PERIOD DRAMA NEWS: OLD FRIENDS AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES COMING SOON

1. GENTLEMAN JACK: SURANNE JONES + SALLY WAINWRIGHT + VICTORIAN ENGLAND

Suranne Jones (Doctor Foster, Save Me, Scott & Bailey)  and  Sally Wainwright (To Walk Invisible, Last Tango In Halifax, Happy Valley) are due on set together again to shoot Gentleman Jack, a coproduction BBC/HBO. Of course, Suranne Jones will lead the cast as the protagonist while Sally Wainwright will sign the screenplay and will direct the 8-part series.

If you love good TV drama you should at least be as excited as me. But if, like me,  you are also a period drama lover, you should be on seventh heaven since this new series is set in 1832.

It’s the story of Anne Lister (Suranne Jones), a remarkable landowner who - after years of exotic travel and social climbing - returns to Halifax, West Yorkshire, determined to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home, Shibden Hall.

PERIOD & MORE PERIOD - WELCOME BACK, OUTLANDER, THOUGH ... THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

One more review

I know we are all a bit dizzy having moved from droughtlander to this flood of new inebriating images, events, stories from the Outlander world, but let me add my own musings to the general euphoria,  will you? I promise I’ll be brief.  As brief as a talkative English teacher + enthusiastic  fan of the series can reasonably be. The following ramblings will make sense only if you’ve seen episode one of series 2. So... spoilers ahead, I’m afraid.

TEN GOOD REASONS (NOT) TO WATCH OUTLANDER

Sam Heughan as Jamie Fraser

  

  

 1.  Jamie Fraser. 

      

Once you meet him, the least that can happen to you is that you get a crush on him. But,  watch yourself! You risk to fall desperately in love with him, become obsessed with him,  and there’s no way back! Mind you: you're warned.

He is strong, brave, witty, generous, loyal, charming, smart, passionate, principled, sensitive, reliable, honest, charismatic, sexually insatiable and handsome.  

And even if you come to accept he is just a fictional character and renounce finding his alter ego in real life, still you’ll go on comparing every man around you to him and … sigh!

READING, RE-READING, REVIEWING: THE MEMORY OF MIDNIGHT, OUTLANDER, JANE AUSTEN'S FIRST LOVE

Reading: The Memory of Midnight by Pamela Hartshorne

Historical novels are my best favourite kind of books, as well as classic literature. The Memory of Midnight is the one I'm reading at the moment. It is a thrilling mystery story by Pamela Hartshorne, taking place both in Elizabethan York and present-time York, dealing with two distant eras and parading two different heroines, both prisoners of the past, bound by love and fear. 

This book was a gift from a good friend of mine living in York and it has a special dedication from the author to me on the first page. I don't expect you to remember, but Pamela Hartshorne was my guest here at FLY HIGH! to present her first historical novel,  Time's Echo,  back in September 2012.  I had read, liked and reviewed her novel and she kindly accepted to be interviewed. 

My friend met her in York - where they both live - at the presentation of this second novel and got a signed copy for me. And here I am,  half-way through The Memory of Midnight.   I have been loving it so far!