by Valerie | Jan 26, 2015 | General interest, history, Italy, people
Days are getting longer, very slowly. I’m told it begins on my birthday, 29 December. The sun is setting every day nearer to five. When it sets at five I begin to feel the first intimations of spring. I note there are a few tiny yellow crocuses peeping up through the... by Valerie | Dec 5, 2014 | General interest, history, Italy, people
When we first met, I had no idea that this man in oatmeal tweeds and with sparse fair grey hair was a spy. He owned a semi-ruined property near Cortona in Tuscany. Someone had tipped us off that he had an uninhabited farmhouse to sell off the road leading through the... by Valerie | Nov 24, 2014 | General interest, history, Italy, people, travel
Olive picking in Tuscany has been the high point before Christmas. It happens in Keats’s ‘Season of mellow fruitfulness’ before the trees are bare and the earth hardened by frost. Or so it used to be. The persimmon tree in front of the house was laden with orange... by Valerie | Oct 29, 2014 | people, travel
Every so happy often I meet my friend who is reading the first draft of my current novel and we discuss a few chapters at a time or, as this time, the dreaded synopsis. We live a two hour drive apart, so we meet roughly half-way at a rather nice country hotel. All... by Valerie | Oct 17, 2014 | General interest, Italy, people, travel, writing a novel
It’s so mild that men are still wearing shorts, and we’re well into autumn! This morning I gazed at the chestnut tree in front of the Minster from my writing desk in front of the window. This week saw the start of serious editing of the finished manuscript. Already... by Valerie | Oct 1, 2014 | art, General interest, history, people
Beverley’s fine Town Cross was built in 1714, the year the first of the Hanoverians came to the throne. Strange, therefore, that Beverley was the only place in Britain to celebrate the coming of the first King George who, not being able to speak English, hastened the...
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