaborate on this, because I couldn’t tell you what I thought the exhibition needed, but I just came away from it feeling like it was a “fine” exhibition but not great or amazing like others I have been to lately (including another one last year at the same gallery). Perhaps it just wasn’t quite “my thing”, as the exhibitions I went to last year were all ones I had been highly anticipating and were right in my wheelhouse of interests. I’d certainly be interested to hear from anyone else who may have caught the exhibition and what their thoughts were!

Latest Blog Post

In case you missed it, last month’s blog post looked at a fantastic artefact – a book known as the Liber Manualis, written by a Frankish noblewoman almost 1200 years ago. The Liber featured on my blog’s Facebook page years ago, and so I thought it was time to finally do a more in-depth post about this incredible survival. Its author, Dhuoda, was Duchess of an area of modern-day France and Spain known as Septimania and the Spanish Marches, and she had a tumultuous life. After an initially successful marriage, she was drawn into dangerous court politics, her family threatened. Relations with her husband soured, and she possibly ended her days sick and ostracised, forcibly separated from her children. To comfort herself, she picked up a pen and composed a loving book of guidance and advice for them. This remarkable book is vital for understanding Dhuoda as well as many aspects of social history during the ninth century. Make sure to catch up on it here!

History in the News

There have been some really great bits of history in the news the past month, so some really fun reads here. Firstly is the incredible discovery in London of part of the city’s first Roman basilica. It is being hailed as one of the most important pieces of Roman history unearthed in the city of London. The basilica (like a town hall) was the heart of the city, situated at the back of the forum, a set of buildings with an open courtyard. The excavation was undertaken due to regulations in London when building work is occurring, and the ruins will form a key part of the new block above ground – read more here.

Jumping forward in time, Historic England has announced that they have acquired the Janette Rosing Collection of England, a huge collection of over 8,000 black and white photographs of England from the very earliest days of photography in the mid-1800s up to the early 1900s. There are photographs from every single county in England, and they track the huge changes happening to the country under industrialisation. Efforts are now underway to catalogue and digitise the collection, which will be a real treasure trove. Read the announcement, and see some of the photographs, here.

There have been lots of technical innovations across the past few years which have allowed scientists and historians to look inside wrapped documents. In the past, this has been used to look inside letterlocked pieces of paper (a way that people secured letters in the past through elaborate cuts and folds) so that the artefacts can remain intact. Now, a combination of X-ray imaging and AI have unfurled the secrets within a badly burnt scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum, buried by the infamous eruption of Vesuvius. The team responsible are confident they will eventually be able to read almost the entire scroll, which is really exciting as hundreds of similar scrolls survive from the town so this can really deepen our understanding of the time. Read about the project here.

Thank you all for reading, and I’d love to hear any other great history news you’ve seen.

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• Hello

• Mary Rose Museum

• History News

• Latest Blog Post

Hello

Hello everyone, and welcome to a very prompt February newsletter. It’s been lovely to see a flurry of new followers over the past few weeks since announcing I was coming off Facebook, so a big hello to all of you, new and old. A few days ago I visited the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, so I’m very excited to tell you a bit about that, and then we turn to look at some bits of history that have been in the news recently. So let’s get started!

Mary Rose Museum

The Mary Rose was a warship commissioned by Tudor King Henry VIII within his first year on the throne. At the time, England only had a handful of ships, and Henry was eager to change the naval might of the country, commissioning the Mary Rose from his own personal purse. The ship turned out to be a fearsome force for the next few decades, seeing action for 34 years until it suddenly and shockingly sunk in the Solent in 1545 during battle with France.

A few items from the ship were later salvaged under Henry’s orders, including some of the guns and sails, but thereafter the ship faded to obscurity, coated in layer upon layer of silt. It was partially rediscovered in the 19th century then lost again until 1971, where a decade-long recovery project was undertaken. After carefully excavating it, retrieving the surviving objects from within, and painstakingly lifting the wreckage from the sea floor, it was placed at Portsmouth docks. Years of conservation and protection went into salvaging what there was left of the wreckage, and today a museum stands around it.

