I would like to give a big shout out to libraries and their fabulous newspaper archives which are the life blood for authors like myself who rely on them for historical research. I used them widely for The Royal Station Master’s Daughters trilogy and gained fantastic insights and new story lines from reading the papers of the day.

That is the reason I am delighted to hold the launch of The Royal Station Master’s Daughters in Love, at King’s Lynn library on Saturday, 25 April. It was there that I was assisted by library assistant Kevin Hitchcock, a very knowledgeable historian, who may not have realised it at the time, but chatting to him inspired one of my lead story lines in The Royal Station Master’s Daughters at War.

Before the covid pandemic I trawled huge newspaper archives at The British Library in London, and it was while flicking through their papers that I learnt about The National Egg Collection which was a part of people’s every day lives, but is a story not well known by people today, and not referred to by historians when writing about WWI.

I later discovered the joys of researching from my computer in the comfort of my home, thanks to subscribing to Catalyst, the digital newspaper service offered by The London Library, which is brilliant. I can totally immerse myself in this for hours and learn so much, it is so enriching.

When writing The Shop Girls, a memoir about the lives of shop girls in an elegant ladies department store, I was grateful to access The Cambridgeshire Collection at Cambridge Central Library.

As I start writing my next couple of books, a WW2 inspired royal war story, again inspired by true accounts from people who worked for the royal family during this time, I’ve no doubt I shall be delving into newspaper archives again.

I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to library staff for all you do to support authors and making our lives so much easier.