Euan thomson biography of nancy
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Nancy Goldstone
Nancy Goldstone has a passion for medieval history and old and rare books. She is the author most recently of three works of non-fiction examining the role of high born women in the Middle Ages: The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc, which unravels the mystery of the Joan of Arc by revealing the fascinating role played by Yolande of Aragon, queen of Sicily and the dauphin’s mother-in-law in her story; Four Queens, about a family of four thirteenth century sisters, the daughters of the count of Provence, who all became queens; and The Lady Queen, a biography of Joanna I, fourteenth century queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily and countess of Provence, the only woman of her day to rule in her own name. Nancy has also written a number of books with her husband Lawrence, including The Friar and the Cipher, a narrative non-fiction account of the life of the great 13th century scientist Roger Bacon, and Out of the Flames, the story
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Born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, daughter of Edmund D. Archibald, a professor mathematics who taught in the Education Department in Bengal before running a school in Tonbridge in 1881.
Phyllis studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1896 - 1906 and taught there from 1903-1905. (Her mother came from the city and was with her children in Scotland in 1901). At the GSA, her work was admired bygd both John James Burnet and Alexander Nisbet Paterson. While in Glasgow, she became a close friend of the journalist and writer, Catherine Carsewell.
She lived in Paris in 1909, and after her marriage to reporter Charles Clay in 1911 she was known as Phyllis Archibald Clay.
They lived in London, Bradford, then Surrey. After Charles' death, Phyllis moved to Grasmere, Westmoreland in the 1940s and died there in 1947.
She executed a number of commissions, including: Industry and Science for the warehouse of William McGeoch & Co. Ltd., Glasgow (1905); the figure sculpture (with Richard Ferris) fo
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It's a strange experience reading a book in its intended setting. I've been back at Asthall Manor, the fictional 'Alconleigh' where Nancy Mitford set her autobiographical novels the Pursuit of Loveand Love in a Cold Climate. I've been sleeping in a room she used as a child and looking at the paintings she decorated the walls with - now crumbling and fading behind perspex covers.
And I've been shown the 'Hons' cupboard' that occupies a central place in the books. Admission was granted only if you had the 'Hon' in front of your name ie, if your father was a Lord of something or other. Favourite people were sometimes made honorary Hons. The Mitfords were all Hons.
"The Hons' meeting place was a disused linen cupboard at the top of the house, small, dark and intensely hot . . . Here we would sit, huddled up on the slatted shelves and talk for hours about life and death." - and sex, as the younger girls interrogated their older siblings in the ho