Homely Cottage Pie

I made a Cottage Pie tonight - the filling was all right, but the real reason I make Cottage Pie, and the reason everyone eats it, is because of my mashed potatoes. Being Irish, I love potatoes in any form, but I spent years perfecting my mash.
I use big old baking potatoes that stay white [...]

Fear and Loathing in the Middle Ages

I do enjoy historical fiction and my favourite authors are Jean Plaidy and Philippa Gregory. Gregory’s A Respectable Trade is one of the finest novels of the slave trade that I have ever read, highlighting a little known aspect of it. So perhaps it was the surfeit of Plaidy and Gregory I had been reading [...]