British Apple Lore
Apples were for centuries the fruit that most people would have had most often. From acerbic and sharp cooking apples to rosy red ones that crunch and release floods juice there was an apple for every palate.
Folk Tales For Bold Girls
My new book is intended to inspire all the little girls who admire women like Michelle Obama, Lucy Bronze, Malala Yousafzai and Jacqueline Wilson.
Folk Tales for Bold Girls is packed full of my own retellings of folktales from around the world, each one telling the story of a little girl — not a princess or a goddess, but a little girl the same age as the target readership, between 7 and 12 years old.
Collectable Mermaids and the Myth of the Merrow
The early sirens, the ones Odysseus encountered, were not fish at all but bird-women, but they had those great siren qualities – bewitching songs and the will to lure the unwitting to a bad end.
Ruth Tongue and ‘The Chime Child’
The Chime Child is one of the most enchanting books I know. It begins with the rustle of autumn deep in the Somerset countryside where villagers, mindful of the old ways, have set up a corn dolly for Harvest Festival.
From Oracle Ox to Gorse Goddess: Taking Lore Seriously in ‘Folk’
Writers have long retold folk tales just as musicians have reinterpreted folk songs. But when writing Folk, I aimed not to tell old tales but to imbue the world of the novel with folklore, both real and imagined.