Spotlight on Deborah Swift, author of The Poison Keeper

 Naples 1633

 Aqua Tofana – One drop to heal. Three drops to kill.

Giulia Tofana longs for more responsibility in her mother’s apothecary business, but Mamma has always been secretive and refuses to tell Giulia the hidden keys to her success. When Mamma is arrested for the poisoning of the powerful Duke de Verdi, Giulia is shocked to uncover the darker side of her trade.

Giulia must run for her life, and escapes to Naples, under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, to the home of her Aunt Isabetta, a famous courtesan. But when Giulia hears that her mother has been executed, and the cruel manner of her death, she swears she will wreak revenge on the Duke de Verdi.

The trouble is, Naples is in the grip of Domenico, the Duke’s brother, who controls the city with the ‘Camorra’, the mafia. Worse, her Aunt Isabetta, under Domenico’s thrall, insists that she should be consort to him – the brother of the man she has vowed to kill.

Based on the legendary life of Giulia Tofana, this is a story of hidden family secrets, and how even the darkest desires can be vanquished by courage and love.

‘Her characters so real they linger in the mind long after the book is back on the shelf’ Historical Novel Society

 

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Deborah Swift 

Fun Facts 

(Stuff you may or may not already know!)

Fun things about me.

It’s at this point I discover I’m not actually fun.

*** 

I love to do physical things and my lifestyle includes martial arts, yoga and dancing.

Here I am in our studio at home ready for an online class. You can see the yoga hammock behind me, and so far I’ve managed not to strangle myself with it.

I like to drum on big drums, here’s my group in action! We are very enthusiastic amateurs! 

I used to work as a costume designer but I am probably the worst dressed person I know. One of the jobs I once had at the BBC was to screen in the incoming live audiences for ‘Offensive’ T-shirts and replace them with plain white.  They could collect the offending item again after the show.

I have a Zen side to me that not many see, and I like to meditate and spend a lot of time in silence, even when not writing. Om!

At one point I was part of a black light theatre group that specialized in puppets and illusions and toured with them all around the UK including Northern Ireland, where our van kept being impounded in case it harboured a bomb. For that job, I was dancer/puppeteer/stagehand and invisible person.

Pictures my own or from Wikipedia

***

Thank you for hosting me, never realized I was so dull!

Deborah

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Deborah Swift 

Deborah Swift lives in the north of England and is a USA Today bestselling author who has written fourteen historical novels to date. Her first novel, The Lady’s Slipper, set in 17th Century England, was shortlisted for the Impress Prize, and her WW2 novel Past Encounters was a BookViral Millennium Award winner.

Deborah enjoys writing about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and most of her novels have been published in reading group editions. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is a mentor with The History Quill.

 

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Q&A: When did Italian replace Latin as the language of Italy?

History Extra

Languages can literally die overnight when the last of their speakers dies, but the death of Latin was very different.

 After the fall of the Roman empire in the west in AD 476, Latin evolved into a wide variety of regional dialects now known as Romance vernaculars. In the early 14th century the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri reckoned that more than 1,000 such dialects were spoken in Italy. At the time of Dante, Latin was still used in literature, philosophy, medicine and other cultural or legal written documents. Dialects were spoken, but also used in writing: the earliest examples of vernacular writing in Italy date from the ninth century.

The early 16th century saw the dialect used by Dante in his work replace Latin as the language of culture. We can thus say that modern Italian descends from 14th-century literary Florentine. Italy did not become a single nation until 1861, at which time less than 10 per cent of its citizens spoke the national language, Italian.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Italy was a ‘diglossic country’ – one where a local dialect such as Neapolitan or Milanese was spoken at home while Italian was learned at school and used for official purposes.

The First World War helped foster linguistic unification when, for the first time, soldiers from all over Italy met and talked to each other. The rise in literacy levels after the Second World War and the spread of mass media changed Italy into a bilingual nation, where Italian, increasingly the mother tongue of all Italians, coexists and interacts with the dialects of Italy.

 Answered by Delia Bentley, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester.

Q&A: When did Italian replace Latin as the language of Italy?

History Extra

Venice in 1338. (Bridgeman Art Library)

Languages can literally die overnight when the last of their speakers dies, but the death of Latin was very different. 

 

After the fall of the Roman empire in the west in AD 476, Latin evolved into a wide variety of regional dialects now known as Romance vernaculars. In the early 14th century the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri reckoned that more than 1,000 such dialects were spoken in Italy. At the time of Dante, Latin was still used in literature, philosophy, medicine and other cultural or legal written documents. Dialects were spoken, but also used in writing: the earliest examples of vernacular writing in Italy date from the ninth century. 

 

The early 16th century saw the dialect used by Dante in his work replace Latin as the language of culture. We can thus say that modern Italian descends from 14th-century literary Florentine. Italy did not become a single nation until 1861, at which time less than 10 per cent of its citizens spoke the national language, Italian. 

 

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Italy was a ‘diglossic country’ – one where a local dialect such as Neapolitan or Milanese was spoken at home while Italian was learned at school and used for official purposes. 

 

The First World War helped foster linguistic unification when, for the first time, soldiers from all over Italy met and talked to each other. The rise in literacy levels after the Second World War and the spread of mass media changed Italy into a bilingual nation, where Italian, increasingly the mother tongue of all Italians, coexists and interacts with the dialects of Italy.

Answered by Delia Bentley, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester.