SilverWood Selection Box - A selection of tantalising tasters

Belonging to a group of authors not only means you enjoy the company of colleagues, but it improves your writing. I belong to several groups and associations – you’ll see some of the logos below – but one I treasure is the community of SilverWood Books authors.

The genius of Helen Hart and her team […]

Roma Novan heroines and gender pressure on men

The Roma Nova heroines – Carina and Aurelia Mitela – are ‘tough gals’; dedicated, strong-willed, physically and mentally resilient and tied into their sense of history and duty. Underlying all this, their driving force is their self-belief.

Carina, despite her disrupted childhood and separation from Roma Nova until she was twenty-four, has embraced Roma Novan […]

Lupercalia – Not an ancestor of Valentine's Day

Lupercales, Andrea Camassei (1602-1649), Prado Museum

In AD 495, Christian bishop of Rome, Gelasius, finally managed to suppress the more than thousand year old Roman festival of Lupercalia. Gelasius’ letter to senator Andromachus taunted the nominally Christian senators who were intent on preserving the Roman tradition: “If you assert that this rite has […]