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Ruth Wade
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  • Creative Writing
    • A crash course in creative writing
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    • Creativity Coaching
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    • May Keaps Series
    • Planning Writing Projects
    • Skills & Craft
    • Dance Quartet
    • Teaching & Editorial
    • Commissions
  • Library
    • Walls of Silence
      • Behind the bricks
        • Charting the mind
          • Walls of Silence: Part I
          • Walls of Silence: Part II
          • Walls of Silence: Part III
          • Walls of Silence: Part IV
          • Walls of Silence: Part V
    • May Keaps Series
      • The Last Post
      • Foul Trade
        • Foul Trade: character dossiers
        • Foul Trade: book club topics
      • Found Drowned
        • Found Drowned: the rogue scenes
        • Found Drowned: smoke and mirrors
        • Found Drowned: book club topics
    • Dance Quartet
      • A Fatal Rhythm
      • Dancing with Death
  • Research
    • Walls of Silence
    • May Keaps Series
    • Current Research
    • Influences
    • Research Topics
    • Oral History
    • Resources
    • The Great War
    • Women in the 1920s
    • Dance Quartet
  • Media Scrapbook
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    • Interviews
    • Media
    • News
    • Reviews
    • Press Pack – Ruth Wade
    • Press Pack – BK Duncan
  • About
  • Contact
Ruth Wade
  • Home
  • Creative Writing
    • A crash course in creative writing
    • A Writer’s Life
    • Creativity Coaching
    • Inspirations
    • Writing Wisdom & Quotes
    • May Keaps Series
    • Planning Writing Projects
    • Skills & Craft
    • Dance Quartet
    • Teaching & Editorial
    • Commissions
  • Library
    • Walls of Silence
      • Behind the bricks
        • Charting the mind
          • Walls of Silence: Part I
          • Walls of Silence: Part II
          • Walls of Silence: Part III
          • Walls of Silence: Part IV
          • Walls of Silence: Part V
    • May Keaps Series
      • The Last Post
      • Foul Trade
        • Foul Trade: character dossiers
        • Foul Trade: book club topics
      • Found Drowned
        • Found Drowned: the rogue scenes
        • Found Drowned: smoke and mirrors
        • Found Drowned: book club topics
    • Dance Quartet
      • A Fatal Rhythm
      • Dancing with Death
  • Research
    • Walls of Silence
    • May Keaps Series
    • Current Research
    • Influences
    • Research Topics
    • Oral History
    • Resources
    • The Great War
    • Women in the 1920s
    • Dance Quartet
  • Media Scrapbook
    • Articles
    • Interviews
    • Media
    • News
    • Reviews
    • Press Pack – Ruth Wade
    • Press Pack – BK Duncan
  • About
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May Keaps series

I can’t visit the world my characters in the May Keaps series would have inhabited because it no longer exists. But my job is to make it feel as though it does and bring it alive in the reader’s imagination. Here are some pieces about my research sources and techniques, and my trials and tribulations in the quest to get it right. You might like to flick through the pages of my media scrapbook for some articles on the real world behind the May Keaps series. Or peruse my pieces on the craft of writing the books.

1920's hats. Black banded. Research by Ruth Wade

Style and fashion in the 1920’s: hats

Check day dress. Stylish armchair. Fashion 1920's style.

Fashion 1920’s style

Ticket for WWI Centenary Commemoration in Harrogate Library 10/11/2018

WWI centenary commemorations

Theatre card for Tivoli 1933. BK Duncan

Music halls and all things theatrical, darling

Footballer Bob Crompton. 1913

The sporting life

The Fishing Smack, Cold Harbour. Poplar pubs and waterside taverns

Poplar pubs and waterside taverns

Moochers & mug-fakers

Stylised 20's girl walking hound. Pastel by Ruth Wade. Representing the Isle of Dogs

The Isle of Dogs

Boats in Thames at Limehouse Reach

Undercurrents of Found Drowned

Blue racing car on orange. Pastel by Ruth Wade

Slang and cant decoded

Blue racing car on brown. Pastel by Ruth Wade

Slang and cant: the words and the music

Red and navy saloon cars on green. Pastel by Ruth Wade

Libraries: Poplar’s palaces of learning

1914 Cupid calls the tune. Ruth Wade

It’s a man’s world

Vintage medical field kit. Wellcome foundation.

Murder and medics

Peach oak tree. Pastel by Ruth Wade representing East End communities. BK Duncan

East End communities

Yellow sailing boasts on blue. Pastel by Ruth Wade

London docklands

Oak tree on brown. Pastel by Ruth Wade

Poplar and Limehouse

Beneath Foul Trade

Family photograph of young man in WW1 uniform. Ruth Wade collection

Behind The Last Post

Historical fiction. Edwardian family. From Ruth Wade collection

The past in the present

Oscar Kirk's 1919 diary

An East End voice

Still from Wellcome film on shell-shock treatment in WW1

Shell-shock

A writer's influences. The making of novelist Ruth Wade / BK Duncan

The melting pot

Women swapping stories at summer fete. Oral history. Research Ruth Wade

“I remember her wearing this, what a fright . . .”

1920's women. Mother reading to her children.

“It was as if every man you had ever danced with was dead.”

Poplar Street party for Peace Day 1919. BK Duncan

It was never to be the coming of peace

Hippodrome Poplar. As featured in Foul Trade by BK Duncan

Clear the stage, dim the lights.

Vintage gramophone. Researching novels by Ruth Wade / BK Duncan

How do I research?

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