Historical Stories

1905. An idealistic painter flees London for rural Dorset, convinced genius will one day be recognised. But it is his overlooked wife, Henrietta, who discovers inspiration in an enigmatic ex-soldier while a reckless weekend of absinthe, artists and shattered conventions exposes the gulf between lofty ideals and human desire. In the end, art—not scandal—delivers the greatest surprise.

Agatha was the last of the Winthrop line and is destined for spinsterhood unless she locates a suitable male partner to share life with on all levels including the most important time spent in the bedroom. Finally, she believes she had found the perfect soul-mate.

A hard-working married mechanic is shown the need for labour unions and the joys of working-class male bodies meshing their gears together.

In July 1941, journalist (but really military intelligence agent) half English-half Burmese Gordon is dispatched to Burma to convince the artist who deflowered him at age fourteen and set him into having the fetish too to return to England to work on the war effort. The artist is in Burma because there are easy boys there and he tries to convince Gordon to stay. Gordon indulges in his old fetish and is also pursued by a Japanese sadist.

The new king must father many children, but he is a gay man with no interest in women. His solution is to donate one of his testicles to each of two men, whose lives are then devoted to fathering as many of the king's children as they can. One of them also delights in a life partner.

In 1956 Germany, American colonel, Armstrong, takes his wife, Betsy, and fourteen-year-old son, David, on a vacation to see Mad King Ludwig’s Bavarian castles. They engage a down-on-his-luck count to be their guide. David and the count become very good friends.

A sailor washes up on the coast and is tended by a comforting woman at the turn of the 18th century.

This story was written for a story-writing competition, which it didn't win. It is the morning of the day before the wedding of a young girl in a country village in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. (A 'verst' is half a mile, and YES, it CAN be done!)

Diana is a prostitute in the temple of Aphrodite and sincerely believes in the value of her service to the goddess. But when her friend Andromeda adopts the new religion of Christianity, Diana's faith is also shaken.

A very short story with no sex. Carol is a woman who catches her husband cheating and devises a plan to end their marriage. As things sometimes happen, plans go awry and in the end everything works out for Carol.