Melissa Lawrence

Hi everyone. As I think I said in a recent crafting blog post ( http://www.melissalawrencecrafter.blogspot.co.uk/ ) it's the time of year when the Big Guns are rolled out by the television companies who assume that we are all now curled up in front of the fire with our mugs of hot chocolate, pretending we are in an episode of Gogglebox . One of the biggest guns of all, so big in fact it's probably more like a canon, is Downton Abbey which starts its fifth series on ITV1 tonight. I must admit I'm looking forward to it more than usual as I have a vested interest in this amazing drama because of a non-fiction book project I'm currently working on. I have been extremely fortunate to inherit a collection of letters which were written to my grandmother Elsie Merrall by her close friend Ethel North. Between 1919 and 1933, Ethel North was the friend and travelling companion of Lady Winifred Burghclere who was the sister of the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, the one who helped di...

Hi everyone. And I'm back, almost a year to the day since my last writing blog post. This time twelve months ago, my closest friend and "confidante" had just passed away from cancer. It was one of the lowest points of my entire life especially as it was my third major bereavement in six years and felt like the last straw of many last straws. I hadn't been in a great place with my writing for a while, as you can probably tell from that post and I had pretty much decided that after 18 years or so, writing as a "profession" was no longer for me. I had decided just to think of writing as a "hobby" and concentrate on my new career as a crafter, designer and scrapbooker instead. Well, here I am a year on and feeling much better about everything, I'm very pleased to say. Ironically, I found that once I'd taken the pressure off myself by only thinking of writing as a "hobby", I got more writing done than I had in ages! Then, once I be...