What's New

Recent updates on my website.

The Stolen Crown, by Susan Higginbotham

Unsentimental portrayal of the turbulent events surrounding the short and ill-starred reign of Richard III, and in particular the dramatic role played by Henry Stafford Duke of Buckingham.

Wood turning in Anglo-Saxon England

Wood was the standard material for tableware in early (Anglo-Saxon) England, and was used even by wealthy individuals like the king buried at Sutton Hoo. How would wooden cups and bowls have been made?

New reader reports on Ingelds Daughter

New reader reports and reviews added on Ingelds Daughter

Wooden tableware in Anglo-Saxon England

Early English (Anglo-Saxon) settlement sites tend to yield less pottery than Roman and medieval sites, suggesting that either Anglo-Saxon pottery does not survive well or that it was replaced by other materials for some applications, such as tableware.

The Sixth Wife, by Suzannah Dunn (Book review)

In 1547, Katherine Parr, widow of Henry VIII, marries her old love, the dashing Thomas Seymour, much to the puzzlement of her closest friend, Catherine Duchess of Suffolk (Cathy). Soon these three will find themselves entrapped in a (fictional) love triangle that can only end in betrayal – but of whom?

Human sacrifice in Anglo-Saxon England: what rite might have been used?

If human sacrifice was practised at all in early England (which is by no means proven), can Norse legends and the archaeological evidence of the Iron Age bog bodies from Britain and Northern Europe provide any clues about the rites that might have been used?

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

  |   What is RSS ?

Read my Blog at

What is RSS ?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a method to spread headlines and announcements around the internet. Potentially it can save people from having to trawl around websites looking for new content announcements. To make use of RSS, either another site can use the RSS feed of the first (perhaps thus becoming the automated "Everything new in historically based fiction" site), or an end user has an RSS reading tool to collect the headlines from sites of interest, and prompt the user when new material has arrived.

You can find out about RSS and RSS reading tools via various websites; suggest you put "RSS" into Google and see what you find! Or for a controlled explanation, the BBC's website has a decent introduction, if biased a bit to use by a news broadcaster.

The Carla Nayland news feed & RSS.

The homepage of this website has a "news" panel, also repeated on this page.

If you have a RSS reading tool (below), then you can subscribe to the RSS feed at http://www.carlanayland.org/rss/rss.xml
or you could drag the RSS symbol onto your reading tool.
The Webmaster has added an XSL style sheet so that the raw RSS page makes sense to most current browsers.

RSS Reading Tools.

I recommend that you search for tools as things are changing rapidly. The following is the webmaster's understanding in February 2006.

Windows Internet Explorer does not directly support RSS, though there are third-party plugin applications, and stand-alone Windows applications (both free and paid-for). Internet Explorer should support RSS in version 7.

Mozilla Firefox has limited RSS support for the headline, but not the body of the message (using "live bookmarks"), or there are various plugins for Firefox, such as "Wizz RSS".

Mozilla Thunderbird (the mail tool) has support for RSS; using an email-like tool is an alternative way of viewing RSS information and receiving notifications of changes. There are RSS plugins for Microsoft Outlook (and I guess Microsoft Outlook Express).

Apple Mac users have full RSS support in the current Apple Safari browser.

There are numerous web-based news tools, which can aggregate RSS files from multiple places.