Return of Garrow's Law

Hurrah - dust off the periwigs and the silks, the wonderful BBC TV series Garrow's Law returns for a third series this Sunday at 9pm!

The legal drama is inspired by the life of the pioneering 18th century barrister William Garrow.  Episode 1 of Series 3 focuses on the true story of James Hadfield, accused of attempting to assassinate King George III. Garrow risks his reputation to defend the indefensible.  And he changes British law forever.

 Meanwhile, William and his beloved Lady Sarah are finally living together but things are not all rosy.  Lady Sarah is desperate to see her baby son and starts a legal challenge to her jealous husband, Sir Arthur Hill.

William Garrow is played by Andrew Buchan, John Southouse by Alun Armstrong, Lady Sarah by Lyndsey Marshal, Sir Arthur Hill by Rupert Graves and John Silvester by Aidan McArdle.

You can find out more on the BBC website for Garrow's Law (including the real cases behind episode 1) and at Mark Pallis' blog.  Mark is the Legal and Historical consultant for the show.   There is also The Garrow Society website, which has information on Garrow's trials, family stories and web links.

Here's a fabulous taster for Series 3, but beware, spoilers ahoy ;0)

Guest author - Hazel Osmond

A very warm welcome to my blog for guest author Hazel Osmond, who writes contemporary romantic comedy.  Hazel's fabulous debut novel - Who's Afraid of Mr. Wolfe? - is available now from Amazon and many other outlets and she's currently working on her second book, The Genuine Article.

Here Hazel gives her view on that most elusive and inexplicable entity, a writer's 'voice'....


You write funny….

Many thanks to Elizabeth for giving me the opportunity to write this piece – it’s been brewing away in my brain for a while and concerns what I feel is one of the mysteries of writing: where does the writer get her voice?

It’s a question that intrigues me because up until five years ago, I wasn’t listening to what now appears to be my writing voice, but trying to summon one up based on what I believed I should be writing. I put it down to ‘doing’ an English degree and to equating ‘being serious’ with ‘being taken seriously’.

It will not surprise you to learn that the pressure to write something weighty and profound resulted in a blank mind and a computer screen to match. Soon the only writing I was doing was advertising copywriting– nothing wrong with that and I will always be grateful that advertising taught me the importance of being entertaining, brief and direct… but where was that book I was going to write?

It took Richard Armitage, the actor, and the discovery of fanfiction to wake me up and show me that my voice was romantic and funny, and to convince me that making people laugh is not a barrier to making them cry a few pages later.

If I hadn’t been wearing intellectual blinkers, I would have picked up on the clues earlier. I might have realised that there was a reason why I day-dreamed love stories from an early age and continue to do so even when, and I say this at the risk of the curse of smugness shrivelling my vitals, I have been happily settled with the same man for A. Long. Time.

And the humour thing? Well, did I go for The Famous Five when I was little? No, and sorry to those of you who love those stories, but I much preferred the Just William books …and later, when my sister let me read her copies of Monica Dickens’ One Pair of Hands and One Pair of Feet I remember feeling as if I’d stumbled on someone who was completely tuned into how I saw life. By the time I discovered Dorothy Parker you might have thought my reaction to her would have told me something.

For all my short-sightedness, I suppose that somewhere deep down I was learning an important message: Richmal Crompton and Monica Dickens and Dorothy Parker had an absolute right to be funny even if, between the three of them, they did not possess one willy.

Of course it wasn’t all about women… during my teens I also had the great good fortune to need a lot of dental work. This of itself may be a funny thing to say, but what did all those hours at the dentist’s mean? Access to piles of Punch and writers as wonderful as Alan Coren.

So there we have it, my voice was in there all along but I wasn’t letting it out. I’m not saying it’s a better, more insightful voice than a serious one, but it’s true to my take on life – that humour, used properly, is a great leveller, comforter and humaniser. To write a book without it, or even a short story, just feels like I’m wearing someone else’s shoes. And they pinch.



 

Nell Dixon's new release is available now

While promoting the Kindle release of The Paradise Will and waiting for updates on other fronts, I'm busy sketching out ideas for a new story.  Once the original idea has ignited, I find my characters and plot need time to take shape, and then evolve.   Try and rush the process and it doesn't work.  It all has to make some sense in my head before I can start writing.  I make notes, decide on character names, do some reseach (a great way to procrastinate *g*) and I might even get the opening line sorted.  Sometimes I'll use visual prompts (currently a photo of a house, torn out of a magazine and stuck to the wall above my PC!).  It all feeds into a creative melting-pot which will hopefully churn out a first draft down the line.  We shall see ;0)

Meanwhile, it's a pleasure to announce that my author buddy and all-around lovely person Nell Dixon is launching a new book.   I can't wait to read it!  Here's more details and an excerpt to whet your appetite:-

Renovation, Renovation, Renovation is the new release from multi award winning author, Nell Dixon. 

Overworked, over budget and just so not over him! Kate would like an engagement ring from Steve but instead he's lumbered them with a thirteenth renovation project, and doing up Myrtle Cottage disturbs a ghost from the English Civil War who has romance troubles of her own.

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon.com 

Renovation, Renovation, Renovation is a contemporary romance with a twist. One of the residents at Myrtle Cottage, a fifteenth century house is a rather mournful ghost called Mary Ann. She was resident during a turbulent period of English history when Oliver Cromwell was coming to power and civil war raged throughout the country. Mary Ann’s story becomes entwined with that of Kate, the current owner bringing glimpses of the past into the present.

 Excerpt:

“Hey, Kate, can you get me the torch from the kitchen?” Steve’s voice was muffled but excited.

I went and collected the torch from the junk drawer and passed it to him. “What have you found?”