If you want to know more about the history of the Mary Rose and the museum itself, I’m hoping to publish a blog post about it in the coming weeks, but I thought I’d give you a little preview now. The museum is, in a word, excellent. I was so excited to go and visit and finally lay eyes on it myself, and it surpassed expectations. The ship itself is breathtaking, and the lighting changes intermittently from complete darkness, to small illumination, to having projections of people on the decks undertaking ship tasks. The gallery is built in a U-shape around it, with one long gallery placing objects in a mirror to the ship opposite, showing correspondingly where they were found in the wreckage. At either end of the ship are more detailed exhibition spaces which house many more artefacts and fascinating stand-alone cases centred on particular people who served on the ship.

These cases in particular really struck a chord, as it really emphasised the human loss of life that came with the shipwreck, but it also created a personal collection with the artefacts. Sometimes, seeing items lined up in cases, whilst interesting, is easy to forgot that they were connected to a person or group of people. Showing groups of items believed to belong to one individual, alongside analysis of both the items and skeleton to draw conclusions about the person (where they likely grew up, whether they had worked as a child, what ailments they had, what social rank, and so on) was incredibly impactful.

I’ll leave any further thoughts for my future blog post, as otherwise this newsletter will be just as long, but in conclusion I can highly recommend visiting the museum if you are ever in the area!

History News

In time for Holocaust Memorial Day, the Wiener Holocaust Library announced that following a three-year digitisation project, they now have over 150,000 items available online for the first time. The collection includes letters, pamphlets and photos which follow the rise of fascism in Europe and life under the Nazis. You can read more about the announcement and find links to the platform here.

In fantastic news, the UK Ministry of Justice has announced that they will be retaining all original wills after a huge public and professional backlash to a consultation proposing that after digitisation, all wills (apart from those of “famous people”) would be destroyed. Beyond the vital importance of preserving original archival material, the recent spate of cyber attacks, including that on the British Library, only served to highlight that digital records are not safe from harm. You can read more here.

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a man who has been found guilty of stealing an extremely valuable Viking hoard. George Powell failed to appear at court for sentencing, after being found guilty alongside another man for theft, conspiring to conceal criminal property, and converting criminal property by selling it. The pair discovered a hoard of 300 coins and gold jewellery in 2015 and instead of declaring it as treasure, sold it privately. Some items have since been recovered, including 31 coins, a ring, a crystal rock pendant, a bracelet and an ingot. Historians have since studied the recovered items, which have already changed understanding of this particular historical period. Learn more about the hoard and the charges here.

Latest Blog Post

In case you missed it, and missed my previous newsletter, my last blog post was an announcement on where I am taking Just History Posts this year. Astonishingly, the blog is now over 8 years old. My situation is so different to when I started – from university graduate to heritage worker and thrice-published author – and I decided everything needed a real shake-up. My current stack of juggling plates was just unsustainable, and I want to provide the best for my readers and loyal blog followers, whilst not completely burning myself out and neglecting one thing for another. I’m hoping these changes will finally see that through. I’ve already found an incredible community on Bluesky, and my inspiration for the blog has rocketed – I already have one blog post almost ready to go live, and three more in the works. If you want to read more about my thoughts and planned changes, then catch up here!

Thank you all for reading, and I hope that 2025 brings us all wonderful things.

Support me:

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You can also find my books on Amazon or in most bookshops!

• Hello

• Updates for 2025

• Latest Blog Post

Hello

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2025! I’m doing a dual post on this newsletter and on my blog simultaneously, so feel free to only read one or the other. I’m here to update you on changes to my social media accounts going forwards, and a refocus on the blog and this newsletter.

Updates for 2025

With the start of a new year, and time to reflect over the winter break, I’ve made some decisions about the blog and its future that I thought were worth putting in a blog post. If you follow my newsletter, then you’ll know that in my last post before Christmas I recounted that 2024 was my least active blog year yet, only posting six new posts. Despite this, overall blog growth was strong, gaining my highest number of views of any year yet. I made big changes to my social media schedule last year, reducing my Facebook posts to every other day rather than daily, and creating an Instagram and Threads account.

After a few weeks away from social media to rest over Christmas, I began to think about how to make 2025 a far more sustainable year for me. Last year I moved house and published my third book all whilst working full time, trying to run the blog socials and a newsletter and my blog posts and also keeping up with other general life stuff. This year is going to be full with writing my fourth book which is due next January. And I miss writing my more in-depth blog posts.

