84, Charing Cross Road - The love story of a New York City woman and a London bookshop

by Stephanie Cowell

In New York 1949, in the years not long following the terrible losses in the world from the War, a young writer who had never gone to college sent a letter to a bookshop called Marks and Co. in Charing Cross Road, London. She was determined to be self-educated. She wanted a number of classic books, then only available in old editions; the great cheap reprints of today had not yet been envisioned. She sent the bookshop a list of what she wanted. Back came a letter from one FPD (Frank Doel) for Marks & Co. saying they had copies of a few things on her list and would send them book mail. The invoice would be enclosed with the books. Yes, there really was a world when you could order anything and the seller did not doubt you would pay for it. In England Lyons Tea Shops were all over, and Elizabeth would not ascend the throne for three more years.

Through the mail, Helene Hanff wrote, “I enclose $4 to cover the $3.88 due you, buy yourself a cup of coffee with the 12 cents…Now, do you have….” And back came more estate-quality editions so beautiful she hardly dared read them.

Helene Hanff,who fell in love with an English bookshop

But she was a writer and writers are often poor. The bookshop staff wanted her to visit, but Helene could not afford to go. Instead her best friend went and wrote back to her: “It is the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens; you would go absolutely out of your mind over it. ….It’s dim inside, and you smell the shop before you see it; it’s a lovely smell….it combines must and dust and age, and walls of wood and floors of wood…the shelves go on forever; they go up to the ceiling….”

You never know what happens when you write a first letter to someone. “Gentlemen” which was the first salutation evolved into “Dear Frankie.” The request for books developed into a friendship with the whole bookshop staff. It led to her sending boxes of meat and dried egg and nylon stockings, things unavailable then in England except under the strictest rationing. 

The correspondence of Ms. Hanff and bookseller Frank Doel continued for twenty years. Their letters were collected into a small book call 84,Charing Cross Road which became an underground classic and earned Helene Hanff hundreds of fan letters from strangers in English-speaking countries around the world. It became a BBC live television play. It became a West End play and a Broadway play and eventually a movie with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins.

Anthony Hopkins as bookseller Frank Doel in the film

But Helene never met her friend Frankie; he died suddenly in 1968 . Almost the whole of the London antiquarian book trade attended his funeral on a bitterly cold day.

When Helene finally sold enough television scripts to go to England, she found to her great sadness that the bookstore she had made so famous in her little book had closed. Someone had saved the sign for her though. She subsequently wrote two charming small memoirs about her adventures seeing London and England at last, hosted by her huge number of fans and her English publisher. It was a dream come true. The books are The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and Q’s Legacy, which is also about how an American girl who could not afford college fell in love with English literature.

Many people love the 1987 movie version but I feel it pales next to the vivid writing of the actual letters. So if you have not read the actual 84, Charing Cross Road, you can do it in much less than an hour and it will transport you back to the time when you wrote snail mail to bookshops for what you wanted if not available here and didn’t have to pay until after it came and when a London book shop could keep a staff of six or eight employees while selling books through the mail for about two dollars each and probably a lot less if you went in person.

Charing Cross Road as seen in the film

In 1997 my husband and I made our own pilgrimage to 84, Charing Cross Road. At that point, the shop was empty and there was nothing but the plaque commemorating it (see above) and the book Helene had written about it. It was very sad, but there were still a number of second-hand bookshops on the street, and I bought a book in one which I still have today. It was not an antiquarian book but a used paperback, but still I love it.

A few years before I had written Helene Hanff a fan letter; she still lived in the Manhattan apartment house whose address was listed in her books. She was then about 80 years old. She wrote me a lovely handwritten letter back which lies buried in one of the many boxes of papers or I would hope to scan it for this article. I was perfectly thrilled to receive it.

the original edition of the book of letters

I own almost all her books. Mostly they are the story of how one woman loved English literature so much that she made an ordinary Charing Cross antiquarian bookshop into one of the most loved bookshops in the world ever. And so it remains in people’s minds many years after the world it celebrated has changed forever.

