As an author of 50+ books of historical fiction and non-fiction for kids, teens, and adults I am handicapped by being unable to travel in time or go to the places I set my stories. I have long used photography as an attempt to capture a sense of places and the people who inhabit them, but I gradually realized that my images were not simply an adjunct to the stories I was telling but that the best of them had their own tales to tell. Through photographs, jumbled piles of stone became a gateway to a lost, magical past and a trigger for my imagination.
I wrote
Places not Paisley: Photographic Peregrinations: Book 3, The Ruined World
Not only am I enthralled by the large images of lost places and people, but I am in awe of the fact that the photographers even reached some of the wildest places on earth with over a hundred pounds of camera equipment and boxes of mostly poisonous chemicals.
I will never again complain about sitting in the cold or the heat with my lightweight 35mm camera, waiting for the lighting to be just right.
In the second half of the 19th century, unprecedented advances in technology resulted in the collision of travel and photography. Explorers were able to document their journeys, hauling enormous amounts of equipment over arduous terrain. The results were breathtaking. This collection of photographs takes readers on a historic global tour that includes five continents and offers a visible record of worlds long-since vanished. Beginning in North Africa amid the pyramids and along the Nile, this book takes readers down through the Sahara to South Africa via Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Zanzibar. The journey continues from South to North America, capturing images…
Many, many years ago, Rose Macauley’s classic book, The Pleasure of Ruins, went a long way to inspiring my sense of wonder at the remnants of past worlds.
In this book, Roloff Beny interprets Macauley’s words in the same way that I attempt to encapsulate and share some of the feelings of awe I get when I visit these magical places.
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
For me, poetry from Chaucer to Seamus Heaney can trigger an emotional reaction in the same way that a well-chosen image can.
So, it is natural that photographs and poems of the natural world should be paired. The depths that each adds to the other can hold me in thrall for hours as I delve back and forth and draw out every last emotion.
I love cities: Rome, Paris, Madrid. These are easy cities to love; all you need do is stroll around the Colosseum, walk along the banks of the Seine, or hang out in the Puerto del Sol.
I love London as well, but it hides itself better. You have to work to see the real London. Great damage was done during the Blitz, but much greater damage was done over the years by thoughtless development.
These photographs allow me to browse through a landscape that no longer exists.
A spectacular presentation of photographs of Tudor, Georgian and Victorian buildings captured just before their destruction - most seen here for the first time. "This endlessly absorbing book that is at once a record of destruction, a haunting collection of relics, and a door into the past." - John Carey, The Sunday Times.
"Each picture contains a novel in this deeply moving, unforgettable book." - Duncan Fallowell, Daily Express. "A magical book about the capital's past." - Sunday Times.
An Italian Feast celebrates the cuisines of the Italian provinces from Como to Palermo. A culinary guide and book of ready reference meant to be the most comprehensive book on Italian cuisine, and it includes over 800 recipes from the 109 provinces of Italy's 20 regions.
Antarctica is the one continent I have never taken a photograph in. It has barely changed in the past 100 years, but Hurley’s images still take me to an unknown world and how people have struggled to survive there.
I love the way he can capture the majesty of a landscape that is mostly just one colour and how his photographs give a sense of the puny humans grappling with the harshness of the environment.
I have a sense of almost intoxication when I stand before the moss-covered ruins of a lost world. Whether it be the vine-tangled faces of a Thai temple, the massive, shaped stones of an Inca mountain fortress, or the gentle curves of an abandoned English abbey, history, legend, and myth are all there to feed my imagination.
Whether I am in Asia, South America, or Europe, I am standing before my heritage as a human being, partly in awe of my ancestor’s stupendous achievements and partly humbled by their transience.
None of them knew what was coming, and none of them will ever be the same again...
Detective Jelani is a tough, veteran cop. His younger partner, Detective Madigan, is brash and confident. But they were not prepared to become embroiled in a series of cosmic events they could never…
We all want peace. We all want a life of joy and meaning. We want to feel blissfully comfortable in our own skin, moving through the world with grace and ease. But how many of us are actively taking the steps to create such a life?
