A Writer's Journal

October/November 2025

Millicent Garrett Fawcett lived here.

Wednesday 29 October

I did some work on the Biography and novel, which went quite well – a relief after a couple of days when it felt like pulling teeth, getting blood out of a stone, lassoing the moon, etc etc.

I often think I have over-researched the Biography, then I wonder how such a thing is possible. You can’t tell whether or not you need to follow a lead until you’ve followed it, and if it turns out to go nowhere in the end how else would you know? And too there’s the value of immersion in the period, in the subject’s world, that can only come from lots of reading and studying. And of course it means I have lots of information I can write up as nice little blogs, all the things I’m finding out which won’t fit in the book, and especially all the people I’ve found out about whose lives were so interesting. I’m going to start writing some of those in the New Year.

I always enjoy cutting drafts. It’s like clearing out old clothes or watching hair fall around the hairdresser’s chair, the sense you’re getting to the real shape of the thing and getting rid of the extraneous stuff and elements that don’t really matter or work that well. It’s a challenge too, of course, because there’s always the worry you’ve cut something that ought to be in. Which doesn’t really matter in the end either. You can always put it back.

Friday 31 October

I started Samantha Shannon’s Among the Burning Flowers last night. Very good, there’s a sort of female Witcher who goes around killing monsters for money.

Sunday 2 November

I couldn’t sleep last night and as I’d finished (and enjoyed) Among the Burning Flowers, I started re-reading some Dorothy Whipple short stories – The Closed Door and Other Stories. Goodness, she’s a fantastic writer.

Wednesday 5 November

I’m now on to re-reading more Whipple stories – Every Good Deed and Other Stories. Now I won’t sleep because I can’t put them down…

Saturday 8 November

I’m now re-reading Whipple’s novel, Greenbanks. Clearly this will not end until I’ve got through the entire shelf. Yes, I have piles of new books to read. But Dorothy Whipple. Brilliant.

Monday 10 November

I had coffee with a friend today, which was a lovely opportunity to discuss the suffragette project and Biography, she’s got some really helpful ideas. We met in the Cathedral café. Gerard’s old school (where he taught) was there for Charter Day. It was very noisy at first as teachers crowded in for coffees, all looking very smart, and some men (Merchant Venturers?) in frock coats and striped grey trousers. When Gerard was a teacher there they used to give out buns after the service, and very delicious they were. Now it seems buns are off. Seems a bit parsimonious to me.

It was raining, had been raining in the night, and when I left I went out through the garden, a lovely almost secretive spot because of the greenery and trees over-arching narrow paths, but a quagmire too.

Thursday 13 November

I met a friend for lunch – Cathedral café again. Afterwards I went to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery to look at the Turner, Prince of the Rocks exhibition, Turner’s water colours of the Avon Gorge painted in 1791. It was a small but good exhibition, including information about the Gorge itself – rocks, birds, trees and flowers. Then to the Egyptian gallery. The lighting in there is quite low and I found it hard to see some of the things.

Saturday 15 November

I started reading Margaret Murray’s book The God of the Witches. I borrowed it from the library because I read that it had references to Joan of Arc. I have always been interested in Joan, and have a good collection of books about her, but I hadn’t come across Murray’s theory about her before. I haven’t got to the Joan part of the book yet, but what I’ve read so far – Murray’s argument in favour of a surviving, continuous and organised pagan religion dating back to the Stone Age – is to me, shall I tactfully say, less than convincing. Apparently Trevor-Roper dismissed it as “vapid balderdash”, which is a delightful expression (no matter how fair or unfair). I am going to use it of practically everything wrought by AI, a huge swathe of news stories, and much of what I see on social media from now on. Anyway I’ve come across many views of Joan (Saint Joan, Princess Joan, Comrade Joan…) and here is another one to add to my collection.

Tuesday 18 November

We drove to Cambridge yesterday, and today I went into town. First stop was to buy a paperback so I had something to read while I was out and about. The book I’d brought with me is a hardback, J B Priestley’s Bright Day, and I didn’t want to carry it around, and I had nothing on Kindle except books I’d started and abandoned. Buying a book meant buying two: Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts, and Great Expectations. Suitably loaded with reading material, I went to the Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition at the Fitzwilliam. I enjoyed it as much as I had hoped I would, then had a pleasant hour drinking tea and started the Arden; I do enjoy sitting in a café and reading.

