BLOGS AND OTHER TIDBITS
In the Margins
Every book has margins. So does history.
That’s where I live — in the gaps between what was recorded and what actually happened, between the famous figures and the forgotten ones who stood beside them. Pull up a chair. I’ll be sharing what I’m researching, what’s surprising me, and why some stories simply refuse to let go until they’re told
The Aga and I: A 1960s Perspective
My mother pictured here with my little sister, is a woman who can handle almost anything with grace and good humor. England in the mid-1960s
How an English Childhood Shaped Death at Brookhaven
Nancy Polk Hall traces her new mystery Death at Brookhaven back to a 13-room Oxfordshire farmhouse, a ginger cat, and an England she absorbed at age eight.
The Names Women Left Behind: What Surnames Reveal About the Stories We Almost Lost
Nancy Polk Hall on what surnames — especially the ones women gave up — reveal about forgotten histories, and why she researches names as obsessively as she researches events.
The Places That Made Me a Writer: From a French Village to the Pages of Call of the Blackbird
Nancy Polk Hall reflects on how growing up in France and England — and returning to Europe as an adult — shaped her storytelling and brought history alive on the page.
The Letters We Keep: What My Grandmother’s Weekly Correspondence Taught Me About Memory
An essay on weekly letter-writing, family archives, and the framed letter by my dressing table — how handwritten mail shaped the way I write fiction.
Three Ways I’ve Learned to Tell the Same Story –And Why Each One Matters
Historical fiction author Nancy Polk Hall explores how the same story transforms across formats — a novel, a spoken word, and the intimate Letters from Caroline series.
A Letter is Waiting for You
In an age of notifications and noise, Caroline writes letters.
Letters from Caroline is a subscription like no other — original stories from history’s margins, delivered the old-fashioned way: straight to your mailbox. No inbox. No algorithm. Just a envelope, a story, and a moment to slow down.