My interests divide between a fascination with the historical background to our everyday lives – the way we run our homes and bring up our children, and the food we eat – and a love of literary geography: exploring the settings that inspired writers classic and modern. I’m also a little obsessed with fifteenth century England and its literature. I’ve written eleven books on these subjects. The best known are Dream Babies: Childcare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford and Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint’s Trunk (which resulted in my becoming Executor of the Arthur Ransome Literary Estate). I have also written a fifteenth century biography, Malory: The Life and Times of King Arthur’s Chronicler

Writing Malory led to a fascination with Alice Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer’s granddaughter, and I’ve been trying my hand at fiction as so little is known about her. The first book, Alyce Chaucer 1: The Serpent of Division was published in December 2022. I spelt her name Alyce as that’s the way she wrote it. . It was followed in October 2023 by the second: Alyce Chaucer 2: The Book of the Duchess and now in October 1924 the third in the series, Alyce Chaucer 3 Murder Will Out, is available. Double click on their titles or covers for more details. I will be talking about Alyce and all three books at the 2025 Oxford Literary Festival. The audiobook of The Serpent of Division, read by Clare Wille, was released by W F Howes on Audible.co.uk on 21 December 2023. It makes great listening.

Will there be a fourth Alyce novel? Ideas and settings are swirling in my head. Watch this space … Better, let me know if you’d like one! What might help create one is the Festival in her honour which is being held at Ewelme between 16th and 18th May, 2025. I will be talking about her fictional life; Rowena Archer will be giving the facts, John Goodall will be talking about her tomb and the God’s House she and her husband founded, and Nicholas Orme will describe life in a medieval school. Other speakers will discuss medieval fashions, farming and medical practices, and there will be a concert of medieval music. Find out more about it at https://www.alycechaucer.uk

My latest book to be published by Bodleian Publishing is Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings, which was published in October 2019. It is a study of novels in which the place in which they are set is of pivotal importance. It begins with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and ends with Hogwarts School, visiting Wuthering Heights, Bleak House, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Howards End, Manderley, Brideshead, and Bilbo’s Bag End along the way. It received high praise from The Guardian and The Times and has sold very well indeed

In Spring 2026, my sequel to Novel Houses, Novel Crime Scenes: Twenty Deadly Landscapes from Dartmoor to Cape Wrath will be published by Bodleian Publishing.

My second book about Arthur Ransome is The World of Arthur Ransome. part biography, part companion to all twelve books of the Swallows & Amazons saga, It was published by Frances Lincoln in October 2012.

I’ve written three literary anthologies for the British Library. Pleasures of Nature was published in February 2016. Pleasures of the Garden in April 2014, and Pleasures of the Table in March 2015.

I have also had several audiobook anthologies published by Naxos, The Christmas Collection, Poetry for the Winter Season and The Pleasures of the Garden.

My books brought me a parallel career: that of being a journalist,  and broadcaster, using their subject matter as a springboard to writing diary and opinion columns in such newspapers as the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and The Times, and documentaries for radio. I also reviewed books for various publications, and audiobooks for The Times Saturday Review.