Newsletter

Welcome to the May newsletter.

Welcome to the May newsletter and a Happy Mother’s Day for all those celebrating this month. We are almost halfway through the year! How scary is that? As the northern hemisphere looks towards spring and summer, we, here in the south, face the looming winter. At least I can look forward to those lovely log fires! Staring into the flames can mesmerise you! Well, I’d best not waste too much time here… as we keep saying, we have a book to finish!

Medieval Marginalia - Not just pretty pictures!

As per our admission in December that we would cut back on social media this year in order to finish our book five, we do not mean to abandon our duties completely and offer a ‘look back’ on some of our older blogs. We are sure they are worthy of a second airing!

This month’s blog we revisit those naughty monks and their wayward quills! What were they thinking?

LINK TO BLOG - Click on the snail!

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The wonderful world of Camelot.

Click on either picture!

FAMOUS QUOTE -

Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear.

Isidore of Seville, a scholar living in the 7th century.

SHOUT OUT

This month we’d like to shout out to Fiona H who was a very active viewer during our Advent calendar. Many thanks Fiona for all those likes!

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Most visitors to Alsace flock to its world-famous Christmas markets, or aim for the vineyards to indulge in a romantic wine-tasting break. Yet this visually spectacular region, with its flower-framed riverbanks and rainbow-coloured half-timbered houses, has another string to its bow: it doesn’t just look like it was plucked straight out of a fairy tale – it really was the inspiration for one of the world’s best-loved stories. So why not pause a moment before pouring that glass of wine and follow first in the footsteps of one of Disney’s most famous fairytale characters – Belle, of Beauty and the Beast?

Walt Disney himself had French ancestry – his roots can be traced back to the tiny dairy town of Isigny-sur-Mer in Normandy, where his ancestors became the Lords d’Isigny, before moving to England and anglicising it to Disney. And France’s Rococo interiors and romantic châteaux have inspired many a Disney set. So when it came to creating the 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast, the producers could think of no better setting for Belle’s home than Alsace.

Colmar is one of the places which inspired the 1991 animated Disney movie Beauty & the Beast.

The streets Belle calls home in the movie are almost identical to some of those seen in Colmar, Riquewihr and Ribeauvillé, all within a one-hour drive of the region’s main city, Strasbourg. She is portrayed as a conflicted outsider who longs to break free from the beautiful, yet predictable, small town she lives in – but when her plans are unexpectedly sidelined and she finds herself trapped in the château of a formidable beast, she gets a little more adventure than she’d bargained for.

The start of the movie portrays the Disney princess tiring of her daily routine, buying freshly baked bread from the local boulangerie and borrowing books from her local library. She sneers at her surroundings in spite of the stunning views, branding the location a “poor provincial town”. While Belle might have been ungrateful enough to regard her fairy tale town as boring, visitors are likely to find the real streets of Alsace anything but mundane. Many houses date back to the medieval era, and in spring and summer, giant storks’ nests poke out from the top of tall buildings, introducing visitors to the region’s much-celebrated mascot. Visitors will also be struck by the veritable rainbow of colours: traditionally, a house was vibrantly painted according to the profession of its occupants – for example, yellow for a baker, or blue for a sailor – and to this day, there is still barely a dull home around.

For further reading on this story click on the picture above.

ABOUT US - (Our first official author photos in 2007!)

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Catherine A Wilson co-writes with Catherine T Wilson (no relation). Their first book, The Lily and the Lion, was based upon their true-life accidental meeting and resulting friendship. All four books in their ‘Lions and Lilies’ series have won first place prizes in the Chatelaine/Chaucer Awards in the US and IN 2018, The Traitor’s Noose won the Grand Prize Chaucer Award.