Deborah Burrows

The book launch for A Time of Secrets on 24 February went very well, although it was a stinkingly hot evening – the maximum that day had been 39C! But there was yummy food and good wine and company, a lovely speech from Rosemary Sayer and a short one from me. And so my third literary endeavour was launched. Fly, baby, fly.

Here I am with Rosemary, enjoying the relative coolness of the verandah while waiting anxiously for the guests to arrive  and fortifying myself with a glass of champagne…

And me in full flight, thanking everyone and setting my latest baby free.

Lovely Emily from Bookcaffe dressed up for the occasion and sold the books

And they’re now on the shelves, in Busselton:

And in Tasmania

And (hopefully) in bookshops all over Australia and New Zealand…

We arrived back in Iffley a week ago, on Monday evening. I had a day to recover from jet-lag (as if!!) and then we flew to Amsterdam for three nights because Toby was presenting a paper at the Academy of the Sciences there. I do love Amsterdam, though.

We wandered around the funky Jordaan. We visited the refurbished Rijksmuseum and saw a special exhibition on early Rembrandt, with a side trip to the beautiful Vermeers.  Then we took the tram to the suburbs, to the Miffy shop – de Winkel van Nijntje – to buy presents for some special little girls. Amsterdam is such a photogenic city.

We loved the little plaques in some of the ancient houses:

The weather was fine – even sunny on occasion. Here’s Toby outside a little cafe.

Now we’re back in beautiful Iffley and it’s a glorious spring day. The sun is shining and the snowdrops are giving way to daffodils. Birds are chirruping madly in the hedges and the bare branches and there is a sense of anticipation that comes with every spring. St Mary’s churchyard has drifts of snowdrops and the odd daffodil.

There’s a new book out, The Anchoress, that is making some waves. Well our St Mary’s has an unusual feature – the remains of an anchorite cell, which is shown in the second photo. Iffley’s anchoress was called Annora and she remained in a tiny cell there for nine years or so. Here is an article about Annora:

http://iffley.co.uk/…/08-the-tower-and-the-south-wa…/annora/

And here is where she lived

I love that everywhere you look in England there is a story.

My sojourn in my hometown of Perth is coming to an end with the summer, as I fly out on 1 March. Back to a cold and wet (but never miserable) England and my husband, Toby, who left on Feb 7 and is much missed. It’s been lovely to spend most of the summer, here in Perth. It is the time when we have our International Arts Festival and people tend to spend as much time as possible in the sunshine, or outside on balmy evenings. Excitement is rising as the publication date of A Time of Secrets draws closer. Tuesday 24 Feb it’ll be in the shops. It’s such a long road to publication that it’s always very exciting to see the novel in print, even after three books! Now, I’ve done a book trailer. Me, myself, alone. It’s a bit rough, but my agent was most impressed. Have a look and tell me what you think: A Time of Secrets – Trailer 2 – Small The first thing we did when we arrived home was to attend two weddings. The daughter of my dear friends was married on Saturday 3 January, and the reception was in the grounds of one of the very few older buildings left in “tear it down and put up something brand-new because it must be better” Perth. The Bishop’s House was built in 1859 for Matthew Hale, the first Anglican Archbishop of Perth. By Perth standards, this is ancient! The city was first settled in 1829, and was effectively a tent city for the first years. The lovely residence was built by ticket of leave men – effectively convicts on parole. Perth wasn’t founded by convicts, but it was very poor for the first few decades and there was a shortage of labour. What to do? They’d stopped sending convicts to New South Wales in 1840, but we in the West thought that convicts were an excellent solution to our problems and transportation to Western Australia began in 1850 and continued until 1868 (when transportation of convicts ceased for good in Britain). During that period, 9,668 convicts were transported to WA and most spent very little time in prison as they were needed as workers. The old house was used for various purposes after the last bishop to use it as a residence died in 1946, and I remember it as rather a sad place, falling into disrepair when I was a child and teenager. It was saved by an English lord – Lord McAlpine – who leased it in 1982 and renovated it beautifully. In 1999 it was sold to the Multiplex and Hawaiian Property groups, who promptly built two (a nine storey and a larger twenty-seven storey) modern office towers on the land behind. In 2010 it was converted into a posh restaurant, Lamont’s Bishop’s House. The wedding reception was in the open-air courtyard behind the house, which is just behind from where this photo was taken, and the food was very delicious. The next wedding was my beautiful niece Susannah to the dashing Daniel. The service was in her grandparent’s back garden, which looked gorgeous and the bride looked so lovely I cried.

