avg_rating: 3.82
name: Katharine Quarmby
about: Award-winning writer, editor and journalist with extensive knowledge of writing and editing across print, TV, radio and online.Katharine’s latest books include her debut novel, The Low Road, which was published in June 2023 by Unbound. Set in rural Norfolk, London and Australia in the early nineteenth century, it is based on a true story that Katharine uncovered in her Norfolk hometown, of a Norfolk woman, Mary Tyrell, who was staked through the heart after death in 1813. She had been questioned repeatedly about a suspected infanticide.An older daughter, known only by the initials A.T., had survived. Katharine traced her to the Refuge for the Destitute in Hackney. She had met another destitute, Anne Simpkins, there and they forged a friends Award-winning writer, editor and journalist with extensive knowledge of writing and editing across print, TV, radio and online.Katharine’s latest books include her debut novel, The Low Road, which was published in June 2023 by Unbound. Set in rural Norfolk, London and Australia in the early nineteenth century, it is based on a true story that Katharine uncovered in her Norfolk hometown, of a Norfolk woman, Mary Tyrell, who was staked through the heart after death in 1813. She had been questioned repeatedly about a suspected infanticide.An older daughter, known only by the initials A.T., had survived. Katharine traced her to the Refuge for the Destitute in Hackney. She had met another destitute, Anne Simpkins, there and they forged a friendship that deepened into love. In December 1821 they stole laundry from the Refuge, but were caught, stood trial at the Old Bailey, and were sentenced to transportation.The Low Road novel is about uncovering lost histories: the stories of poor women from rural areas, the stories of the imprisoned, the stories of convicts sent to penal colonies, the stories of people who often left no records as a result of illiteracy and hardship. It also contains an important strand of narrative that explores experiences left out of the history books: a same-sex romance that evolves into a marriage of sorts two centuries before this was legally possible.Aside from The Low Road, Katharine mainly writes on environmental injustice, racism, disability rights, the care system, violence and hate crime. She is part of a European collaboration on environmental journalism, most recently co-editing a nine country investigation into the harms and risks of asbestos. ...more