CLARE FLYNN

Sometimes when working I get dizzy. Not out of tiredness, though there's plenty of that, but from the distance I travel without leaving my chair. One day I'm walking the blacked-out streets of wartime Sydney, absorbing the anxiety of a city that suddenly finds the war not on the other side of the world but terrifyingly close to home. The next day, I'm on a hillside in Sri Lanka, back when it was called Ceylon, surrounded by a green counterpane of tea bushes stretching in ever

I'm delighted to welcome the talented Jane Davis back to my blog today to mark the release of her latest novel, The Temple of the Muses, which is the sequel to The Bookseller's Wife, which I loved. Jane is going to tell us some of the fascinating background to the new book, which I look forward to reading.

I’m going to take you to some of the places that feature in UNDER A SOUTHERN SKY. Welcome to Sydney in 1942.

I thought it might be interesting to recreate the routes taken independently and together by Norton and Stella in The Star of Ceylon.

Clare Flynn discusses the research she undertook when writing her novel The Star of Ceylon, and gives her tips for historical research

Sadly, I never met either of my grandfathers – they both died in the 1930s when my parents were still children. My paternal grandfather,...