Dora Metcalf would be 134 on 11 March 2026 and, for her birthday, I’m pleased to announce that I have secured a publisher for my novel based on her life! The Book Guild is a hybrid publisher who will provide editing, typesetting, cover design, printing and all the necessary behind-the-scenes services to enable the book …
Continue reading “Exciting News: My Novel About Dora Metcalf Secured a Publisher”
My great, great grandfather and Dora’s grandfather was Dr John Boyd, MP for Coleraine in Northern Ireland in the mid 19th century. My post about searching for his grave led to contact from a historian of the Boyd family. He recently shared with me a family tree going back to Sir Robert Boyd (died 1333), …
Continue reading “A Journey to Portencross: History and Heritage”
In my novel about Dora, she and John get engaged at the Loch Awe Hotel in the Scottish Highlands in March 1935. Loch Awe is the longest freshwater loch in Scotland, at 41km, but is only 1km wide. It is renowned for its trout and so was an obvious destination for the couple, fishing being …
Continue reading “Dora and John’s Engagement at Loch Awe Hotel”
There is a group of editors called the Wiki Women in Red (WWR) who aim to address the gender bias in Wikipedia’s profiles of ‘notable people.’ Since 2014, when only 15.5% of profiles in English language Wikipedia were about women, they have steadily added more, including Dora, so that now over 20% of profiles are …
Today is International Women in Mathematics day and Dora is being commemorated at the Women’s History Scotland blog. I’m so pleased to see her remarkable story getting some airtime, this time focusing on her Scottish connections and the mystery of why she chose to retire to a remote house at Loch Morar. It’s beautiful in …
I’ve been researching and writing Dora’s story for several years now. Trying to find a publisher for my novel about her is a depressing and, so far, unsuccessful marathon. However, I entered a biography competition with the Society of Women Writers and Journalists (SWWJ), in spite of it all, and found some writing success at …
The theme for the UN International Women’s Day 2024 is Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress. Women do three times as much unpaid care work as men and, if they were paid for it, it would account for 40% of GDP! And that’s before we even get started on the gender pay gap or the fact …
The National Portrait Gallery reopened this summer after a long period of closure. Among their opening exhibitions is Yevonde: Life and Colour. Yevonde Middleton (1893-1975) was a pioneering photographer, bringing colour to portrait photography in the 1930s and producing allegorical and surreal images. Her sitters including royalty, the rich, famous and my parents! Yevonde was …
Celebrating Dora and #IWD2023 #womeninSTEM
I was delighted to see a report in The Guardian that a statue to Lady Rhondda is to be unveiled in Newport, South Wales. I was intrigued to find out who had commissioned it, a group called Monumental Welsh Women. This inspiring group of activists are working on five statues commemorating Welsh Women, including Elaine …
A Bitter Equation 