Writer, historian and biographer who wove archaeology, social history, myth and religion into her work The writer Gillian Tindall, who has died aged 87, wrote books that bridged the boundaries between fiction, memoir and history. Over more than six decades, she explored with a novelist’s intuition and historian’s precision how the hidden past shapes places and the people who inhabit them. No Name in the Street (1959) was the first of more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, leading to the Somerset Maugham award in 1972 for Fly Away Home . Her evolution towards non-fiction began with a biography of a Victorian novelist – The Born Exile: George Gissing (1974) – in whose work London was a powerful presence. Continue reading...