Helen Barrell's Blog, page 2

Meet crime authors at Shrewsbury Waterstone’s

Meet crime authors from across the country at Shrewsbury Waterstone’s on Sunday 15th April from 2pm to 3.30pm. The branch is expanding its Crime Section, so to celebrate they have joined forces with the Crime Writers’ Association to bring you this Meet the Author speed-dating event. There’ll be fiction and true crime, an opportunity to talk to authors – and, of course, buy books.

Come and say hello! I will be in attendance with the shade of Alfred Swaine Taylor, whose most famous case – that...

Alfred Swaine Taylor and The Poisoned Chocolates Case

It might seem odd to think that Alfred Swaine Taylor, who died in 1880, could have anything to do with Anthony Berkeley’s 1929 novel The Poisoned Chocolates Case – but he does.

I had already found references to Taylor’s books in some of Dorothy L Sayers’ work, so it wasn’t a surprise to find Taylor popping up once again in Berkeley’s novel as they’re both Golden Age authors who were acquainted with each other. In fact, before Taylor’s name was even mentioned in the book, my own knowledge of...

“A hum in the drum”: Baby Driver, tinnitus, hearing loss and me

I am admittedly very much behind the curve as it was only the other evening that I finally got round to watching Baby Driver. It shouldn’t have taken me so long because 1: Edgar Wright directed it, and I love his other films I’ve seen – Hot Fuzz especially.1)I realise Hot Fuzz isn’t the trendy choice and all the cool kids love Shaun of the Dead, but perhaps I’ve spent far too much time in small English towns not to love it. And I can’t start enumerating everything I love about it otherwise t...

Isolation in Iceland: thoughts on I Remember You

Having read Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s novel I Remember You (Ég man þig) and seen the film adaptation, I found myself thinking about the theme of isolation.

A group of three adults head from Reykjavík to a remote outcrop of the Westfjords where they plan to do up an abandoned house and set it up as a B&B. The house is one of a few scattered buildings in all that remains of the abandoned village of Heysteri. Although not an island, it can only be reached by boat as there’s no roads over the mounta...

Vivian

Blossom in Canongate kirkyard

I originally wrote this on Thursday last week.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine tried to call me via Facebook. I wasn’t sure why, but when she said in Messenger that she had “shitty news” to tell me, I dashed outside at once to call her. She’d been ill for a long time, so it was pretty clear to me what her “shitty news” might be.

“You look really worried!” Vivian said, as my unfortunate fizzog appeared on the screen.

“Oh, I’ve got a resting sad face, I’m a...

Guest blog: The Mystery of the Sailor in the River

A guest blog for Wivenhoe’s History about a sailor who drowned in the River Colne in 1850. But all was not as it seemed.

(A shorter version of this text was published in Fortean Times a couple of years ago).

The Great Storm of 1987

Me, a few months later in the Summer of 1988, as Captain Cook in the Brownies’ carnival float. It was basically a dinghy on a trailer with me sat in it, dressed more as a pirate than as Captain Cook.

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of what became known as The Great Storm, which ripped its way across the south-east of England on the night of 15th and 16th October 1987.

I was living in Wivenhoe in north-east Essex at the time, on the banks of a river not far from the coast. I remember the st...

The Great Storm

Me, a few months later in the Summer of 1988, as Captain Cook in the Brownies’ carnival float. It was basically a dinghy on a trailer with me sat in it, dressed as a badass.

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of what became known as The Great Storm, which ripped its way across the south-east of England on 15th October 1987.

I was living in Wivenhoe in north-east Essex at the time, on the banks of a river not far from the coast. I remember the storm waking me up as I slept in my “captain’s bed...

A trip to London

Reading a Taylor family headstone in the churchyard of Northfleet, Kent

Having travelled to Rugeley and to Edinburgh in pursuit of Alfred Swaine Taylor for my book Fatal Evidence, it was time to go to London and Kent. He was born in Northfleet, Kent, on the banks of the River Thames in 1806, and eventually moved to London, where he stayed for the rest of his life (trips back and forth to inquests and trials across England notwithstanding).

We got off the train at Euston, and headed straight...

A trip to Edinburgh

A puir wee sleekit ghoastie at Canongate kirkyard

I’d wanted to go on holiday to Edinburgh for ages, and was rather pleased that I could combine it with the writing of my book, Fatal Evidence. But what does the biography of a Kent-born English forensic scientist who lived most of his life in London have to do with Edinburgh, you ask?

Well… the story of forensic science in Britain starts in Edinburgh. Although medicine and science had been used to crack crime in Britain before, there was no fo...