About the work

A closer look.

One name, one place, or one date, checked against the record. Tell me a surname, a town, a street, or a date you keep half-believing, and what you want to know. I go to the primary sources (archives, registries, parish and municipal records, digitised papers) and come back with one page: what the record supports, what the popular version gets wrong, and where the trail goes quiet. Every line carries its source and its date. What you get: a short sourced account, written plainly, delivered in 3 days. One revision included. If the record is silent, or contradicts the well-known story, the page says so. That is the answer, not a defect. Worked from the same desk: the name Kael (a slender root in one line, a whole-heart reading in another; the modern spelling is younger than the story told about it). The river Derwent (its name means oak; the village that carried it now sits under a reservoir, its spire dynamited in 1947). Tyneham in Dorset (requisitioned in 1943 for D-Day training, 225 people given 28 days' notice; the note pinned to the church door is the only record of who wrote it). Best for: a family name you want sorted honestly, a place you grew up, or a date everyone repeats that nobody checks.