Their reception was also open-air – we like to get outside as much as  possible in our gorgeous summer. It was on the terrace of a local golf club,which had views like this: Now for important matters.  After our two weddings it was time for important matters, like publcity photos for ME! Here they are, courtesy of Warnock Imagery, in the lovely home where we’ve been staying. But it is Australia, and creepy crawlies are everywhere. We found a couple of large Huntsman spiders on two consecutive nights in the bedroom.  Actually, I’m not too scared of these gentle giants. Give me a large glass and a piece of board and I’ll catch ’em and stick ’em outside. Come to think of it – maybe it was the SAME spider each night who’d come back after being taken outside… Now, Toby and I were in Perth in summer. The beach calls, “come to me, come to me”. So one Friday evening, just before Toby left, we bought some fish and chips and went to Cottesloe Beach to watch the sunset. The fish and chips were sublime: And the beach was just perfect. A Time of Secrets is set in Melbourne, but a couple of the main characters come from Perth. In one scene Eric tells Stella that his house is “just up from Cottesloe Beach. That’s such a beautiful beach. White sand, pine trees, clear water. You’d love it.” I love it … and here are the photos to prove the truth of Eric’s statement   Selfie on the beach. One day I’ll get the hang of them: The sun sets over the ocean, here in the West, and it’s a glorious sight: Another beach we visited is Safety Bay, where my step-daughter, Lucy, lives with Brett and their three darlings, Jacob, Olive and Sunday. We visited one hot day for a frolic on the beach. Now that sky is a Perth summer sky to me!! The other excitement of my trip is the Book Launch, which is to take place next Tuesday. We settled on Mattie Furphy House, which is an old Arts and Crafts house built for his brother by Joseph Furphy, who wrote under the name of Tom Collins. His most famous work was For the Term of His Natural Life. The Fellowship of Australian Writers WA has its headquarters in an old house nearby (Tom Collins House) and uses Mattie Furphy House for functions and Writers in Residence. It’s a gorgeous place, set in some natural bushland near a park. If you can’t read the sign it says: “Beware Venomous Snakes”. That’s not a joke, by the way. But if my guests keep to the path it should be fine…    The house is gorgeous inside, and I’m hoping for a fabulous launch: The invitation is lovely also: DB ATOS DL INVITE FA (1) (1) Next time I’ll write about the Launch and the Giants who visited Perth last week…

Happy New Year, friends. I hope that it is joyful, peaceful and filled with dreams come true! We spent the New Year in Dubai airport, on our way home for the summer holidays, in the little Moet & Chandon stall.

We arrived in Perth last night. Today it’s 25C max in Perth – a beautiful summer day.

And this is what we have come to. At the moment, Perth seems just perfect:

​Perth was originally founded by Captain James Stirling in 1829 as the administrative centre of the Swan River Colony, and gained city status in 1856. The city is named for Perth, Scotland, by influence of Sir George Murray, then British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.

Perth became known worldwide as the “City of Light” when city residents lit their house lights and streetlights as American astronaut John Glenn passed overhead while orbiting the earth on Friendship 7 in 1962.

Perth is always in the top 10 of the list of the world’s most liveable cities, and I can verify that it is a great place in which to live. The Swan River is the feature of the centre, and we live fairly close to it. I love the river.

Our closest beach is beautiful Cottesloe, pictured here in the daytime and at sunset. Just perfect! We’ll be heading to the beach very soon indeed…

So, I’ll be posting from Perth for the next couple of months. I’ll still be writing, as well as reading and catching up with friends. And working at my legal job (sigh!). Then home to Oxford in March for a beautiful English spring…



We had a lovley Christmas in Iffley. Toby’s sister, Sophie, has joined us for a week and celebrated with us.

On 22 December we went to a candlelit concert in Exeter College chapel. The music was sumptuous and the setting sublime. A lovely Nativity scene had been set up under the altar.

Oxford was getting into Christmas mode – i.e., eating. Bambi and Porky and some friends were hanging around the Covered Markets (don’t look if you’re vegetarian!). I like the Covered Market and the sense of age that comes from such scenes. Here is some information about the Covered Market: http://www.oxfordcity.co.uk/shops/market/

On 23 December we took Sophie for a drive to one of my favourite villages, Dorchester. I learned how to take a selfie by watching Toby’s hand and not the iphone:

We went on to Basildon Park, where some of Downton Abbey and the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice was filmed. A beautiful country house, now run by the National Trust.

It was made beautiful for Christmas, with Christmas trees galore:

I loved this knitted nativity scene:

On Christmas Eve we drove into the Cotswolds, to my favourite village Lower Slaughter, where the houses exhibited beautiful wreaths:

I spent Christmas Day with Toby and Sophie and we had a typical English Christmas, namely an enormous lunch (at the lovely Hawkwell House Hotel) followed by a walk along the river, and then an evening at home watching the Christmas specials on TV: Dr Who Christmas Special, Call the Midwife Christmas Special and Downton Abbey Christmas Special.

This is Hawkwell House:

And this is Christmas dinner: entree, main and dessert:

Yesterday we went for a short walk in the cold through the ususually deserted village:

We walked to a chilly Iffley Lock:

My sister-in-law became the Goose Girl:

Then we showed Sophie our beautiful 12C parish church, St Mary’s, which dates from 1170. It has amazing carvings around its doors, as explained here: http://greatenglishchurches.co.uk/html/iffley.html.

The south door. This arguably the finest part of the church. All manner of mythical figure is here, but little that is overtly religious! From its fine condition one would expect it to have been re-carved but it was in fact protected by a porch for a many centuries and was carved from particularly hard stone.

Inside it has some beautiful contemporary stained glass windows.

Outside it has a yew tree that is older than the church, a lamp post out of CS Lewis, and an Ent (aka a horse chestnut, planted when the village school was opened in 1838).

Toby had some work to do in the library at Cambridge University, so we drove over to the east last Sunday and spent three nights in a little village called Heydon, in a converted barn. The B&B looked like something straight out of a fairy tale:

And our little barn was very comfortable, too:

We caught up with our friends John and Rosemary, who live near Cambridge, for an early Christmas lunch at Wimpole Hall on Monday. And that afternoon we went into Grantchester to look around:

The village of Grantchester was imortalised in the poem by Rupert Brooke, ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, and Brooke’s statue stands outside the Old Vicarage, which is now owned by Lord Jeffrey Archer. The poem was written in 1912, when Brooke was in Berlin and it describes his longing for England and the village. Brooke was killed in World War 1 at the age of 27.

I tried to photograph the scenes mentioned in the poem. The moon photo isn’t mine, but it is too beautiful to miss out, and the woodcut is by Gwen Ravarat, a grand-daughter of Charles Darwin. The other photos are mine.

from: The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
(Café des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)

Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!

To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?

Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?

And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?

Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?

Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?