Witches, puritans and a Romantic poet

Another snapshot of my bookshelves. This group has some connection with the last lot. There were quite a few in the last photo linked to the Salem witch craze as research for Witch Hunt and here are books devoted to English witch trials including the East Anglian witch craze prosecuted by Matthew Hopkins, the odious Witch-Finder General, in the 1640s. I don't know where I first came across Hopkins - probably at school when we did the English Civil War - possibly at college - but he has intrigued me ever since.

There are three books about Puritanism (that were also connected with Witch Hunt) and a few books on Restoration England - though it is a period I have yet to write anything about: Claire Tomalin's book on Pepys, Neil Hanson's A Dreadful Judgement about the Great Fire of London, Liza Picard's excellent Restoration London, two books on Newton (by Patricia Fara and Michael White).

Some books seem to have wandered in from elsewhere: a Lonely Planet guide to Antarctica, The Anglo Saxon Age from OUPs excellent A Very Short Introduction series, a Penguin Classics Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries (which is wonderful), Philip Zeigler's gruesomely fascinating The Black Death. Bede's Eccliastical History of the English People seems to have wandered down from the shelf above.

But the best book here by far - though also somewhat out of place - is Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes. There are few writers I would rather read - fiction or non-fiction - than Richard Holmes and this book is superb. More about him later. . .

The unredeemed captive

I just wanted to pull down a couple of books from the shelves and give them a bit more exposure. I mentioned The Unredeemed Captive yesterday, but I make no apologies for mentioning it again. Most of my non-fiction books are there to give me a fairly neutral grounding in a subject or to confirm or add detail to things I already know a little about. Others like John Demos' book are there with all the force and imaginative presence of a good novel.

The Last of the Mohicans probably began my interest in the Woodland Indians of northeast America. I don't really know why I find them so fascinating but I do. John Demos tells the story of a raid by a French and Indian war party on Deerfield Massachusetts in 1704. Puritan minister John Williams, his wife and five children were captured. Rev Williams was released two and a half years later and spent the next ten years trying to buy back - redeem - his surviving daughter Eunice. But Eunice was more Mohawk than Puritan by then. It is an amazing story, but even a story as good as this can be crushed by bad writing. John Demos tells it brilliantly.

And a lovely cover too. It is a very clever and subtle reworking by illustrator Walton Ford of Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow. There is enough of Bruegel to make it a lovely picture but not so much that it is simply a rip-off or a pastiche.

World Book Day

As it is World Book Day, I thought I might introduce you to some of the books on my book shelves. These shelves are in my office - the front bedroom of the terraced house we rent here in Cambridge.

When we moved, we thought we would only be here for a few months and have actually been her for two and a half years. With limited space here, my choice of books settled mainly on non-fiction and much of that reflecting the fact that I was still mainly writing historical fiction when we left Norfolk.

But though I haven't been writing out-and-out historical fiction lately, the Tales of Terror books are set in a version of the Victorian period (I see them as being set in the world of Victorian fiction, if that doesn't sound too precious) and they often refer back to earlier times. I also believe that for fiction to convince, the factual components need to be right. The world needs to seem authentic. And given that I have a compulsion to buy books that works very well.

So what do we have in this snapshot? Well they show some of my research into the Salem Witch trials when I was writing Witch Hunt for Hodder. Frances Hill's A Delusion of Satan is about that event specifically and a pretty good way of getting into the subject. Cotton Mather was a prime mover in that tragedy and is a particularly fascinating character I think.

There are books about Native Americans - particularly those of the east, with whom the original settlers came into contact. The best book on that subject by far is The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos. It is a fascinating book and just typing the title makes me want to pick it up and read it all over again. Mind you, Women's Indian Captivity Narratives is also a wonderful book on the same subject - published by Penguin it is a compendium of accounts given by women who had been taken as captive by Native Americans.

North Carolina features because when I moved here I was writing New World - a book about the Roanoke Colony the English established in what is now North Carolina (but what they actually called Virginia) in the 1580s. The Narrow Sea by Peter Unwin (about the English Channel), The Tower Menagerie by Daniel Hahn and Old London Bridge by Patricia Pierce are the kind of books that are endlessly useful and that I will dip into on a regular basis. I have lots of books about London.

Sitting on top of the books is a fantastic survey of Penguin covers called Seven Hundred Penguins. Go and buy a copy immediately. You won't regret it. Just visible above that is a book of English Fairy Tales and a big fat Brothers Grimm.

Cast them as cousins

Has anyone else noticed that William Hurt's character in Damages seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to Philip Pullman?

Thumb screw up

I went to the studio today after a long absence. I had a bit of a clear up. Later, Lynette came in and as we hadn't been in the studio together for ages we went to the Black Cat cafe for a celebratory cup of coffee. When we came back I tried to slice the end of my thumb off with a scalpel.

I bled and tried to keep the wound closed while Lynette went to buy steri-strips that we could not get to stick - because of the blood. A design fault there, I think.

So it was off to Addenbrookes A&E in a cab. Lynette kept me company and sat with me whilst we waited for my turn. There is something about sitting in accident and emergency that makes you think of all the accidents and emergencies one has seen over the years. In recent years all my many trips to A&E have been with my son.

Except for the time a couple of years back when I was showing him this nifty trick that Cristiano Ronaldo did and then stood on the ball and fell over with a horrible cracking noise. Me, that is, not Ronaldo.

He just tends to fall over.

Don't get me started on the floor

I had intended to go into the studio today, but for various reasons, decided to stay at home. Having sent the novel off, I thought it might be time to sort my office out a little. While I am writing, things tend to simply pile up and up on my desk.

My desk is a lot clearer - though as I type this it still has a box of slides, some memory cards, a memory stick, three pencils, a pen, an empty mug, a copy of Uncle Montague's Tales of Terrors, a copy of the Black Ship, several letters, a book on Baroque painting, a book on Durer, my camera, a book called Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, a calculator, a pile of magazine pages with photos I like for various reasons, a Taschen book of True Crime Detective Magazine covers, an Ordinance Survey map of Thetford, Breckland and the surrounding area, a can of screen wipes, a can of compressed air cleaner, a portable hard drive, a USB adapter for my son's iPod, an adapter for mine and a plug with a timer control.

Yes, that is after I have cleared up.

And don't get me started on the floor.

That's just a noise!

I wondered if I hadn't been a bit hard on pop puppet Duffy the other day. But then I saw the Coke advert. Oh. My. God. What the hell is she wearing? What the hell is she doing? I'm a big fan of singers making an interesting noise. I 'm not interested in people who just carry a tune. Most of what passes for pop music in the country seems to be karaoke. But that's not an interesting noise. That's just a noise. Stop it. Has the world gone mad?

And when I was praising American TV the other day, I forgot to mention Damages. It is silly, of course, and Glenn Close and Rose Byrne often look like they are acting in a silent movie and can only emote using their eyebrows, but the opening credits alone are better than most British TV programmes.