Alison's Blog
As a writer of history and historical fiction, I delve into a lot of dusty library shelves and obscure corners of the internet. I find things that don't fit the books I'm writing. But they're worth sharing. And this is their place.
When I was a child, my Mum had a big box full cloth leftovers from her sewing projects. It was a textile treasure chest. Velvet triangles, lengths of lace, Liberty prints and chunky tweeds, from the 1940s to the 1970s. They were all tossed in together, and we were allowed to plunder it for our own purposes. Here's my virtual scrapbox, of words and pictures - unassorted snippets of my reading, writing and research.
Chinese History (1)
In my latest book, Dragons, Devils and Rebels, there's a chapter on what Chinese and westerners thought of each other in the early days of contact. The book's finished, but I've since been reading a biography of an Englishman who lived in Shanghai in the mid 1850's. To his shock, when he first arrived Shanghai had been overrun by rebels, and was under siege from imperial troops. Still, he was an intrepid traveller. One day he went on 'an interesting excursion' to Wusong, by boat down the Huangpu. He and…
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Chinese History