This article is an Editors' Choice, originally published on Aug 13, 2015
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Stephanie Cowell is the author of Nicholas Cooke, The Physician of London, The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart and Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet. She is the recipient of an American Book Award. Her next novel is on the love story of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning to be followed by the conclusion of the Nicholas trilogy and an Edwardian love story between two men in the English midlands. Her work has been translated into nine languages. Her website is http://www.stephaniecowell.com. e-mail: StephanieCowell@nyc.rr.com

Celebrating the 4th Anniversary of the EHFA Blog!

by Debra Brown

Thank you for joining us for this anniversary today, and of course, for joining us for the daily posts, many of you for four years now. At this writing, the little knights at the bottom of the blog have admitted nearly 685,000 unique visitors, and we appreciate every one of you who have brought us to our nearly 2,700,000 page views.

This year has seen many interesting topics. Did you miss:

(Probably) Charles, the Spare

The Spare Child of James I of England: a Tragedy in the Making by Linda Root?

Death by Quill, the Parliamentary Act of Attainder (another tragedy) by Beth von Staats, our not-so-much-Henry but equally fascinating 'lesser known Tudor matters' expert? or

Social Mobility in Medieval England by Helena P. Schrader?

(One author is a self-taught history buff, one is a diplomat in a far-away country, and another is a professional in another field. You can get acquainted with these authors in our Facebook group and find out which is which!)

Perhaps you knew all this history, but there are 362 other posts..... besides the ones from the years before.

And neatly packaged in one beautiful new book are 186 essays from the second year, Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors Volume II, to be released on September 30, 2015.

In 2013, we launched Volume I with a Castles themed blog hop. On the 30th of this year we will have a Customs themed hop. Come by and follow links to blogs that will discuss the sometimes laughable (now), sometimes strange (to us), and sometimes saddening customs of the British past.

Comments on Volume I included:

"I think this will appeal to people across the board.  It’ll make a perfect stocking filler for history buffs for Christmas.  It’s companionable to read with a variety of different subjects, writing styles and approaches to history and historical research and can be dipped in and out of at leisure." – Elizabeth Chadwick

"This is an  'I didn’t know that' book,  guaranteed to inspire and intrigue - you’ll find yourself absorbed in the fountain of knowledge penned by wordsmiths who have a passion for the past.” – Helen Hollick

"It's an amusing trot through British history and excellent bedtime reading.... It was literary comfort food – a recollection of childhood, warm and satisfying." – Tom Williams.

Volume I is available in print, digital formats, and audio book.

Our Most Popular Posts

Unfortunately, our Blogger statistics don't give us a breakdown on the most popular posts for one year. However, our all-time most popular posts include:

Seven Surprising Facts About Anne of Cleves by Nancy Bilyeau. Interestingly, we receive far more Google search hits asking about Anne of Cleves than any of our other fascinating topics. A hint to authors!

Little Ease and the Tower of London by Nancy Bilyeau. A torture post. Brrr.

Who Placed the Earliest Roman Footprint in Scotland? by Nancy Jardine. Certainly one to rouse curiosity.

And, curiouser and curiouser, even the author cannot explain the intense interest in this topic:
Stand And Deliver ... Your Tolls? The Rise and Fall of the Turnpikes by J.A. Beard. When it came out, I blamed the interest on the UK Olympics being held about that time. I thought perhaps people, in their concern about tangled traffic, were looking into such things. But no, the post continues to attract attention. If you can explain it, please do.

Our visitors? The largest numbers come from, in this order, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, France, Canada, Ukraine, Australia, Spain, and China. Thanks to you all, and if you are from another land, welcome!

I really want to thank those who promote the blog. There are a number who do so regularly, and many, too, who retweet or Google share for us on occasion.

Please stay with us for another wonderful year, and invite your history loving friends who have not yet cut across our path. We love to hear from you in the comments section of every post, and don't forget to join us on Facebook to share your thoughts there.

Literary Greats: Write On, Homeopathy!

by Dana Ullman

The primary principle of homeopathy, called the law or principle of similars (“treating like with like”), is actually an ancient understanding that great thinkers and healers have acknowledged and utilized since early written history.... Hippocrates, the father of medicine and an early medical historian, once asserted, “Through the like, disease is produced, and through the application of the like it is cured.”

