Alternating chapters of newspaper articles by or about Maud West and Susannah Stapleton’s slow and steady sleuthing to uncover the life and times of ‘London’s Leading Lady Detective’.
Makes me wish I could ask my nanas about their lives, growing up at the start of the 20th century, a couple of decades behind Edith Maria Barber aka Maud West.
Publisher page: The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime: A Remarkable True Story – Susannah Stapleton
Kate Teltscher follows eighteenth century East India Company man George Bogle on his diplomatic trade missions to Bhutan and Tibet in the hope of opening up opportunities in Qing China, as British imperial ambitions emerge under Governer-General Warren Hastings.
Author page: The High Road To China – Kate Teltscher
I am loving these recent retellings of the Greek Myths from the women’s perspective.
Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships is, not surprisingly, the story of the Trojan War and the siege of Troy, triggered by Helen whose face launched those ships, and Paris – and the golden apple, but primarily for the story of where it came from and the three Goddesses vying for its accolade.
Penelope, relentlessly weaving and unweaving – and – my favourite chapters – writing increasingly exasperated letters to her errant husband-with-wanderlust, the wily Odysseus. Andromache, Cassandra, Hecabe (Hecuba when I was at school), and lesser known women whose passing mentions are fleshed out into, well, flesh and bones.
Fab.
Author page: A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes
Very readable rattle through four millennia of history, focusing on the individual as well as the political. Particularly appreciated the short, 2020 COVID-19 themed afterword.
Publisher page: The Story of China: A portrait of a civilisation and its people – Michael Wood
Readable real history but not in the mood.
Got through Eleanor of Aquitaine and a bit of Berengaria of Navarre, then put it down in favour of some fiction.
Author page: Queens of the Crusades: England’s Medieval Queens – Alison Weir