Two young wildcats, Asta and Ash, are captured from their home in a beautiful forest and taken to apothecary’s shop in London to be used to create all sorts of medicines and potions and tinctures. It’s the summer of 1666 and superstition is rife with anti Catholic and anti foreign sentiment. Asta is desperate to escape London and return to the wild forest, but she has to fight against a perilous plot that is threatening the city and not just the caged animals within. Two comets appeared in 1664 and 1665 and were interpreted as harbingers of The Great Plague and The Great Fire respectively. People were also nervous that the biblical number 666 in 1666 indicated evil was brewing. Samuel Pepys wrote: ‘For the whole year, the population of London had a great sense of foreboding, because the year had the number of the devil in it – 666.’ All the houses in London were so close together, which is a very good thing for escaping…But it also helped the fire to spread. So, without further ado, it is our pleasure to present, The Fire Cats of London by the hugely talented Anna Fargher! One of the many joys of this blog, in fact the main joy, is sharing adventures and things that we like and read. When it comes to books, there are so many fine examples out there, it is incredibly hard to choose what to read first. In fact the palace bookshelves are rapidly filling up and I am thinking I may have to comandeer the fridge for Mrs H’s collection of spine tingling chillers, sorry, thrillers!

There are plenty out there, and each is just waiting to serve up a treasure of literal magical resource, fun and adventure with a personal touch.Townsperson: I’ve heard that more than 300 houses have been burned by a fire, Sir, and it’s still going. Asta and her brother Ash love living in the forest with their mum. She is teaching them how to catch their prey when they are caught instead.

The Great Fire of London is the most infamous fire in British history. Studied in schools from KS1, you’re probably aware of the devastation it caused to many beautiful buildings and how it changed the city of London forever. However, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Read on for Six things you might not know about the Great Fire of LondonBut before they could use fire hooks, the people of Pudding Lane needed to ask the Lord Mayor if they were allowed to – and he had to say ‘yes’. Thomas Farriner’s bakery was actually located just off of Pudding Lane in Fish Yard, which is now today’s Monument Street. The story starts on Pudding Lane, in the home of Thomas Farriner, a baker who lived with his family above the bakery. Anna Fargher was raised in a creative hub on the Suffolk coast by an artist and a ballet teacher. She read English Literature at Goldsmiths before working in the British art world and opening her own gallery. The Umbrella Mouse is her first book, which she wrote on her iPhone notepad during her daily commute on the London Underground. She splits her time between London and Suffolk where she is often found exploring the coastline and marshlands under the huge East Anglian skies. The Umbrella Mouse was selected for the Waterstones Book of the Month. Townspeople: Fire! Fire! We need to tell somebody about this… I wish someone would invent the telephone. And the fire brigade.Let’s get The Lord Mayor.

Thomas Farriner and his family climbed out of the window, to the roof, and escaped to the neighbour’s house… all except their maid. Petrified, they are taken by humans and dogs to the vast city of London. Their mother had told them of this place, crawling with humans. It is even worse than they imagined, with foul smells reeking through the air and their grief over their lost mother filling their hearts. She is sold again, this time to something even worse, having to fight for her life every day in a betting ring, surrounded by cruel and merciless humans, both men and women. All she can think about though is returning to free her brother, no matter what he believes about his new life. Any dogs or cats? Lead characters are wonderful wild cats. An antagonist is a British Blue cat. Many other talking creatures play key parts in this story too. Famously, only six people are recorded as dying in the fire. The truth is that most of those who died were poor, working, or lower-middle-class making it almost impossible to know how many people actually died.Courageous animals, human kindness, secret tunnels, the River Thames, ruthless medicine men and roaring flames of the devastating Fire of London, layer the story with one menace after another. How can a wild cat survive? Rat: But while they slept, a spark must have jumped out of the oven… the fire spread across the kitchen before anyone woke up. Hmm. We must command the Lord Mayor to pull down all the houses in front of the fire, so it has no fuel to burn, then the fire will die down.