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 into bronchitis, and deeply touched by the honest and positive responses to my memoir. Always before, I’ve hidden behind my characters when voicing my feelings. 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 out on October 25th, one week from today. That’s THE PUBLICATION DAY, the moment when the memoir finally becomes widely available in bookstores and online. I know many 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 treasure my quiet creative time, but I also love to introduce my books to readers and hear their responses to the worlds I’ve created. In the Read More…
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 war bride raised in Gibraltar, the child of a “crown colony,” revered the queen and the monarchy in general. In 1936, the whole family turned 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.
What I Learned from My Father
In the early days of writing Daughter of Spies, my memoir that will be published in the fall, I was convinced that I could write equally about both my parents, but as I detailed in another blog post, the writer William Zinsser proved me wrong. When he told me that I had to choose 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 rather than with a person who writes books for a living. But I am catching up with all the lingo and with what it takes Read More…
Ian Barnard Hankey
Born Gibraltar November 20, 1921Died in Libya, Battle of Alam Halfa, August 31, 1942
When many years ago, I started writing what would turn into my upcoming memoir, Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, I met with the well-known journalist and author, William Zinsserto discuss with him the Read More…
Polecat Park
On the Road to Polecat Park
Although I rail against the damage I believe the Internet and especially social media has done to our civil discourse, I must admit that I get wonderful surprises on a pretty regular basis when people track me down through my website. The most recent treat came Read More…
My Mother’s Childhood
Although I didn’t know how long it would take me to write a memoir about my mother and myself, I did begin researching my mother’s childhood in Gibraltar and England long before I actually started writing the book. While my mother was still alive, I traveled to Gibraltar or Gib, as she always Read More…
The Queen Charlotte Ball
Bridgerton, the popular show streaming on Netflix, takes place in London in 1813 and centers around a family’s efforts to get their daughters properly married. The first step in that process is to have them presented to society at the Queen Charlotte Ball, founded by Charlotte who was married in 1761 at the age Read More…
Our First Catholic President
My First Communion
Since I grew up in Washington, D.C., a number of people have asked me in the last weeks if I remember other inaugurations. For a purely personal reason, I do remember the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, especially because he was our first Catholic president. The prejudice against Catholics was Read More…
My Uncle’s “Kompromat”
From 1946 to 1958, Joseph Alsop, my uncle,
and his younger brother Stewart, my father,
wrote a syndicated political column for the New York Herald Tribune. At its height, “Matter of Fact” appeared in more than 250 newspapers. Today, decades later, an incident involving Joe Alsop, Russian intelligence, and a so-called “honey trap” 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. I’ve been looking for it for days and finally, thanks to that great invention, the World Wide Web and to websites like Shipspotting and their 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 the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
This year we were in the U.K. for that weekend, and when 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 more pilgrimage to make. My mother’s cousin, Jane, and her daughter, Bets, live on a sheep farm near Ross on Wye.
Read More…
Looking For My Father
I’m still working on the history of my parents’ courtship and marriage in the middle of World War II.
Every day, information seems to be falling out of the sky on me. I’d reached the point in the book when I had my father’s feet sticking through the hole in the 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 I had knew of each other through a mutual friend, Colin Beavan who’d written a book about the Jedburghs, the clandestine operatives who parachuted into 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 of course, there are other times when it proves to be an invaluable tool.
Recently, as I was looking through some photographs of my father Read More…
Daughter of a Famous Writing Father
Having a famous writing father is not an easy burden when you want to be a writer yourself. It’s the reason that, until now, I’ve always written under the name Winthrop and of my 62 books, 61 are fiction. But I’m finally acknowledging that I’m the daughter of Stewart Alsop. I’ve just published Read More…
My Only Democratic Convention
Watching the Democratic Convention on television last night, I was reminded of the one I attended with my father in Chicago in 1968.
In those days, my father, Stewart Alsop, was a journalist writing the back page of Newsweek Magazine and I was a college student, opposed to the Vietnam war.
Here’s a piece 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 one hand, because I’ve read a number of books about my esteemed ancestors, but also because I’ve heard many of the stories from my father, Read More…
