The street that was never straight
Why the main street of an old town bends, and what the bend says about who owned the land.
Popular history writer
I’m Ioana. I write readable history about old towns, castles and ordinary people of the past.
Readable history of old towns and the people who lived in them
Blog
The Old Town Notebook
A long read every Sunday: one street, one church or one person from the past.
What a parish register can tell you
Births, deaths and a few strange notes in the margin, and how I read them.
Drawing a town from a map and a rumour
How I sketch a lost town from one old map and a story the villagers still tell.
The church with a tower to hide in
A village church built to be locked from the inside, and why nobody thought that odd.
How I find the ordinary people
The bakers and carters are never in the big books. Here is where they are.
Newsletter
The Old Town Notebook
One long read every Sunday about an old town, a castle or an ordinary person from the past, sent to your inbox.
“The one email I open the day it lands.”
Downloads and merch
Shop
Downloads arrive by email. Merch is printed to order and shipped by Printful.
PDF · 120 pages
The Town on the Hill
A readable history of one market town, from its first wooden wall to the day the walls came down.
Ordinary People of the Old Town
Twenty short portraits of bakers, bell-ringers, midwives and carters, each pieced together from a few lines in old records.
Castle Life on an Ordinary Tuesday
Eight essays about what a castle was really used for on a day when nothing happened.
Walking-History Guide Template
A fill-in guide for turning any old town into a walking tour, with map pages, stop pages and a short script for each stop.
Online course
My course
Video course · 8 lessons
Writing History for General Readers
From a pile of notes to a finished chapter that a reader who knows nothing will want to finish.
- Choosing a person, not a period
- Finding sources you can trust
- Reading an old record
- Building a scene from a few facts
- Explaining what a reader does not know
- Keeping the dates in order
- Cutting a long chapter
- Showing your sources without a lecture
About
Hello, I’m Ioana
I have loved old towns since I was a child, when my grandfather walked me through ours and told me who had lived in every house. Later I learned to read old records, and I found that the people in them were far more interesting than the dates.
I write for readers who do not think they like history. I choose one street, one church or one person, and I tell what happened as plainly as I can, with the sources at the end. A new long read goes out every Sunday.
What I sell is what I use: ebooks about towns and the people in them, a template for making a walking tour, a notebook for research and two video courses on writing history for anyone who wants to read it.
Questions
How do the downloads arrive?
After checkout you receive an email with a download link, and the same link is shown on the confirmation page. Everything is a PDF made to read on a screen or print on ordinary A4 or Letter paper.
Is there merch?
Yes: tees, mugs, totes, prints and stickers with my own designs. Each is printed to order and shipped by Printful, and the cost and delivery time show at checkout.
How often does the letter come, and how do I leave?
One every Sunday. Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and it works at once.
Do I need to know history to read these?
No. Each long read starts from nothing, explains the words it uses and ends with the sources I looked at, in case you want to keep digging.
What if something is not what I expected?
Write to me within fourteen days of buying a download or course and I will refund it, with no questions.