So here I am on the other side of the first round of book launch events. How do I feel? A trifle overwhelmed, fighting a cold that’s turned Read More…
The Big Ask
Dear Friends and Fellow Readers, For months now, I’ve been entertaining you with stories from my upcoming memoir, Daughter of Spies. I’m hoping these have whetted your appetite for the book itself due Read More…
Why I love to Talk to Book Clubs
I once took the Meyers Briggs personality test and although I can’t recall the exact results, I do remember that I landed right on the line between introvert and extrovert. I Read More…
Book Clubs
Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies
The author’s mother never talked about her past when her children were growing up. Do you think this is usual for parents in general or is it particularly typical for people who have lived through a war? Have you experienced this with your own parents?
My Mother and the Queen
Although of course, it was expected, I was especially sad to learn of Queen Elizabeth’s death. She and my mother were born three weeks apart. My mother, a British Read More…
A Wicked Child
Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the wild child of President Theodore Roosevelt and because we are distantly related and she loved a good gossip, I was often invited to have tea with her on Thursday afternoons. As a budding writer, I was an incurable eavesdropper.
Naming My Brand
My publicist suggested to me recently that I identify my brand. The suggestion stumped me. Frankly, I associate the word “brand” with pet food or soup or cigarettes Read More…
My Mother’s Crossing, December, 1944
I FOUND IT! The ship my British mother traveled on when she arrived in New York on January 4, 1945. Here’s a picture of the Royal Mail Cargo Ship DARRO. Read More…
Remembrance Sunday in England
Remembrance Sunday is always observed in England and the Commonwealth on the Sunday nearest to November 11th, Armistice Day. The First World War officially ended in 1918 on Read More…
Sheep Farming
I was in England for a week this month and although, on a previous trip, I’d visited most of the places where my mother lived, I had one Read More…
The Man Who Parachuted into France with my father
A couple of weeks ago I went to Florida to meet Dick Franklin, one of the two men who parachuted into France with my father in 1944.
He and Read More…
A Virtual Meeting
The Internet often drives me mad as it’s such a temptation to pull away from the sentence at hand and dive into the the wonderland of distractions it presents. But Read More…
My mother goes to Secretarial School.. in a castle…
A week after my parents meet at Allerton, my mother
and her best friend, Bee, are off to Stanway House in that distant corner of England that my father Read More…
My Parents Meet
On this day, what would have been my father’s 100th birthday, I think it’s time to bring him on the scene. My mother
is visiting her best friend, Bee Read More…
Allerton Castle
When my mother graduated from the Poles Convent School at the age of sixteen, she was invited to spend the second summer in a row in Yorkshire with Read More…
Whiteshoots Cottage
I’m sitting in our bedroom in Whiteshoots Cottage in Bourton-on-the-Water which I thought until this morning was my great-grandmother’s house from the mid-1920s until her death in 1946. Read More…
My mother’s convent school, Part 2
Angela and Lynda, who work in the shop at the Marriott Hanbury, were very helpful. They gave me a long historical report on the house Read More…
A Roosevelt Relation
Like so many others in the last week, I’ve been watching the Ken Burns 7 part series on the Roosevelts. I’m familiar with most of this material on Read More…
Setting and Character
As a fiction writer, I’ve always like to visit the setting where my story takes place. For example, in my recent novel, Counting on Grace, the book really Read More…
