Remove student Isabella reports on the event:

“The Remove were treated to a special visitor this week: the English-American author Caroline Lawrence, who came to speak to us about her Roman Mysteries series. These books are about a Roman girl called Flavia and her three friends; Nubia (a slave girl that Flavia freed), Jonathan (a Jewish boy) and Lupus (a beggar boy who couldn’t speak). Caroline’s talk and workshops were fascinating because she combined her love for art history, travel and ancient languages.  This love stemmed from her studies of Classics and Archaeology, which led her towards her career.

After she graduated from Cambridge University, she remained in England and taught Latin, French and Art at a small London primary school. In 2000, she wrote her first book, The Thieves of Ostia. This book was published in 2001. From then she published sixteen more books in the series. After that she wrote four Roman Mystery Scrolls, four Roman Quests and then three short stories. The Roman Mysteries series is the only one to be adapted for television. She has just published a new book called the Time Travel Diaries which I am really enjoying reading.

I found the whole day particularly interesting as I am completing my first year of Latin. Caroline has inspired me to learn more about life in Ancient Rome.

The workshops we participated in were designed to give us the tools to become young authors and illustrators. In the writing workshop, I learnt how to use Caroline’s seven steps for building compelling characters. As a group, we created a twelve year old girl who couldn’t stop eating and used this character to inspire our drawing in the art workshop.

In the art workshop we each designed a book cover which were judged and the winners were then announced by Mrs McKendrick.

The whole day was great and as a year group we appreciated the opportunity to meet such an inspirational woman.”

View the full album of photos.