Secret sites that help me get the details right: dates, cars, words, fashion and more!

Resources for writing historical fiction

I spent ten minutes this morning checking the phase of the moon and the weather on one night in July 1924. Was the moon full, and if so was the night cloudy or clear? Importantly, would you be able to see a woman on a beach wearing a white dress?!

Photo via Deposit Photos

I very much doubt that anyone would berate me if I got the phase of the moon wrong in my upcoming book, Murder On The White Cliffs. But the important thing is that I know - and that gives me, and the readers, confidence.

It’s an example of the little things that I try to get right when I write my historical fiction. Now that I’ve published five 1920s-set mysteries, I have a go-to list of resources that help me with those questions.

As I’ve shared some of my own family history recently, I thought I’d go back to the facts behind my fiction and share some of my research secrets. Welcome to my top list of useful sites for historical fiction writers.

1: TimeAndDate. The first thing I do when planning a novel is go to this website and make a calendar for the month and year when the book going to be set. I choose the settings (country, public holidays, moon phases) and download a PDF to keep in my Scrivener folder for the new book. I’ll then refer to it when I create my timeline for the book. It makes it so easy to know which date is which day of the week, whether it’s a leap year, whether there’s a bank holiday, and those all-important moon phases. And yes, the moon was waxing between half and full on Friday 11 July, when my sleuth gazed down from the hotel terrace and saw… well, that would be telling.

2: Met Office Archive. Sadly, timeanddate.com only goes back to 2009 for weather reports. The Meteorological Office, on the other hand, has reports going back to 1884. You can download the weather summary for the month, so I know, for example, that there was a heatwave in mid July 1924, which broke with thunderstorms. Am I going to introduce a thunderstorm at the climax of the book? You bet I am! The weather was also important in Death At Chelsea, my murder mystery set at the Chelsea Flower Show. I was all ready to write about glorious spring and sunshine - then discovered it was a complete wash-out, with heavy rain and mud everywhere. I incorporated the weather into the plot.

3: British Baby Names. Nothing dates like a character’s name! My grandmother Marjorie ‘donated’ her name for my sleuth, but when I suggested Brenda (my mother’s name) for another character in Blackmail In Bloomsbury, my beta reader team thought it was the wrong period. Actually Brenda does figure in the most fashionable 1920s names in Britain, although it was more popular in the 1930s and 1940s. There’s always a decision to make - should I go with what sounds right to readers, or what I know to be correct? I don’t want to pull people out of the story by including a name that jars with them. Eventually I changed Brenda to Lydia, which no-one complained about. When I run out of inspiration, I browse through top 200 names in this historical baby name blog. I try to remember that the names of the character were chosen in the year of their birth, not the year that the book is set - so I go back to the year of their birth to choose their names.

Marjorie Swaddling in the 1930s

4: Jazz Age Club. Especially in my first two novels, Blackmail In Bloomsbury and The Soho Jazz Murders, my characters spent a lot of time in the fashionable nightspots of the era. I love browsing Jazz Age Club anyway – the articles are so interesting – but it was very handy for checking when particular venues opened, what sort of entertainment they offered, when they were fashionable and how they were decorated. Marjorie’s trip to the Italian Roof Garden at The Criterion on Piccadilly owed a lot to its marvellous description here.

5: Vintage Dancer. Fashion rules have changed so much, it makes my head spin! Think of the 1920s and you immediately picture a flapper in a cloche hat and drop-waist beaded evening frock. But the classic flapper ‘look’ was just one style, and from later in the decade - at the start of the twenties waists and hats with brims were absolutely in style. The rules governing when a lady wore a hat, for example, and when a man took his off, were complex. Although it has a US bias, Vintage Dancer is pretty good on the differences between day and evening dress, different types of party outfit, workwear and how the styles changed during the decade. Newspapers and magazines (see below) are also good guides to what’s fashionable.

Detail from 1916 OS map showing Holborn and Bloomsbury

6: Vintage Ordnance Survey Maps. Parts of the street plan of London changed dramatically since the 1920s, thanks to a combination of bombing during the Second World War, post-war rebuilding and 1960s modernisation. Development in recent decades has also changed some areas beyond recognition. I check locations on the National Library of Scotland’s online service, in which you can search for a district then click on the most appropriately dated OS map. The main danger here is that I get so engrossed in the map, I forget to do any writing.

7: The Oxford English Dictionary is usually the most reliable place to find out when a word or phrase first came into use. It’s not always obvious - did you know that no-one got their knickers in a twist before the 1960s, for example? Some slang words, such as ‘gig’ for music concert and ‘digs’ for accommodation, are earlier than you’d think. I used them in The Soho Jazz Murders, because they’ve been around since the start of the 20th century, but some readers thought they weren’t used until much later. Here’s the OED’s blog on words that first came into use in the 1920s, like zip, fridge and broadcast.

1930 Lagonda similar to Mrs Jameson’s motor: yours for £42,000 via carandclassic.com

8: Classic car auction sites. This was a tip from author Benedict Brown, whose 1920s sleuth Lord Edgerton has a fine garage of cars which he likes to take for a spin. If I need inspiration as to what type of car a character might drive, I have a browse on the auction sites. I then have to resist the temptation to buy one of these beauties!

9: British Newspaper Archive. I’ve written before about my love of the BNA, which provides digital access to thousands of newspapers going back centuries. The BNA blog is also a trove of useful information. For example, what would your characters have given each other for Christmas? Handkerchiefs, pencils and cigarettes, according to the gift guides in fashionable magazines!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind the scenes! I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with some of the background research about the history of the Chelsea Flower Show, just in time for the real thing!

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