Social media has been fun, and rewarding. I created my Twitter and then Facebook pages in the early days of Just History Posts as a way to share my blog posts, but also to dive into smaller snippets of history. These social media posts helped influence what I’d write on the blog next, gave me personal interest, connected me with people on social media, and were useful for material for my books. But the landscape of social media has changed. Platforms dependent on the whims of American corporations and billionaire owners make it consistently difficult for independent sites like mine to gain exposure without paying loads of money in ads. Algorithm changes consistently reduce your exposure. I currently have almost 9,000 followers on Facebook, a page that was once a thriving community with loads of likes and comments on every post, and now most of my posts only reach 1-300 people.

I do still have regular posts which go more viral, and in fact the past year I have seen quite a number of posts reach tens of thousands of people and garner thousands of likes. But having one post every month or two go nuts and the other 99% of them be seen by no one is not a sustainable use of my time. In the time it takes me to write an average blog post for my website which lasts forever, I can create about 2 weeks’ worth of social media posts which are fleeting.

I have therefore made the difficult decision to stop most of my posting on social media. I will no longer post on Facebook, and I’m going to stop my Instagram and Threads accounts too, as I just haven’t found them to be the right fit for me. I still need something of a presence on social media for my author work, as it’s the easiest way to connect with podcasters, blogs, and other promotional groups, plus it is good to have a platform to share my newsletters and blog posts still. For this, I’ve decided to try out Bluesky. Although Bluesky is still comparatively in its infancy in terms of numbers of users, a lot of people are continuing to move there, and its algorithms suit me best. The fact that it encourages people to see posts from people they follow, rather than pushing ads and random content on you, and that it does not hide posts with links all make it much better for the uses I need.

With all of this in mind, I hope that this year will see a revival in Just History Posts, with many more blog posts for you to enjoy. It should reduce my personal burnout, and allow me to focus more on my next book too. I’ve already had time in these interim weeks to write a new blog post which will come out within the next few weeks. I won’t delete any of my social media accounts, both to prevent any copycats and in case situations change in the future and I can always pick them back up again.

But to summarise going forward, the places you will be able to find me, and rough frequency will be:

· The Just History Posts blog, with an aim for a new post every month (if not more)

· This newsletter, with one newsletter sent to your inbox roughly once a month

· My Bluesky account, with intermittent posts about the blog, the newsletter, random bits of history, and my author work

If you want to make sure you don’t miss anything, then you can sign up to receive updates by email directly on the blog (find the button at the bottom of any post) or by this newsletter.

I want to thank you all for bearing with me, particularly the past two years as I’ve experimented with different platforms to figure out what works for me. The resounding result has been anything where I can connect directly with you, without algorithms, and where I am more in control of my own content – through the newsletter and this website. Stable places which should have very few changes. And thank you for all your support on Facebook over the years. It was genuinely a hard decision to make to stop posting on there, as you have all been so kind and supportive in the comments there for so long, championing my books and celebrating my achievements with me, like when I was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I appreciate you all, and hope I can provide you with more and better quality content going forwards.

Latest Blog Post

I thought I’d end by briefly mentioning my final blog post of 2024, which came out just after my last newsletter. I was very excited to write about two remarkable women I had only recently learnt about, the Trưng sisters. Two noblewomen from Vietnam who lived in the first century AD, they led an impressive rebellion against imperial China and became the country’s first female monarch(s). If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend checking it out!

Thank you all for reading, and I hope that 2025 brings us all wonderful things.

Support me:

Follow me on Bluesky, or check out my blog.
You can also find my books on Amazon or in most bookshops!

• Hello

• Women in the Middle Ages

• Just History Posts

• Emily Murdoch Perkins, Historical Author

• Women in the Middle Ages (again)

• Margaret More Roper, Tudor Scholar and Writer

• The Sainte-Chapelle

• “I, Christine” by Marcia Maxwell

Hello

Hello, and welcome to what will probably be my final newsletter of the year! It’s been an incredibly busy year for me, with the finishing, editing, and release of my third book, alongside moving house, but now that both of those big life moments are finished, I’m feeling ready to curl up in the warmth this Christmas and recharge for next year. I thought it’d be nice to do a little bit of a summary of the year, so grab a hot drink and let’s look over the past twelve months.

Women in the Middle Ages

We’ll start with a big positive, which was the release of my third historical non-fiction book, Women in the Middle Ages: Illuminating the World of Peasants, Nuns, and Queens.

