I've always had a keen sense of history. My father was an antiques dealer and he used to bring home boxes full of treasures, and each item always had a tale attached.

Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living.
that’s the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hundred years or only a few weeks. It’s all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers.

I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we've come from.

Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.

Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.

We are in the middle of the biggest revolution in reading and writing since the advent of the Gutenberg press.

Small details are a vital part of allowing a reader to make an imaginative connection with long dead historical figures.

History at its best is a gritty, dirty business.

The 1950s is a key decade in the 20th Century. Each year has a distinctive flavour.