Thursday 23 January 2014

The Tailor's Girl


The Tailor's Girl by Fiona McIntoshThe Tailor’s Girl by Fiona MacIntosh

This is another delightful historical story from the author of The French Promise and Fields of Lavender. This book could probably be best described as an historical romance with the wounded soldier and his wife as the central characters. The horrors of war and attendant memory loss are as central to this story as is the womens’ movement for equal rights.

The Tailor’s Girl of the title is Edie the daughter of a Jewish tailor based in London. Her desire to lead a life as an independent woman, more than wife and mother, provides an ongoing focus when the hero Tom changes direction through an accident that is no fault of his own.

The challenges for returned soldiers and women post war are addressed with a wonderful tour through the streets of London, life in the English countryside, lots of detail about the fashions of the time and an interesting look into that very male bastion of the times, Savile Row.

Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed this tale, the somewhat convenient ending was rather contrived, but having said that, it was an enjoyable read with an ending that suggests 'love conquers all'.




Tuesday 21 January 2014

Welcome Wellcome

Today Wellcome has made available a wonderful collection of images,"thousands of years of visual culture"  with Creative Commons licensing. The image above comes with the following details:

A humorous image of two men wearing revolving top hats with several attachments for optical aids and tobacco etc. Coloured etching. 1830 Published: T. McLean,London (26 Haymarket) :  1 January 1830 
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 2.0, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 

It is wonderful to see the increase in Creative Commons works being made available for all to use and share. Browse and enjoy this newly available selection of images.

Thursday 2 January 2014

Historical fiction

2014 Reading challenge

I've joined the challenge for 2014 at Historical Tapestry. This is my favourite genre and by joining the challenge I will be reminded to write reviews for each of the titles I read. I'm aiming for the Ancient History level of 25 historical novels in 2014.

My Historical Fiction tag in LibraryThing reveals that I read 23 in this genre in the last 12 months but I did not write reviews. Here's hoping for a year of great reads.
The first three lined up are Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, Fiona McIntosh's The Tailor's Girl and The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin.

What will you be reading this year?




Enjoyed this post? Want to see more?