Even Shakespeare wrote about treating “like with like” in his famed play Romeo and Juliet (Act I, scene ii), when Benvolio gives comfort and advice to lovesick Romeo, saying:

"Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning;
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish,
Turn giddy and be holp by backward turning;
One desperate grief cures with another’s languish.
Take thou some new infection to the eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die."

The eminent British poet, John Milton (1608–1674), made direct reference to the concept of the treatment of “similars” in the preface to Samson Agonistes (1671): “Things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) is considered one of the greatest Western literary figures of all time. A German poet, novelist, playwright, courtier, and natural philosopher, Goethe was a contemporary of homeopathy’s founder, Samuel Hahnemann, MD (1755–1843), and they both were Freemasons. When Goethe was given an amulet containing a very small gold ornament (September 2, 1820), he wrote: “The jewelers of Frankfort must have heard of the Leipsig Dr. Hahnemann’s theory—now, certainly a world-famous physician— … and taken the best of it from their own purposes … now I believe more than ever in this wonderful doctor’s theory as I have experienced … and continue to experience so clearly the efficacy of a very small administration.” And in another letter he strongly proclaimed himself a “Hahnemannian disciple” (Haehl, 1922, I, 113).

Goethe not only espoused the virtues of homeopathy in his letters to friends and colleagues, but even in his most famous play, Faust, in which his lead character, Mephistopheles, asserts the homeopathic credo, making specific reference to the homeopathic principle of similars: “To like things like, whatever one may ail; there’s certain help.”

Goethe was also a close friend with Karl Wesselhoeft, the owner of a large German publishing company of literary works, and Goethe was a frequent visitor in the Wesselhoeft home. Wesselhoeft’s son, William, became Goethe’s protégé. As a result of Goethe’s influence and due to later correspondence with German doctors who had become homeopaths, the younger Wesselhoeft became a serious student and then practitioner and teacher of homeopathy in America....

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was one of England’s most respected playwrights. Shaw is the only person ever to have won both a Nobel Prize (Literature in 1925) and an Academy Award (Best Screenplay for Pygmalion in 1938). In his play The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906), Shaw showed the dilemma that doctors inevitably face between their need to care for their patients and their need to practice, often using dangerous drugs and performing unnecessary operations in order to earn a livelihood.

In the play’s preface, Shaw wrote:

"The test to which all methods of treatment are finally brought is whether they are lucrative to doctors or not. It would be difficult to cite any proposition less obnoxious to science than that advanced by Hahnemann, to wit, that drugs which in large doses produced certain symptoms, counteract them in very small doses, just as in modern practice it is found that a sufficiently small inoculation with typhoid rallies our powers to resist the disease instead of prostrating us with it. But Hahnemann and his followers were frantically persecuted for a century by generations of apothecary-doctors whose incomes depended on the quantity of drugs they could induce their patients to swallow. These two cases of ordinary vaccination and homeopathy are typical of all the rest."

He continued: “Here we have the explanation of the savage rancor that so amazes people who imagine that the controversy concerning vaccination is a scientific one. It has really nothing to do with science. Under such circumstances vaccination would be defended desperately were it twice as dirty, dangerous and unscientific in method as it really is.”

Thankfully, Shaw goes on to assert that times and things are changing, “Nowadays, however, the more cultivated folk are beginning to be so suspicious of drugs, and the incorrigibly superstitious people so profusely supplied with patent medicines that homeopathy has become a way of rehabilitating the trade of prescription compounding, and is consequently coming into professional credit.”

In 1932 Shaw wrote an essay, Doctors’ Delusions, Crude Criminology and Sham Education, which included a story about the homeopathic treatment he received for a hydrocele. This accumulation of fluid around the testicle normally requires surgery, but Shaw experienced a rapid cure without recurrence.

Shaw once challenged Sir Almroth Wright, a noted conventional physician, to look into homeopathy’s ability to cure many “incurable” diseases. Wright expressed complete incredulity, while Shaw retorted that Wright had no scientific attitude or simple curiosity. This short conversation was a classic:

Almroth said, “This thing is absurd and impossible; let me put it this way. Would you, Shaw, trouble to get out of your chair if I called from the next room. ‘Do come in here and see what I have done—I have turned a pint of tea leaves into pure gold.’”

