I am aboard a train from Cambridge to London. 

I have just completed the final revision of Chapter 30, which by coincidence, describes a conversation on a train between Cambridge and London. In the book, I’ve slightly altered the London station’s name from St Pancras to St Pancross, which is what my wife calls it. And I’ve decorated the station with small leering sculptures of Pan, the ancient god of mischief, from whom we get the word panic. 

I’ve spent all my spare moments in the last two weeks listening to the Audible version of ‘Mythica’ by Professor Emily Hauser. She takes the Iliad, the story of the Greek siege of Troy, and wrests what she can of the story of women in the late Bronze Age. 

Do you have any idea how long it took late Bronze Age women to sew a sail for a boat? Months!

So great was the demand for textiles that it led to the trafficking of women in the Aegean and Anatolia. 

And so profitable was it that it led to wars. 

Enter the Iliad and the Odyssey.

I’m interested in it because the three books of the Portals trilogy, starting with ‘Beyond The Shining Portals’, then ‘The Half-Life Girl’, which will be published shortly, and finally ‘Now Is The Time Of Monsters’, follow the fortunes of the Maiden Orders in protecting women in a very hostile universe across hundreds of years. The main protagonists are Sorcha, Elektra, Brigid, Agatha, Helena, Matilda and of course, Rosebud.

One of the joys of living in Cambridge is that the University draws outstanding people to the city. So on Wednesday evening, I will be in the audience at a bookshop here to listen to the professor discuss her book.

‘Mythica’ by Emily Hauser. Definitely worth reading!