Category: social history
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Flashes of Doubt
Some say it was during the 1960s that the idea of ‘the generation gap’ entered into popular usage. It became a useful phrase that summed up the differing attitudes towards politics, behaviour, music, fashion and virtually everything else between the young and the old — with the ‘old’ including everyone over 30. Children born after…
Isabella Muir
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Whispers of Fortune
For many people across the world, 1961 offered hope and optimism. For others not so much. On 20 January that year, John Fitzgerald Kennedy became President of the United States. In Whispers of Fortune we learn how the words of his inaugural speech crossed the Atlantic to be heard by a young woman who was…
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Storms of Change
More than a decade after the end of the Second World War, Britain was still reeling from the loss of life, the devastation, and the underlying fear that such hard-earned peace might be short-lived. But then a new decade arrived, bringing with it a generation of youngsters who believed they could put the past behind…
Isabella Muir
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Waiting for Sunshine
On her third birthday Libby Frobisher met her father for the first time and in this extract we learn just how difficult it can be to look back on the past with a clear focus, especially when trying to remember the years when we were small and the world was large and confusing… …when it…
Isabella Muir
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Lost Property
‘What’s your definition of a secret?’ This opening line from Lost Property, the second novel in the Janie Juke crime mystery series, introduces a theme that runs throughout the book – a theme of secrets and lies. At the heart of the novel readers are introduced to the secret organisation that was said to have…
Isabella Muir
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Choices
It’s a self-evident truth that war affects everyone, young and old, those on the front line, and those who remain at home fearing for loved ones, as well as fearing for their own futures. My novella, Choices, explores some of those fears through the experiences of ten- year-old, Vera Stubbs. With her father far away,…
Isabella Muir
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Never enough
My last blog post, More than Ashes, considered the way rationing affected life for everyone in Britain throughout the war years. Anyone caught looting was threatened with a life sentence, or worse still, for the worst offenders, hanging. However, perhaps with a view to the importance of morale, no-one was actually executed for looting and…
Isabella Muir
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More than ashes
Browsing through the stories I’ve written over the years, it’s no suprise that I’ve chosen to step back from writing fiction for a short while, grabbing the chance to take a deep dive into the decades that have always been at the heart of my novels and novellas. So, in the next few blog posts,…
Isabella Muir
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What is the point of history?
Why study the past when it is just that – past, gone, over and done with – or is it? There are numerous reasons that historians cite for their interest in the past, probably as many reasons as there are historians! Here’s a few suggestions that various historians have cited, to start us off: Let’s…
Isabella Muir
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Cars, cars and more cars
In Flashes of Doubt – set in 1962 Britain – we get a glimpse of the thoughts of William Arnold as he remembers the warning his father had given him years earlier about the rise and rise of the motor car. The route William used to take each workday, from his cottage in Burton Street…
Isabella Muir 