JOHN RASHALL THE PREACHER AND THE POET ALFRED TENNYSON An interesting aspect of my book The Water Doctor’s Daughters, is the lifelong friendship of the poet Alfred Tennyson and the Reverend John Rashdall. The pair had grown up together in rural Lincolnshire, and were contemporaries at Cambridge
Read more →SCHOOLGIRLS IN EXILE My book, The Water Doctor’s Daughters, is the biography of a dysfunctional family, but it is also Victorian era true crime. It centres on the case of French born governess Mlle Celestine Doudet. In 1855 the governess was tried over the deaths of her
Read more →THE GENESIS OF THE LAUNCH I hadn’t considered a separate launch for The Water Doctor’s Daughters in Australia, but a few months ago a generous offer came from Sydney’s Ashfield Library to do a book signing. It was to be part of their very popular ‘Authors
Read more →In The Beginning..The Water Doctor’s Daughter’s When I was writing my true crime book, The Water Doctor’s Daughters, I had a moment of panic and said to my husband Rob, ‘Oh dear, what if someone publishes this one day and I have to give talks about it?’
Read more →In my non-fiction book, The Water Doctor’s Daughters, Queen Victoria is an important figure. BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT- QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER FRENCH DRESSER Early in 1842, Victoria employed a well educated young Frenchwoman as one of her wardrobe mistresses. Célestine Doudet was born in Rouen on June
Read more →This brief article is a tribute to a very special Frenchman; Dr Auguste Ambroise Tardieu, who was born in Paris in 1818. Dr Tardieu headed the team of French doctors who performed a post-mortem on the disinterred body of English schoolgirl Marian Marsden in 1854.
Read more →THE WATER DOCTOR’S DAUGHTERS IS COMPLETE! After all my angst, the index to The Water Doctor’s Daughters was completed without Rob filing for divorce on the grounds that I was too irritable and unreasonable to live with. Mind you, neither of us will be taking up indexing
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