Wednesday 19 November

I went to London from Cambridge, for a trip to the London Library where I planned to do a bit of research as well as return and collect some books. It was one of those ill-starred days which you either bring on yourself because you’re in a panicky stressy mood, or which bring the panicky stressy mood upon you. First off I couldn’t get an Uber to the station, it was so busy because of the weather – rain, rain, rain, with a bit of blustery rain thrown in. As there was no phone signal in the hotel room I was in reception at this point, where the receptionist very kindly offered to phone for a taxi for me. I waited for that but then thought perhaps I had better walk in spite of the rain and carrying a heavy bag of books. But just as I was about to go the taxi arrived. So, it seemed things were looking up.

At the station, trains were delayed.

At King’s Cross, the Piccadilly line was playing up – the platform was so crowded we were queuing to get onto it. Then I woke up and remembered I could get the Victoria Line to Green Park instead, and did, walking what seemed like miles underground to get to it.

Then the police had blocked off the road I normally take down to the Library. I’d planned to go for coffee first anyway, so I did that in the hope the road would be open when I got back. It wasn’t so I walked round a different way.

At the library it turned out I’d requested the wrong edition of the book I wanted to consult, not the original 1911 edition but a horrible modern facsimile. The librarians very kindly offered to go and get the 1911 edition, but then they couldn’t find the keys to the safe where it is stored. In the end I said I’d look at the horrible modern facsimile as I didn’t want to add to their burdens. It was adequate but not enjoyable, the pictures not very good quality.

Then back to Cambridge. By now the rain had stopped but there were deep puddles in the gutters. I know this because a car drove through one and splashed me with the lovely mucky water.

Thursday 20 November

I went out for coffee, then did a bit of mooching around the shops, and mooched my way to buying a pair of ankle boots. To my surprise when I got to the till they were reduced in price, apparently as a Black Friday deal. BF is something that usually passes me by, or I pass it by, so it was a pleasant surprise.

I had a very healthy lunch in the Fitzwilliam café – a chocolate and hazelnut shortbread, delicious. And then because it was a nice day I decided to walk to Shaftesbury Road to meet Gerard, who was working there, although I was carrying three bags. I really enjoyed the walk, pausing to look at the house where Millicent Garrett Fawcett lived, passing the Botanic Garden, looking at the ducks on the stream which rolled quietly along beside the pavement. It was bitterly cold, and sunny.

Then we drove home, a horrible long journey that felt as if it would go on and on for ever. But we got home at last.

Friday 21 November

In Cambridge I finished the Katherine Arden, The Warm Hands of Ghosts, which is absolutely brilliant and one of the most wonderful books I’ve ever read. I started Great Expectations, and also read more of Bright Day. When I got home it was to two other books I’d got on the go: They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple and Woman’s Lore by Sarah Clegg.

Lat night I finished the Whipple (fantastic, brilliant, amazing, wonderful etc etc), and got back to Bright Day. This is the second Priestley novel I’ve read, and I do like his writing, but I’m a bit puzzled by the occasional outbreak of ridiculous patriarchal blather. Here it is the comment when the male narrator, who has been kissing a young woman, is annoyed when she draws back and doesn’t want things to go any further. So, remarks our young narrator, he was “understanding for the first time in my life why women often received such rough treatment, for there was in me a tide of energy still roaring to be released somehow”. Well obviously it’s perfectly understandable that the release to this obviously uncontrollable roaring phenomenon is thumping a female. (The character doesn’t, by the way; just trots out his exculpatory utterance.)

Is this the character speaking, or is it an authorial aside that reflects Priestley’s own attitude? I wonder because there’s something like it in Lost Empires, when another character expresses similar views (here a murdered woman has herself to blame as she led on the men…). Or is it just that it is such a common view that lots of male characters express it and Priestley is merely reflecting a reality?

Cambridge ducks outside the Botanic Garden.