Shaw responded back simply saying, “Certainly I would.” (Coulter, 1994, 409).

A writer that one might predict to have had an interest in homeopathy would be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories. The Scottish Doyle popularized the field of crime fiction and put Scotland Yard on the map. He was a prolific writer who also wrote science fiction, historical novels, plays, romances, poetry, and nonfiction.

In many ways, being a good homeopath is a lot like being Sherlock Holmes. A good homeopath obtains an enormous amount of detail about the totality of a sick person’s symptoms. A good homeopath probes and probes and probes, asking open-ended questions that lead patients to describe what they are experiencing in their own words. A good homeopath is open to hearing things he or she does not expect, and makes the best use of unusual symptoms that the sick person describes. Sherlock Holmes was also known to assert: “That which is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance.” And again: “That which seemingly confuses the case is the very thing that furnishes the clue to its solution.” Both of these statements are an integral part of homeopathic casetaking and case analysis. Homeopaths usually conduct a conventional diagnosis, but they then always seek to find the symptoms that are unusual for the diagnosis, and these unique symptoms are vital in selecting the medicine for the patient.

There is an intriguing reference in Doyle’s Lost World (1912). Many people are familiar with this novel because several movies were made of it (including a pioneering 1925 silent film with stop-motion special effects of the dinosaurs done by the same wizard who later created the special effects for the original King Kong). It is one of Doyle’s Professor Challenger stories. Challenger was a zoological “Indiana Jones-type” with a reputation for beating up reporters whose interviews were anathema to him. In Lost World, the narrator is a reporter who bravely decides to interview the violent professor, and a physician friend of this reporter advises him to take along a new remedy that is reported to be “better than arnica” for dealing with the injuries he is sure to suffer from the encounter (Chapter 3). But then, the narrator of the story asserts, “Some people have such extraordinary notions of humor” (as though there could ever be something better than arnica).

Arnica is one of homeopathy’s most well-known remedies for shock of injury, for sprains and strains, and for certain pre- and post-surgical problems.[ii]

Of additional interest is the fact that Doyle originally trained as a medical doctor, but his frustration, bitterness, and even cynicism is well expressed in his great Holmes adventure, “The Adventure of the Resident Patient,” a story in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894). Ultimately, we must all feel quite blessed that Doyle was not so appreciative of homeopathic medicine that he practiced it rather than writing his stories....

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) was poet laureate of the United Kingdom and is one of the most popular English poets of all time. Tennyson was one of many highly respected individuals to frequent the spa of Dr. James Gully, who was known to provide cold water treatments and homeopathic medicines. When Tennyson was in his late thirties, he suffered from petit mal seizures and a nervous breakdown supposedly due to thwarted romantic hopes, the death of a close friend, and financial anxieties. He first sought care at a spa under the direction of Dr. Edward Johnson, and there is record of him going to two other spas. He was so despondent and ill that friends despaired for his life (Martin, 1980, 278). However, shortly after he went to the spa and homeopathic clinic operated by Dr. Gully, he experienced noticeable benefits. In fact, although Tennyson was not yet fully cured, after Gully’s treatment, he no longer wrote to friends that he was suffering from “hypochondria” as he had done so many times previously. Even Tennyson’s mother saw the difference and referred to Dr. Gully as “a very clever man” (Martin, 1980, 315). Five years later Tennyson brought his new wife for care from Dr. Gully (Oppenheim, 1991, 136). Tennyson lived a long and fruitful life.

Other patients of Dr. Gully included: George Eliot (the pseudonym for British novelist Mary Ann Evans, 1819–1880, who not surprisingly was a friend of another major homeopathic advocate, Henry James), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (British novelist, playwright, and politician, 1803–1873), Florence Nightingale (leader in the worldwide nursing movement, 1820–1910), Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (highly respected clergyman, 1805–1873), Charles Dickens (author, 1817–1870), Thomas Carlyle (essayist and historian, 1795–1881), and Charles Darwin (British naturalist, 1809–1882)....

