Derbyshire, 1603: Elizabeth I is dead and the Tudor reign is over. As the men in power decide to pass the throne to the Scottish King James, one woman debates changing the course of history. Two Tudor heirs have been covered up for decades, and with a foreign king threatening the stability of England it […]
Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II by Linda Porter
According to the great diarist, John Evelyn, Charles II was ‘addicted to women’, and throughout his long reign a great many succumbed to his charms. Clever, urbane and handsome, Charles presided over a hedonistic court, in which licence and licentiousness prevailed. Mistresses is the story of the women who shared Charles’s bed, each of whom wielded […]
Charles II’s last mistress
Linda Porter, author of Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II, writes about Hortense Mancini, the beautiful but unconventional niece of Cardinal Mazarin who became the king’s last mistress. Everyone knows that Charles II was an amorous king. The Restoration court was renowned for glamorous women parading their charms in the latest […]
The Last Protector by Andrew Taylor
A dangerous secret lies beneath Whitehall Palace… Brother against brother. Father against son. Friends turned into enemies. No one in England wants a return to the bloody days of the Civil War. But Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard, has abandoned his exile and slipped back into England. The consequences could be catastrophic. James Marwood, a traitor’s […]
The Puritan Princess by Miranda Malins
London, 1657. The youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell, 18-year-old Frances, is finding her place at England’s new centre of power. Following the turmoil of Civil War, a fragile sense of stability has returned to the country. Her father has risen to the unprecedented position of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, and Frances has found herself […]
Entertaining Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift
London, 1666. Elizabeth ‘Bird’ Carpenter has a wonderful singing voice, and music is her chief passion. When her father persuades her to marry horse-dealer Christopher Knepp, she suspects she is marrying beneath her station, but nothing prepares her for the reality of life with Knepp. Her father has betrayed her trust, for Knepp cares only for […]
In search of the animals in the Great Fire of London
Deborah Swift came across an intriguing area of research when working on her latest novel based on the lives of the women who appear in Samuel Pepys’s Diary, Entertaining Mr Pepys, set in 1666. Among the records we have on the Great Fire of London, there’s one topic which was something of a beast to […]
Blood’s Revolution by Angus Donald
It’s 1685 and after the victory of Sedgemoor by King James II’s men and the Bloody Assizes that followed, the British Isles face an uneasy time. Many powerful men have grown tired of Catholic James’s autocratic rule and seek to invite William, the Protestant Prince of Orange, to seize the thrones of the Three Kingdoms. […]