The book was a significant challenge but also an immense joy to research and write - and who doesn’t love spending weeks looking at medieval artwork? Learning about the rich variety of lives medieval women lived was so refreshing, and seeing just how much they impacted artwork and left little reminders of their existence that have survived centuries after their death felt really special.

I have promoted the book a fair bit, so I don’t want to bog you down too much here, but it is now officially out worldwide, so if you considered buying it for Christmas (or any other gift-giving event!) it would mean a lot to me - it is available on Amazon and in most major bookstores. You can see a sneak peek inside on my Instagram video here:

Just History Posts

Now to turn to the blog. I’ll admit, in terms of new posts written this was the slowest year yet for the blog, with only five new posts. There is, however, a final new post coming out next week, so if you like powerful warrior queens then keep an eye out!! This simply came out of a place of time limitation, with edits for Women in the Middle Ages taking up a lot more time than anticipated (having not done an illustrated book before, I was unaware of the sheer volume of work needed once the writing is done!) alongside aforementioned house move. But, I have plans in place for next year to keep things up.

And, views wise, this has already been my most-viewed year yet before we’ve even finished December. It’s great to see that my older posts still hold relevance and interest. By far, this year’s most viewed post is one I wrote last year about the time Napoleon was attacked by rabbits. Yep, you read that right. If you haven’t seen it yet, now is your chance!

Social media has also stayed strong, with more followers on Facebook. I’ve also been able to post far more consistently on Facebook since changing to a schedule of posting every two days instead of every day – it was much more sustainable. Having taken Just History Posts off Twitter last year, this year I also left it on my author account, and made the move to Instagram and Threads. I admit, I’m still not entirely sure that Instagram works for my type of account, but I’m certainly finding a cosy home on Threads and have been able to reunite there with many of my friends I had made on Twitter over the years.

To finish off the newsletter, I thought it might be nice to do a little summary of each of my blog posts this year, as a catch-up for anyone who may have missed any. If you’ve already read them all, then firstly thank you! But secondly, I will say goodbye to you here, and a thank you for reading this newsletter. If there’s any blog posts you’d like to see in the New Year, please pop them in the comments below.

An Interview With: Emily Murdoch Perkins, Historical Author

I always love interviewing people who are doing history in one form or another on the blog, as I find it so interesting learning the huge variety of ways that people interact with history. Emily Murdoch Perkins began as a romantic historical fiction author, but has now turned her pen to non-fiction. Her highly-anticipated release, Regina: The Queens Who Could Have Been, looks at the princesses of the English Royal Family from before the Norman Conquest to modern day, exploring their lives and what may have been had they inherited the throne. We chatted about how she made the change from fiction to non-fiction, why she took this particular approach to the book, and how she balanced such a significant time period. Read it here!

Women in the Middle Ages

This post, as you can probably guess, was my book announcement. I don’t really need to say much more about this, apart from have a read if you want to learn a little more about the book!

Historical Figures: Margaret More Roper, Tudor Scholar and Writer

Back in July we had a fabulous guest post written by author Aimee Fleming about Margaret More Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More. Having just published a book about Margaret, Aimee was perfectly positioned to give us some information about the life of this extraordinary woman. Highly educated, her upbringing served as a template for other noble daughters in England. It’s thanks to her work that we know so much about her father, whose legacy may otherwise have been somewhat erased after his execution. To learn more about her, just click through!

Medieval Marvels: The Sainte-Chapelle

I love writing about history, but when I travel I particularly like sharing connected bits of history with you all. In Spring I visited Paris and finally ticked off the Sainte-Chapelle from my bucket list. It was honestly one of the most spectacular places I have ever visited, made all the more special by knowing how few people were able to see it from the inside for much of its history. The medieval stained glass is beyond words, and so if you want to know more about this historic gem, and see some of my photographs, then have a read.

Book Review: “I, Christine” by Marcia Maxwell

And finally, the first post of the year was a book review of I, Christine. This historical fiction novel focuses on the life of Christine de Pisan, the first woman to have earnt a living as a professional writer. If you study medieval Europe, you are almost certain to come across Christine at some point, and she left a significant mark both during her life and in the centuries afterwards. She’s a fascinating character for a fiction novel - I’m surprised there aren’t more works about her – and the book was clearly very well researched. If you want to know my final verdict, take a look here.

