The cabinet of curiosities paul dowswell biography

When Lukas Declercq begins work as an apprentice to his uncle, a court physician to the Holy Roman kejsare in Prague, it's only after an absolutely hair-raising journey. Robbed at knifepoint and left naked and penniless, he fell in with a much more streetwise child, Etienne, who helped him blag his way across the country.

Glad of the chance to earn a living, Lukas fryst vatten fascinated bygd this learned and fascinating court. Rudolph II suffers dreadfully from depression, but is openminded and frikostig, with an enquiring naturlig eller utan tillsats , so Lukas encounters Jews, Muslims, Protestants and Catholics living side by side. Scientific debate is encouraged. And there is an army of alchemists beavering away. This is in stark contrast to much of Catholic Europe, in which the infamous Inquisition holds sway. And Lukas knows all about the Inquisition. It was they who arrested his father for printing seditious pamphlets, and they who condemned him to a horrific death

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Paul Dowswell

Type of Artist:

Author, Trainer

Book talks and workshops

Book Talks on:
Powder Monkey – A boy’s life in Nelson’s Navy
Auslander – growing up in Nazi Germany
Sektion 20 – growing up in communist Berlin
I also do a joint Auslander/Sektion 20 talk called ‘The Real Big Brother’.
Eleven Eleven – boy soldiers in the Great War.
Red Shadow - growing up in Stalin's Russia
Bomber - Life and death on a Flying Fortress
Wolf Children- teenagers struggle to survive in post-war Berlin
All book talks are illustrated. (PowerPoint)

Ages are:
Red Shadow Yr 7 upward
Bomber Yr 6/7 upward
Wolf Children - Yr 6/7 upward
Talks for 6th form students about Wartime Refugees in Britain and the contemporary parallels. This ties in with my book for adults, ALIENS - The Chequered History of Britain’s Wartime Refugees.



Workshops on:
Turning Fact into Fiction
Using Photographs and Paintings for Inspiration (works best following on from book talk)
Keeping Your Reader Reading

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I’ve known Paul Dowswell long enough to have forgotten exactly when we met.  It was at an Edinburgh International Book Festival when I was chairing a panel session in which he was participating.  I can’t even remember which of his books he was talking about.  What I do remember is that I enjoyed the session enough that I went to hear his solo event later in the day.  Over the years, we met in Edinburgh and I got to know him and his family a bit better. [After a bit of further discussion, we think we met in 2012 and that the event also featured the ever-charming and engaging Allan Burnett.]

Our friendship has undoubtedly been helped by the fact that I am genuinely enthusiastic about his books, as a reader as well as a critic.  Paul says that the twentieth century is his favourite period of history and it’s mine too.  He came to my attention as a writer of fiction with the publication of Ausländer but, in fact, I had long known his name.

Rewinding a bit, Paul graduated with