Dr. Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, the first British physician to practice homeopathy in England and the first homeopath to British royalty, was also the homeopath to many of the British elite, including literary greats Charles Dickens (author of Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and many others) and William Makepeace Thackeray (author of Vanity Fair, among many others, 1811–1863).

One of Charles Dickens’s short novels, published posthumously, that mentioned homeopathy was The Mudfog Papers (1880). The story takes place in the mythic town of Mudfog, and like other Dickens works is full of odd and interesting characters. In this book, Dickens relates the story of a surgeon named Pipkin who tells about a short and interesting communication from Sir William Courtenay, a self-proclaimed messiah whose real name is Thom and who is an ardent believer in homeopathic medicine. He even believes that homeopathic medicines can raise the dead if prescribed immediately upon passing. This gentleman had a premonition that he would drown, and therefore employed a woman to follow him everywhere he went with a pail of water, with the instructions to place one drop of a homeopathic dose of lead and gunpowder under his tongue after death to restore him. Sadly, however, the peasant woman did not understand his instructions, and Dickens concludes, “the unfortunate gentleman had been sacrificed to the ignorance of the peasantry.”

The Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) was a known appreciator of both homeopathic medicine and Swedenborgian thought.

The discussion of European authors with an appreciation for homeopathy would not be complete without mentioning Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett DBE (1884–1969), the English novelist whose writings were published as I. Compton-Burnett. Reviewers of her books assert that she is a direct descendant of Joyce, Kafka, and Woolf, and several of her books are New York Review Classics and still in print. She authored twenty books, including Manservant and Maidservant, More Women than Men, A Family and a Fortune, A House and Its Head, and A God and His Gifts. She received her DBE in 1967 for her contribution to literature.

Daughter of a famous homeopathic physician, James Compton-Burnett (1840–1901), Ivy was the cousin of Dr. Margery Blackie (1898–1981), who succeeded Ivy’s father as the country’s leading homeopathic physician, though distinguished herself even further by becoming the physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Before Ivy’s mother, Katherine Rees, married her father, she was diagnosed with Bright’s disease and was expected to never get well. However, she sought the homeopathic care of Dr. Compton-Burnett who cured her in eight months with homeopathic Mercurius vivus (mercury).[iii] They were married within the year, and ten months later Ivy was born. Her mother lived another twenty-seven years.

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[ii] Alpine Pharmaceuticals (San Rafael, Calif.) sponsored a double-blind, placebo-controlled study using two potencies of Arnica in the treatment of patients who underwent facial plastic surgery (Seeley, et al., 2006). This study, conducted by the head of the Facial Plastic Surgery Department at the University of California, San Francisco, was published in a respected AMA surgical journal. 

[iii] Although mercury is a well-known toxic substance, the doses used in homeopathic medicine are known to be safe and have a 200-year history of safety and efficacy. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has regulated the sales of homeopathic medicines since 1938, and has determined the safe dosage levels of the 1,000-plus legally recognized homeopathic medicines.

See also Mr. Ullman's post The Royal Medicine: Monarchs’ Longtime Love for Homeopathy.

Excerpted with permission from Chapter 3 of The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy by Dana Ullman
(Berkeley: North Atlantic Books/Random House, 2007)

The chapter also contains information about American Writers, An Eastern Advocate, other European Literary Figures, and Modern Literary Greats.

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DANA ULLMAN, MPH, CCH, is one of America's leading advocates for homeopathy. He has authored 10 books, including The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy, Homeopathy A-Z, Homeopathic Medicines for Children and Infants, Discovering Homeopathy, and (the best-selling) Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines (with Stephen Cummings, MD). Dana also authored an ebook that is a continually growing resource to 200+ clinical studies published in peer-review medical journals testing homeopathic medicines. This ebook combines the descriptions of these studies with practical clinical information on how to use homeopathic medicines for 100+ common ailments. This ebook is entitled Evidence Based Homeopathic Family Medicine, and it is an invaluable resource. Dana has been certified in classical homeopathy by the leading organization in the U.S. for professional homeopaths. 
He is the founder of Homeopathic Educational Services, America's leading resource center for homeopathic books, tapes, medicines, software, and correspondence courses. Homeopathic Educational Services has co-published over 35 books on homeopathy with North Atlantic Books. 
Dana writes a regular column for the wildly popular website, www.huffingtonpost.com(to access these articles, click HERE!)