So, all that’s left to say is thank you for reading and following me in whatever form that is, whether it be social media, this newsletter, on Just History Posts, buying my books, coming to my talks… it is an absolute dream that I get to spend my days sharing history with the world, and that wouldn’t be possible without you. I wish you all a restful December, a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

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You can also find my books on Amazon or in most bookshops!

• Hello

• 8 Years of Just History Posts

• Women in the Middle Ages

Hello

October is always a big month for me, as it is filled with anniversaries relating to my history career. I started my blog, Just History Posts, in this month, and my first book, Royal Witches, was released in October too. Now, my third book is weeks away from release, so I thought this month’s newsletter could be something more reflective than usual.

8 Years of Just History Posts

Unbelievably, 1^st October marked the 8^th anniversary of my blog. I had just finished my masters, and everybody else I knew from university had seemingly started a blog once they had graduated, so I thought I would join the trend. I was coming out of four years of studying history, returning to a retail job, and I didn’t want to lose my historical muscles. I had learnt so many interesting bits of history at university, and wanted to tell everyone about it!

Just History Posts turned into something so much more than I could have ever imagined. The first year was slow, but I was so grateful and overwhelmed with every single view on the blog. I had not long hit 1,000 total views on my blog the following summer when, within (what I remember as) days, one of my posts got shared on Facebook and went “viral”; it was my post about Joan of Navarre, second wife of Henry IV of England, and queen in the early 15^th century. I had written my Masters dissertation in part on Joan, and the fact that she – alongside three other 15^th-century royal women – had been accused of using witchcraft against the king. In 24 hours, the post had hit 1,000 views, thus already doubling my all-time views. Across 2 or 3 days it passed into 2,000 views. I was astounded! 

Through the past year since finishing university, whenever anyone had asked me what I had written my dissertation on, they invariably declared “wow, I never knew that! That would make a great book”. This post on Joan going wild confirmed these voices I had been hearing, and I started to think – hey, maybe there’s something here. I did some research on writing pitches for non-fiction, and within the next 2 months I had somewhat hopefully sent one off. That single email led to Royal Witches being published 2 years later, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Whilst Just History Posts led to my writing career, the ironic knock-on effect is that the blog has since often had to take the back seat. When choosing between recording promotional podcasts, heading to the British Library or various archives for research, sitting down and writing hundreds of thousands of words, or working on my blog, deadlines (and money) has sadly dictated that the blog comes last. It is something I have lamented for years – “this year I’ll bring the blog back to the forefront”. But trying to keep up with creating social media posts, writing blogs, accommodating guest posts and interviews, starting this newsletter… it’s a lot to fit in around a full time job and everything else that life throws at you!

This has sadly been the most inactive year yet for my blog, with just four posts managing to go live as of the time of writing. But there’s life in the old girl yet, and I hope that next year will see Just History Posts rise from the ashes. A decade of blogging is on the horizon, and I’m determined that we’ll make it there. So thank you for reading this newsletter, and signing up to it if you have – having this interaction with you all encourages me to keep going! And why not pick out a post to read this evening to reassure her that we’re all still here! 

Women in the Middle Ages

So, on to the second topic of this newsletter: my upcoming book! Excitingly we are just over a week away from it’s UK release (15^th October, mark your diaries) and a little over a month away from the US release (26^th November). My copy should be arriving any day, and I can’t wait to see it. In the week leading up to its UK release, I’m planning a special series of posts on my Facebook, Instagram and Threads pages, so make sure to follow me on whichever platform you use! I’ll be taking a look at each of the themes within the book and giving a sneak peek at some of the art that features within. This book was quite honestly a joy to research, I learnt so much and really went outside my comfort zone by learning more about other countries in Europe than those I am most familiar with. Women really led such varied lives in the medieval period, and had so many more opportunities open to them than we might expect, so I really hope that this book serves as a fantastic launch pad to pique your interests and inspire you to read more.

It would mean so much to me if you considered pre-ordering the book from any retailer of your choice. Pre-orders make a huge difference to authors, as it shows bookshops that there is interest in upcoming releases and it can encourage them to order more copies and publicise it more prominently. And it would make perfect Christmas presents! 

So, in the end, this newsletter has been one of looking back at the beginning and to the future! And with Autumn weather setting in in the UK, and the reminder that the year will soon be coming to an end, it seems somewhat fitting. Until next time.

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