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…
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…
Following in My Mother’s Footsteps: A Trip to England
As many of my readers know, I’ve been researching my mother’s childhood in Gibraltar and England for a number of years. While she was still 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…
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…
Decoding my mother: A Final Post from England
Our nineteen-day trip to England was all I wished it to be. We made remarkable connections, identified mysterious photographs,
met cousins we’d “known” only through family lore and the Read More…
Fetcham Park, my grandfather’s childhood home in Surrey
On May 20th, we took another train from Waterloo Station, this time to Leatherhead, Surrey to see Fetcham Park,
the house where my grandfather, Arthur Read More…
My father, the British Army and a Wedding
One day, we took the train from Waterloo Station to Winchester where Christopher Wallace met us and drove us the short distance to the Green Jackets Museum. Christopher
My mother in London
So when we last saw my mother in early March of 1943, she’d just hopped on a train to London.
Standing in the queue at Harrods, her mother Read More…
War Memorials
As it’s Memorial Day in the United States, it seems the right time to describe our visit to one special cathedral in England.
When we went to Winchester last week Read More…
The Mysterious Photograph
When I went to Ampleforth Abbey and College last week to show the monks and teachers the photographs my Uncle Ian
took during his short life, there was one 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…
Uncle Ian at Ampleforth
For now, we shall leave my mother and father, separated by wartime England, my father besotted by his beguiling Catholic girl, and my mother,
thrilled that she’s caught the 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…
My mother’s convent school
My mother was not surprised when, in 1939, her parents decided to take her out of the simple day school in Gibraltar in order to send her to Poles, a Read More…
The First of Three Mothers
I am losing three mothers this year.
My own mother died in November. One of my best “book mothers”, Nina Ignatowicz, the editor I’d worked with for Read More…
A Blog Tour!
The Next Big Thing Blog Tour
The Next Big Thing is an author blog tour. What’s a blog tour? A blog tour gives those on the tour a chance to Read More…
Research On The Web
Sometimes I bemoan how much time the Web and the Internet seem to steal from my real work which is putting one sentence down after another. Other times, Read More…