Castles, Mansions, Banquets and Balls!

Castles, mansions, banquets and balls! What a life we see glorified in books and movies today, and what enjoyment it affords us. Dungeons, armies, peasants and kings. The history of England is a fascinating source of fodder for stories.

Here we are bringing together some of the modern day authors of historical England and the British Empire. We here, the authors of this blog, are working on your next books, the delight of your leisure evenings, and we are more than eager to share them with you. We want to stop our work for now, though, and take the time to meet you, to talk with you and to savor Olde England, our passion, with you.

Hadrian's Wall, shown with Chester's Bridge Abutment, above, is some of early Roman England. It is the greatest tourist attraction in Northern England today. I can only imagine standing, looking at it and trying to realize the time that passed since workmen were putting those stones together. Since then, in all those centuries, I imagine the travelers that passed near them, the children that climbed over them- all of them quickly grown up, grown old, grown silent and long forgotten.

Through all those centuries, named eras came and went. Each era had its rulers, its heroes, its ladies and its unfortunate poor. Each came to be known for its recovered facts, its legends and the questions it has raised. Its left-behind structures stand, or fall. Its art, music and dances have passed down to us, and with those, we imitate their lives.

What pretty stories we can create once we have done the research and become acquainted with the times, for there were common lives, extraordinary lives and for some, even royal lives. As time went on, a class system developed structure, structure which was widely, if resignedly, accepted by even those who suffered because of it. The lowest suffered for their "inferiority", which meant working hard and doing without. The highest suffered for marriage rules that destroyed their love lives and broke their hearts. Their positions pitted family members against each other for power or precedence and sometimes even took their lives. These are sad realities, but with much of it in the past, we can dream of people who might have lived in those confines. We can use those rules and that structure as an aid to make fascinating tales about these dreamed up people. The settings are grand; there are medieval forest hideouts, majestic but cold stone fortresses and gilt palaces. What appeals to you?

The authors of this blog will share some of the incredible things we've learned- perhaps you might be interested in the Great Fire of London in 1666 or learning about an eccentric lady of centuries past. You might want to know more about the practice of medicine in Victorian London or simply what an everyday Georgian working class man did with his spare change. How about an article on a particular castle? We will have a new post daily, something sure to keep ablaze your ancient English fancies and give you something to get your own imagination in gear. Perhaps you will want to be one of our "Reader-writers" and give us a short short story or a post? Please do! You may want to leave us a question about England for one of our experts to answer, or just come to play on our games page. We want this blog to become Anglophile Central, a place to learn about England, past and present, and have some fun. You may want to bring your tea.

We also want to introduce you to us, your authors, and our very English works. You can read about each one on the About Us page and even traipse off to our websites and blogs. Be sure to come back the next day, though, for a new and intriguing post!

Today, during our Grand Launch Weekend, we are having a huge Giveaway Event with a Kindle Grand Prize and numerous others! Please take a look at the following post to see what we have to offer, and choose your favorites.

Hadrian's Wall photo by Mike Quinn, shared by Creative Commons
Belton House photo owned by Richard Thomas, shared by Creative Commons

Welcome to English Period Readers, Authors and Anglophiles Everywhere!

Please join us September 23rd through 25th, 2011, to set off some serious "fireworks" right here. We will be launching this new blog, perfect for Anglophiles everywhere. The festivities will include games and drawings for a Kindle or Amazon Gift Certificate. Other prizes in the drawing will include copies of over a dozen books. You will have the opportunity to get acquainted with numerous authors of British History and Historical Fiction, learn about our books and meet some of our readers.

Following the launch weekend, there will be fascinating daily posts about the history and culture of Britain and the Empire. There will also be a weekly book giveaway. You will be able to follow updates by the authors as they publish their work. Please follow this blog, or subscribe, to receive the information in a timely way.