Delicious nuggets

Sparks of Bright Matter is set in 18th-century London and rural county Cork in Ireland. It weaves historical fact with fiction and follows the fortunes of a character based on a real-life Irishman known as the 'The Last True Alchemist'.

Peter Woulfe lived in Barnards Inn, Holborn during the second half of the 18th century. I started developing a fictional character around him while knowing very little. The things I did know were intriguing. He was a respected scientist, a Fellow of the Royal Society, but behind the closed doors of his immensely cluttered rooms he was secretly seeking the Philosopher's Stone.

Reading John Timbs' English Eccentrics and Eccentricities provided me with some delicious nuggets of information.