Yorkshire Day!

It’s Yorkshire Day! But, er, what is Yorkshire?

Menewood is out now!

The second novel about Hild, Menewood, is out now in North America in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook, and in the UK in audiobook and ebook, with the hardcover available in late November. It has a gorgeous cover by Anna and Elena Balbusso—the same artists who painted the Hild cover. And, as with Hild, I forgive […]

Hild’s bynames #5: Cath Llew

In HILD, Hild acquires four bynames or epithets. In MENEWOOD she acquires more, the first of which is Cath Llew, or lynx. Here’s a post—maps! drawings!—about how and when that happened.

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2023

I loved the Leeds International Medieval Congress: warm, collegial, confusing, busy, exciting, tedious, tiring, and delightful, with all the best conversations happening in the bar.. Here’s my report.

Hild and Menewood at the Leeds International Medieval Congress

I’ll be doing an event at the Leeds International Medieval Congress on Wednesday 5th July at 7pm, with Elaine Treharne, Megan Cavell, Jennifer Neville, Joshua Davies, and Matt Hussey. Please come!

Totems and banners: Edwin and Oswald

What totems and banners did Edwin and then Oswald carry as kings of Northumbre? Sometimes the clue is in the name. Sometimes, eh, not so much. Another chewy post about martial iconography and the Angles, Irish, and Picts of early seventh-century Britain. Or: Fun with colour and cost!

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.

Gemæcce

The story of making the novels about Hild of Whitby