Over the past few days I have been working my way through Hester Lees-Jeffries' wonderful new book: Textile Shakespeare . It was only published last week and offers a detailed examination of ways in which textiles were created, handled, used and subsequently viewed in Early Modern England, with occasional reference to the intervening years between then and now. Hilary Mantel's use of textiles in her Wolf Hall trilogy gets special coverage. I am reading Textile Shakespeare because I believe...

Another unique feature of writing retreats at A Place to Write is the reading by candlelight on the final evening. Retreaters are often...

One of our new signs This month, with my doctoral thesis finally out of the way, there has been time to move things forward behind the...