Nicola Cornick's Blog, page 46

May Day!

Happy May Day! Today is the pagan festival of Beltane, marked by the lighting of bonfires, the first day of summer in the Celtic calendar. It is also a time of other festivities; bringing in the May, dancing around the maypole, and dressing up as a tree if you so wish.

Also on this day:
Arthur Wellesley, The Duke of Wellington, Irish-born soldier, statesman and Prime Minister was born in 1769.
The Act of Union united England and Scotland in 1707.
Betting shops became legal in the UK in 1961.

What Lies Beneath?

Now here is an idea for a story setting! I was reading my English Heritage magazine and came across a reference to the medieval vaulted passageways that lie beneath the City of Exeter. Apparently they were built to supply fresh drinking water to the city and are unique in the UK. These days they are a tourist attraction.

Exeter's early water supply came from springs and the Roman garrison sourced water from two local springs and brought it into the city via an aqueduct. In the Middle Ages...

All About Covers!

Today I am very excited to post the new cover for my e-book The Secrets of a Courtesan which will be available from MIRA/HMB in May. I think it is beautiful and I hope you like it too. This is the style for the UK covers of my Fortune's Folly books and I really love them! Details of all the books in the series are on my website.

Meanwhile in more cover news, the cover of my book The Scandals of an Innocent has been nominated in the Cover Cafe Contest as one of the best book covers of 2009...

Recipe of the week!

Recipe of the week this week is Tipsy Cake. This is more of a dessert than a cake and was apparently enjoyed by eighteenth century bucks (who seldom turned away anything with a whiff of alcohol). It was traditionally served at ball suppers. I chose it because I like the name and I also love the thought of young ladies meekly drinking lemonade and then becoming completely cast away on a pudding that had enough alcohol in it to sink a battleship!

Ingredients
1 large sponge cake, three or four...

Is the White Horse really a Dragon?

Today is St George's Day, the patron saint of England, and in celebration I am posting up a picture of the actual place where he slew the dragon. Yes, Dragon Hill, near Uffington in Oxfordshire has been identified as the site of the dragon-slaying and as "proof " there is a patch of chalk on the top of the hill where the grass never grows because this was where the dragon's blood was spilt. You can see the patch in the photograph. It's a wonderful story and a fabulously atmospheric place.

Have you ever had a library fine?

Up until about a year ago I had never had a library fine. It was something of a point of honour for me; I prided myself that I was never late taking books back and I always remembered to renew if I needed a book for longer than the date it was due. Perhaps this was because as a child I loved the library at my primary school and then as I grew older libraries became an incredibly important part of my life. We seldom bought new books in our family because of the cost, but I knew that I could...

The influence of volcanoes in the Georgian/Regency period

In 1990 we took a trip to Iceland, driving ourselves around the entire country in a Land Rover and camping out in some of the most remote and extraordinary places I have ever seen. As a trip it was superb. One of the places we went to was the Krafla volcano, where we walked around the explosion crater of Viti (translated as "hell"). The rock beneath our feet was warm, steam was rising from the vents and the smell of rotten eggs was strong. Every indication was that this was a volcano that wa...

The History of the Loch Ness Monster

I first had the idea for this post when I was reading about Big Cat sightings in the newspaper. Notwithstanding my post a few weeks ago about the extinction of various wild species in the UK, I wondered if there had been reports of big cats roaming the UK countryside in the 19th century or earlier. That led me on to thinking about Scottish Wild Cats and from there I leapt to Loch Ness, metaphorically speaking. So here is a potted history of the Loch Ness Monster. I do like quirky history.

A Few Little Known Facts about Gold

I was in the mood for trivia today and so a piece in the paper caught my eye: Ten little known facts about gold. I'm a bit of a silver girl myself, but who can resist the lure of a few doubloons? Here are a few choice facts.

Almost all the rocks and soil in the world contain traces of gold. Most of it could not be mined profitably. All the gold that has ever been mined would make a cube 20 metres on each side. This doesn't seem very much to me!
Gold is a safe food additive. Edible gold and...

Do you like licorice?

I haven't thought about licorice for years and then recently I saw a TV programme about it that reminded me how much my grandfather adored it - and how much I hated the flavour of it myself. There are some foodstuffs that if anyone asked me where they came from, I would have to think hard before I replied. Licorice is one of them. Did I even know it grew on trees? (Well, in bushes). I'm not sure that I did. Yet the history of licorice growing in Pontefract, a town near where I grew up in...