What's New

Recent updates on my website.

The Secret Middle Ages, by Malcolm Jones (Book review)

Eclectic, erudite and entertaining survey of the everyday arts and crafts of the Middle Ages in Europe. Did you know that Pigs might fly! as a figure of speech for the impossible has been in use for at least 700 years?

Gladiatrix, by Russell Whitfield (Book review)

In Roman Asia Minor, the Spartan priestess Lysandra finds herself enslaved and forced to fight for life in the arena as a gladiatrix (female gladiator). Born to the rigours of the Spartan agoge, she is already expert with weapons – but the love she finds in her new life will bring her to face her greatest challenge.

Reconstructing seventh-century place names: North York Moors

Much of Paths of Exile is set on the North York Moors and the Cleveland coast. This area was extensively settled by Danes in the 9th to 11th centuries, and many of its place names are of Norse origin. How could I reconstruct names that would fit with the seventh-century setting?

Dating the Battle of Chester

The Battle of Caerlegion (usually considered to be modern Chester) is recorded in both Welsh and English sources, and was clearly a conflict of great importance. It was fought between Aethelferth of Bernicia and the kings of Gwynedd and Powys. When did it take place?

New reader reports and reviews for Paths of Exile

New reader reports and reviews for Paths of Exile added

Wort Cunning

Octavia Randolph discusses herbal medicine in Anglo-Saxon England

The What's New panel is available as an RSS feed.

  |   What is RSS ?

Read my Blog at

Welcome

Welcome to Carla Nayland's website.

Here you can read my free online novels Ingeld's Daughter and Paths of Exile, find out about the background to the novels, and contact me with your questions and comments.

You can also read my non-fiction essays on various aspects of history, lifestyle and culture.

There is also a page of books I like, and a list of my book reviews.

I shall be adding and updating

content from time to time, so check back regularly. The most recent additions to the website appear in the What's New panel on this page, and you can also subscribe to our RSS feed.

I also keep a blog, with regular postings about reading, writing and researching historical fiction, plus anything else that interests me.

What's New on my blog

• Eosturmonath (April): fourth month of the early English calendar
• April recipe: curried chick peas with fried bananas
• The House on the Strand, By Daphne du Maurier. Book review
• The Delightful Ducks of Dedham Vale
• Who was buried at Sutton Hoo?
• The Boleyn Inheritance, by Philippa Gregory. Book review
• The Merovingian coins from Sutton Hoo

About the author

Carla Nayland writes historical fiction set in Britain in the period between the Roman occupation and the Norman Conquest (5th to 11th centuries AD), and fiction set in an invented world loosely based on medieval and Renaissance Britain. Carla Nayland has a lifelong interest in history and archaeology and considered doing a degree in the subject in her spare time, until deciding it would be much more fun to explore it in historical fiction instead. Historical fiction is more absorbing to write than a research paper, because it requires imagining a past society in all its detail, and requires the author to make choices and follow up the consequences. The result is also rather more enjoyable to read than a thesis.

She has degrees in Natural Sciences and Pharmacology from Cambridge, UK, and has worked for many years in corporate strategy, cost-benefit analysis, health economics and scientific writing. Carla Nayland is also a keen hillwalker, which is a bit of a problem as she lives in the flatlands of East Anglia. She knows the M6 rather well. Carla Nayland is a pen name, to keep her fiction separate from her scientific writing.