Totems and banners: Hild’s Elmet

What banners and totems might Hild’s people have carried in the early seventh-century of MENEWOOD? We don’t know. But here are some guesses, with pictures!

Menewood!

Nearly ten years after HILD, the sequel is almost here. MENEWOOD will be available wherever books are sold on October 3. Here’s a first look.

Spear—Arthurian Legend and Sixth-Century Wales

In April I published Spear, set in early sixth-century Wales. It’s an Arthurian retelling but not much like other Arthurian tales.

The Butcherbird and her shield

Over on my personal blog I’ve just posted pictures of Hild as Butcherbird and of the shield her Hounds carry. Usually, when she rides as Hild Yffing, Lady of Elmet, this unsubtle image is hidden beneath a perfectly respectable leather cover painted with the hazel tree of Elmet and the Yffing boar. But when she […]

Hild’s bynames #4: Hægtes

What exactly is a ‘hægtes’, and how do you draw one if you don’t know what it is?

Celtic cross: accidental icon

Over on my personal blog a piece about an elegant structural repair that turned into a lasting icon: the Celtic cross of Iona. It occurs to me that it might interest readers of this site, so, well, here it is. Image description: Black and white vector drawing of a stylised Celtic cross: a long vertical […]

Hild’s Bynames #3: Little Prickle

Image description: Black and white drawing of a hedgehog with its face lifted, snuffing the air after truffling about in the forest litter at its feet. The parts of the forest litter that are identifiable are elm leaves and twigs, oak leaves, and two acorns. I did this post a couple of weeks ago on […]

Hild’s bynames #2: Butcher-bird

The taxonomic name for the great grey shrike, Lanius excubitor, is Latin for butcher sentinel. Sentinel because of the way shrikes stand tall on top of a post, as both a warning and declaration of territory: they practically shriek vigilance and eagerness to tangle. (They remind me of new bouncers at a club: overready to get into it.) And butcher because they spike their prey—smaller birds, mice, lizards, bees, crickets—on thorns and barbed wire fencing, like feathery little Neroes playing with Christians.

Hild’s bynames #1: Freemartin

Exploring one of Hild’s bynames, freemartin. The first of an occasional series.

Making my own Hild art

While writing both Hild and Menewood I drew dozens of maps to help work out everything from travel routes to weather events to Hild’s thinking to battle tactics. These sketch maps are full of private code and wouldn’t make sense to most readers. But every now and again I like to post one to illustrate a point. So I started […]

Making sense of Cadwallon (or, An excuse to play with maps)

In which I talk about Cadwallon, his origins, faults, and battles—as one giant excuse to play with maps

MENEWOOD!!

The first draft of MENEWOOD is finished!!

CFP: A Hild Companion

This is a call for contributors, and ideas, to a companion volume to Hild: an accessible guide to the book and its Early Medieval context.

Hild’s feast day

Today is the anniversary of Hild’s death in 680. I mark it because Hild—and Whitby, and ammonites—have marked my life.

IONA Vancouver

Last week I spent five days at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, to attend IONA: Early medieval studies on the islands of the North Atlantic—transformative networks, skills, theories, and methods for the future of the field. If you are an early medievalist, you should go the next one at King’s College London, November 2021.

Gemæcce

The story of making a novel about Hild of Whitby