Author Archives: Pat S
Mr Atkinson’s Rum Contract – A review
From 2006 to 2018, Richard Atkinson worked as an editor at Bloomsbury publishers, rising to senior commissioning editor and responsible for some of the most successful illustrated cookbooks of the last two decades, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage series. From 2010, he was increasingly occupied with researching and writing his own first book, a … Continue reading
… a story of slate and more . . .
Last year, I became the published author of a family history: The Cassons in North Wales: A Story of Slate and More (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2019). The culmination of 8 years of research and writing, it tells the story of my maternal grandfather’s family. Since childhood, I had heard how, at the beginning of … Continue reading
A Meeting with Gentleman Jack
It seems unlikely that the forthcoming adaption of Anne Lister’s diaries by the BBC will focus on either of the elements that I found most interesting. In The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister as edited by Helena Whitbread ‘Gentleman Jack’ devotes an impressive amount of time to mending her own clothing, particularly her underwear … Continue reading
Looking for dialogue – Part 1
What drives me to want to use dialogue in non-fiction writing project? One year, two months and three days late I finally manage to post a blog about my efforts to find sources for real dialogue that can be used in non-fiction writing. Action novels and deliciously trashy domestic stories have lots of dialogue that … Continue reading
A writing class with Michael Arditti
As part of the Ilkley literary festival, I attended a Fiction writing class run by the author and critic Michael Arditti. Although the emphasis was on fiction, there were still useful ideas and exercises that can be applied to family history writing. Michael emphasised how lonely a writer’s life can be, and the importance of … Continue reading
Great-great grandpa gets a parking ticket
If you thought parking tickets were a relatively new invention, think again, the ever interesting Huddersfield Chronicle has turned up a story about John Arthur Liversedge, my great-great grandfather that would be familiar to many a tradesman today. When my great-grandfather Alfred John Liversedge was born in 1854 his family lived in Huddersfield where his … Continue reading
A visit to the Somme
We recently visited the Somme area for the first time. My husband’s maternal grandfather was killed there during the First World War and as the centenary of his death approaches, it felt appropriate to see where he is buried and pay our respects. In a sense he was fortunate in that he has a named resting … Continue reading
A Change of Fortune
After the photograph of the Slaughter family taken on the steps of the loggia at White Ness ca. 1906, as far as I know they were never together again – at least, there is no extant group photo of them from a later date. Mihill [Mac] and Connie were married in 1906,and in the … Continue reading
William’s ‘other’ family
During the early 1980s, my mother saw an advertisement in the Times requesting any descendants of William Capel Slaughter to contact a box number. This my mother duly did, and through subsequent enquiries discovered that her grandfather had had an affair with a governess after the death of his first wife and that a son … Continue reading
Mr Slaughter and Mr May
William May’s background was very different from William Slaughter’s. Born in 1863, May was from a professional, landowning family in Berkshire. His father was a surgeon in Reading, as had been his grandfather. William was born in the family home at Caversham, a mansion set in large grounds by the Thames. He was educated at … Continue reading