Blog
Some novels with a similar theme to Elizabeth and Ruth
I recently contributed to a marvellous website https://bookdna.com that promotes authors and their books in various ingenious ways in order to help readers find fiction they will love. Its...
Why Was Ruth Banned and Burned?
The story of Ruth is rather different from Pasley’s story as set out in the letter to Dickens, although Ruth is a similar age to Pasley when the novel...
Publication Day!
So it’s finally arrived! The day that every author waits for with an almost equal mixture of anticipation and anxiety! It’s very much like bringing a child into the...
First Review!
So lovely to see this early review of Elizabeth and Ruth before publication!
Why Elizabeth Gaskell?
I was always drawn to Elizabeth Gaskell as a writer who lived in Manchester and who wrote about its social issues and conditions. She was born in London in...
Elizabeth and Ruth – the questions I had to ask
Pasley’s story as presented in the letter from Elizabeth Gaskell to Charles Dickens is both tragic and dramatic, but there are so many gaps in it that I had...
Top Reads of 2025
Ever since lockdown when I read voraciously and on more than one occasion ordered the same book twice, I’ve kept lists of all the books I’ve read in any...
More about Elizabeth and Ruth
I first came across the story about Elizabeth and Pasley in Jenny Uglow’s marvellous biography of Elizabeth Gaskell. It was just a short paragraph that suggested that Elizabeth was...
Elizabeth And Ruth
My New Book! Hello and welcome to my new blog on my brand-new website! I have a lot to say, because my latest novel Elizabeth and Ruth, is coming...
Reservoir
Very often for me a new novel begins with a question. It’s a question I can’t answer – otherwise there would be no point in exploring it further by...