He’d pulled a crate into the fireplace and balanced on it, shining the torch into the flue. Knowing my luck he’d happened on some protected species of bat and we’d have to abandon the whole project or live in the Hammer house of horrors for evermore. I could hear him scrabbling around.

“This is so great.”

“What?” My curiosity was piqued in spite of myself. Maybe he’d found treasure – some previous owners nest egg of sovereigns perhaps?

Decorated with yet more dust and soot, he emerged from the fireplace clasping a small dirty brown object in his hand.

“I never thought we’d be lucky enough to find one of these. I’ve heard about them but never, ever thought I’d find one.” An excited grin split his face and he looked like a small boy who had just been given the world’s biggest treat.

He held the object out towards me almost reverently. “It was on a ledge, quite high up inside the chimney.”

As I looked more closely I could see that what he’d found appeared to be a child’s shoe. Much worn and filthy dirty from its time in the chimney. I failed to see why Steve was so excited.

“You do know what this is, don’t you Kate?” Steve touched it carefully with the forefinger of his other hand. Again a cool movement of air swirled around my feet and ankles.

“It’s a shoe.”

“It’s a spirit trap.”

Mark your diaries...

...The Kindle edition of The Paradise Will is published on 30th September!

It's been a while coming so thanks to everyone for being patient; I know how frustrating it was to be unable to get hold of a copy because the print run had sold out. 

The Paradise Will was my debut novel and a finalist for the RNA Joan Hessayon award.   I loved writing it and adored each and every one of the characters (well, almost ... one character is better described as - er - interesting rather than adorable ;0) ) and am looking forward to re-visiting it via the shiny new Kindle I had for my birthday :-)

You can pre-order from Amazon UK and Amazon.com.  Other formats available very soon. 

Hope y'all enjoy!

More News on The Age of the Regency

For all fellow Regency-ites out there, here's more details on BBC4's upcoming series to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Regency, Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency.

The first episode will air at 9pm on BBC4 on Monday 29th August.  Further details on the content of episode one (and two) can be found here on the BBC web-site.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page for a short programme trailer :0)

Elegance and Decadence: The Age of Regency

At last!  A BBC programme about the Regency era!

Thank goodness...we've had so many about the Victorians, I was ready to toss my corset across the room in disgust *g*   Seriously, I like the Victorian era but it's been done to death by Auntie Beeb in recent times and it's therefore an absolute treat to get a three-part series about my favourite period, the Regency.

Elegance and Decadence: The Age of Regency airs soon on BBC4.   I'm not sure of the exact transmission date, but as trailers are already appearing, I'm guessing in the next two to three weeks.  It will be presented by the delightfully warm and enthusiastic Dr. Lucy Worsley (above), who recently appeared on another BBC4 history programme,  If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home. 

The three episodes look set to cover the Prince Regent himself, great events of the era, famous artists, architecture - including Brighton Pavilion - the middle classes and a little bit of Jane Austen.  It will conclude with the Peterloo massacre, industrialisation and Royal divorce.

There's a few more details on Lucy Worsley's blog and at the BBC Press Office, but I'll post more information on here about transmission dates and content as and when it appears so keep checking back :0)

caricature of George, Prince of Wales from Wikimedia Commons

Fake or Fortune?

Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould

There's an excellent series currently running on BBC called 'Fake or Fortune', in which presenter Fiona Bruce teams up with art dealer and Antiques Roadshow expert Philip Mould to investigate mysteries behind paintings.

Through a combination of sleuthing and scientific testing, the Fake or Fortune team try to prove the authenticity or otherwise of the featured paintings.  One astonishing fact to emerge from the series is that it is estimated that between 20-40% of works of art on the market are faked, so as well as there being a huge amount of money at stake, there is also presumably plenty of material for our sleuths to work with!

Courtauld's '17th century painting', 'The Procuress'

This week's episode featured a painting called 'The Procuress' which hangs in the Courtauld Institute in London.  The painting has divided scholars' opinion for years and Fiona and Philip's mission is to find out whether the Courtauld painting is a genuine 17th century original, possibly painted by Vermeer, or a 1940s forgery from the prolific brush of Dutch superfaker Han Van Meergeren.   Van Meergeren was a man who dared to fake the work of Old Masters and made millions from his deception, until he was caught in 1945 after selling a supposedly Old Master painting to Hermann Goering.

To prove that he had not sold Dutch cultural property to the Nazis, Van Meegeren had to confess to multiple forgeries.  His subsequent trial caused a sensation when it was revealed for years he had duped art collectors and galleries into purchasing apparently Old Master paintings.  As Van Meegeren died before a complete record of his fakes was made, mystery survives to this day as to how many are still out there.  Philip and Fiona get to work on the London picture which, legend has it, hung in Van Meegeren's studio on the day he was arrested. Was it his last work? And by testing it, can it be proved prove how he out-foxed some of the most eminent minds in the art world?

The programme was fascinating and along the way we got to see Scotland Yard's storeroom full of fakes and latter-day forger John Myatt trying to reproduce Van Meergeren's techniques which involved painting a copy of Vermeer's The Girl with the Pearl Earring using a toxic mix of oil paint and corrosive bakelite resin.

Super stuff and I'll be rivetted to the final episode next week :0)

Fake or Fortune echoes a theme in one of my short stories in my latest release Brief Encounters.  The Virtuous Courtesan tells the story of a valuable painting which hangs at Rookery End, ancestral seat of the Earls of Allingham.  The current Earl would like to sell the painting to clear debts run up by his father, but the provenance of The Virtuous Courtesan is not as straightforward as it seems....

Brief Encounters is available now as an e-book, and in September as a paperback.

Fake or Fortune is currently showing on BBC1 at 7pm on Sunday evenings :0)