The Duchess and the Ascendancy

As part of the Royal Family and as wife to the future King, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge is already a member of the Irish aristocracy. At the time of her marriage, she acquired the title of Baroness Carrickfergus. However, recent research into the Duchess's family tree has also discovered that Catherine is descended from the Marquess of Lansdowne (below), the Irish-born Ascendancy aristocrat who was British Prime Minister at the time of the American War of Independence. The Petty-Fitzmaurice family were later hugely influential in the Irish Southern Unionist movement and in the early twentieth century, the Marquess of Lansdowne was the Tory leader in the House of Lords, where he campaigned tirelessly to try and preserve Ireland's legislative Union with Britain. After the 1911 House of Lords Act, this was no longer possible and the focus of the Unionist campaign shifted to "saving" Ulster from the proposed Home Rule settlement. Many southern unionists, like Edward Carson, jumped ship at that point to join the controversial "Save Ulster" campaign, much to the Marquess's chagrin. His son, and another of Catherine's distant relatives, the Earl of Kerry, attended the 1914 Buckingham Palace Peace Conference, organised by King George V, to try and negotiate a peaceful solution to Ireland's mounting sectarian and political tensions.

The Duchess has thanked the amateur genealogists who uncovered this familial link during a school project in Australia, which also discovered ties to Sir Christopher Bullock, Winston Churchill's principal private secretary at the end of the First World War. 

The full Daily Telegraph article can be read here. 

Two new reviews of "Popular"

There were two new reviews out recently for my first novel, "Popular." One was published in a literary magazine published by the University of Melbourne, called Viewpoint, and the other was written by a teenage reader from County Down in Northern Ireland. 

Viewpoint's review discusses how her expectations weren't meant when she began reading: "When I first picked up Popular, I expected (a) it to be about a bunch of mean American girls and (b) that I wouldn't like it. (I went to a high school full of mean 'popular' girls and I don't like being reminded how nasty females can be to each other.) However, the girls and one boy were Irish, although pretty mean, and I did enjoy it. Russell stands back from his characters and describes them almost mockingly."

For the full review, click HERE.

Emma, the reader, writes about how she enjoyed "Popular" as a young teenager from Belfast. And you can read it HERE.

British or European readers can purchase "Popular" HERE.

Canadian readers can purchase it HERE.

American readers can purchase it HERE.

And, of course, Australian readers can purchase it HERE.

I feel so lucky to have these great reviews and it certainly makes any author's day a brighter one!

Anniversary of the Coronation

Today marks the fifty-eighth anniversary of the Coronation of the Queen in Westminster Abbey, the great church where more recently her grandson married Catherine Middleton. 

Pretty magnificent footage from the BBC via YouTube of the day itself and the intricacies of the ceremony is shown below. The latter half is in colour.

For those interested, in Britain, Her Majesty's full official title is Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Upon becoming Sovereign, the Queen and her advisers decided that in reference and deference to the many other countries over which she was now Head of State, she would bear an individual title within those countries, representing her position as Head of the Commonwealth. This means that today, Her Majesty is also the Queen of Canada (in French, her full title is Sa Majesté Elizabeth Deux, par la grâce de Dieu Reine du Royaume-Uni, du Canada et de ses autres royaumes et territoires, Chef du Commonwealth, Défenseur de la Foi), Duke of Normandy (Guernsey and Jersey), Lord of Mann (the Isle of Mann), Queen of Barbados, Queen of Jamaica, Queen of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Grenada, Queen of Saint Lucia, Queen of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Queen of Australia, Queen of New Zealand, Queen of Papau New Guinea, Queen of the Solomon Islands, Queen of Tuvalu, Queen of Antigua and Barbuda, Queen of Belize and Queen of Saint Christopher and Nevis ("St Kitts.")

"Popular": publication update

I'm really excited to announce that my first novel Popular will be published in the United Kingdom and Ireland on July 7th 2011 and then in Australia and New Zealand on August 29th!

Popular is profiled on Puffin Australia's blog Between the Lines, HERE.

Hello, 2011!

Well, A.D. 2010 has been and gone and today is January 1st, 2011 - New Year's Day in the United Kingdom since the reign of King George III. (Prior to that, the English preferred to celebrate new year on March 25th.) 2010 has been like any year, namely a mixture of some good and some bad. As a family, we sadly lost my uncle, Richard Mahaffy, on the day before Saint Patrick's Day in March, an event which has obviously been personally very hard for my mother (his sister), his wife, daughter and stepdaughter, as well as (of course) for his parents, my wonderful, wonderful grandparents. Uncle Richard's funeral did however bear testament to how well-respected he had been, and also very much liked as well. It has not been easy, by any means, and Christmas this year was slightly more downbeat than others have been.

However, it's also had a lot of good things - my friends Emerald, Aisleagh, Laura and Elena Maria have had great success and been very inspiring in their career paths. Emerald's first major television appearance was aired at the end of the year. She played Lady Lottie Edgefield in Channel Four's adaptation of William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart - a fantastic show from a great novel. I think it's still on 4OD, if you're looking for it! Aisleagh has catapulted into the world of high-flying lawyer types (seems only yesterday we got stuck trying to climb out a bathroom window when we decided a high school house party we were attending was too boring, but we were too afraid to go out the front door in case it caused a scene... squealing like two stuck piglets in what was demonstrably a tiny, tiny window was how karma got us back.) Laura has just published her first book, Eat, Drink & Succeed: How to Climb to the Top using the Networking Power of Social Events and Elena Maria published her third novel, The Night's Dark Shade, set in 13th-century France during the turmoil of the Albigensian Crusade. Onwards and upwards, ladies - and congratulations!

I also had a wonderful summer vacation in America this year, with just a little bit of work thrown in, and I got to spend lots of time working with the team at Penguin, who are amazing and very entertaining. Puffin's 70th birthday party in London was riotous fun, although people seemed to be traumatised by the post-modern technological bathrooms. Not entirely sure that it showed either of us in a particularly good light when almost the first thing my editor and I discussed when she announced she was pregnant was the possibility of being able to shop in Baby Dior or the Ralph Lauren Children department... Still, it's best to be realistic about these things.

2011 is a year I have great reason to look forward to - my first novel, Popular, is being published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on July 7th by Penguin and I'm very excited about that, as well as handing in the manuscript for its first sequel on January 14th; I'm back to work in the United States for a week in February, I hope to complete my masters in medieval history, my friend Aisleagh is getting married and I have made some truly wonderful friends in the past year, who I'm very excited to be starting 2011 with in my life. Don't get too conceited though; I am very capricious! Literally, at any second I can change my mind. Bam! ... I jest ... I do not jest.

This also marks the start of the first full calendar year in which I will be keeping this blog, having started back in spring 2010. Bearing that in mind, I thought I would have a look back over some of this blog's statistics to see what we've achieved since starting.

Well, since March this blog has had 96,857 hits. Of those, nearly 40% came from the United States and trailing along in a distant second were my own compatriots in the United Kingdom. Canadian, German, Australian, French, Dutch, Brazilian, Spanish and Finnish readers made up the rest of the international Top 10. And perhaps most interestingly of all, here are the top ten most popular articles: -

1. "Elvis, Chatsworth, JFK and Me" 

(A link to The Daily Telegraph's interview with the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire)

2. "The Allure of Anne Boleyn"

(A post where I discuss the perennial fascination with Henry VIII's second wife)

Mortifying mistake on "Australia's Next Top Model"

From my other blog - an embarrassing mistake on the live finale of Australia's Next Top Model.