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18 March 2024

Book Review: The Tudor Socialite: A Social Calendar of Tudor Life, by Jan-Marie Knights


Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US 

Jan-Marie Knights follows her previous book, The Plantagenet Socialite with this new venture into the world of the Tudors.  This probably explains the title and subtitle of 'A social calendar of Tudor life'. 

In fact the book is less a social calendar and more of a diary of many of the key events of the Tudor dynasty, from the Fiked of tge Cloth of Gold to the Span ish Armada.

Some events are limited to a brief paragraph, while others have a page or two, and the book is full of fascinating 'soundbites' of the Tudor world.

None have referenced sources, and although there is a long bibliography, many of the books listed are Victorian.  Our understanding of the important social context around the key events of the Tudors has come a long way since tben, and I would have liked some acknowledgement of this, perghaps with examples.

The main value of this book is therefore as a series or 'prompts' organised by date, which budding historians could use as a starting point for further research. 

Tony Riches

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About the Author

Jan-Marie Knights is an ex- editor and journalist who has worked on many newspapers and magazines and is a keen researcher of local and Tudor history. She lives in the area known as the ‘Dukeries’ with her Tonkinese cat called Ashi.

15 March 2024

The Marsh House, by Zoë Somerville


Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

The haunting second novel from the author of The Night of the Flood. Two women, separated by decades, are drawn together by one, mysterious house on the North Norfolk coast.

'
December, 1962

Desperate for a happy Christmas after a disastrous year, Malorie rents a remote house on the Norfolk coast for herself and her daughter Franny. Yet when a furious blizzard traps the pair indoors, the strained silence between them feels louder than ever.

Escaping to the attic, Malorie finds the discarded diaries of Rosemary, who lived at the Marsh House through the Thirties. As she reads, she finds herself inexorably drawn into Rosemary's lonely existence – until past and present begin to blur entirely...

Praise for The Marsh House:

'Zoë Somerville is a born storyteller and this page-turner delivers plenty of creepy thrills.' The Times

'A satisfyingly dark, gothic tale where the past is never far behind you.' Rhiannon Ward, author of The Quickening

'Beautifully written, atmospheric as hell, and elegantly constructed, the story of The Marsh House will draw you into its grip and never let go till the final word.' Jane Johnson, author of The Sea Gate

'Deliciously eerie and unsettling, The Marsh House had me bewitched from page one. I loved its layers of history and secrets. A haunting gem of a book.' Susan Allott, author of The Silence

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About the Author

Zoë Somerville is originally from Norfolk, but has settled with her husband and children in the West Country. She works as an English teacher. Her debut novel, The Night of the Flood was published in September 2020. Her second novel, The Marsh House, was published in March 2022. She is currently writing her third novel.  Find out more from Zoe's website https://zoesomerville.com/ and find her on Facebook and Twitter @zessomerville

13 March 2024

Blog Tour: A Matter of Time: Henry VIII, The Dying of the Light (The Henrician Chronicle Book 3) by Judith Arnopp


Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

With youth now far behind him, King Henry VIII has only produced one infant son and two bastard daughters. More sons are essential to secure the Tudor line and with his third wife, Jane Seymour dead, Henry hunts for a suitable replacement.

Excerpt: August 1541 Henry at Lincoln taking recompense for the recent uprising

The people are waiting to receive us. The gentry, the mayor, and citizens of Lincoln, and the clergy of the cathedral. 
   Traitors all, who should rightly be hanged for their crimes. I take my stand and look coldly above their heads.
   One by one, the various groups come forward. The clergy is first; their chosen leader makes a hesitant speech, a speech full of regret, full of apology. A speech that begs my forgiveness. 
I would like to draw my sword and strike off his head, but I have already spied the coffer that he means to bestow upon me by way of recompense. He hands me a rolled copy of his apology and I accept it and, without reading, I hand it to Norfolk. Everyone kneels; only the queen and I are left standing. I look across the bowed heads of the company to the sky where crows are circling, and the pennants of the city hang limp in the bright blue sky.
   “Jesus save Your Grace!” they cry, while I look on dispassionately. A te deum begins, the voices of the choir soaring to the heavens. Katherine turns to look at me, and my eyes soften, as they always do when I look upon her. I was wrong to be displeased with her earlier. What does it matter if she is a little impetuous, a little lacking in discipline? She is young; it is all part of her charm. Too soon, she will grow up, and her passion for life will be dampened, her limbs will stiffen with ague, she will be old before she knows it. She should enjoy life while she is still young enough to dance.


Judith Arnopp

Judith’s trilogy The Henrician Chronicle, comprising of A Matter of Conscience: Henry VIII, the Aragon Years. A Matter of Faith: Henry VIII, the days of the Phoenix, and A Matter of Time: the Dying of the Light, is available now on Amazon Kindle and paperback.

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About the Author 

Judith Arnopp is a lifelong history enthusiast and avid reader with a BA in English/Creative writing and an MA in Medieval Studies. She lives on the coast of West Wales where she writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is best known for her novels set in the Medieval and Tudor period, focussing on the perspective of historical women but recently she has completed a trilogy from the perspective of Henry VIII himself.  Judith is also a founder member of a re-enactment group called The Fyne Companye of Cambria which is when she began to experiment with sewing historical garments. She now makes clothes and accessories both for the group and others. She is not a professionally trained sewer but through trial, error and determination has learned how to make authentic looking, if not strictly historically accurate clothing. Her non-fiction book, How to Dress like a Tudor was published by Pen and Sword in 2023. Find out more at Judith's website www.judithmarnopp.com/ and find her on Facebook, Bluesky, Threads and Twitter @JudithArnopp

12 March 2024

Special Guest Post by Irina Shapiro, Author of the Redmond and Haze Mystery Series


Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

When the body of a young man is found stuffed into the tomb of a medieval knight, Parish Constable Daniel Haze is tasked with investigating his first solo murder case. Suspicion instantly falls on the only stranger to arrive in the village of Birch Hill just before the crime took place, but the American captain proves to be an unexpected asset. A former soldier and a skilled surgeon, Jason Redmond is not only willing to assist Haze with the investigation but will risk
his own safety to apprehend the killer.

When I was invited to discuss my latest release, I initially thought I’d talk about The Lost Colony, which is a bit of a departure for me. I loved writing this twisty psychological thriller, but I’m better known for historical murder mysteries, and the series readers are most familiar with is the Redmond and Haze mysteries. Murder of a Hangman, A Redmond and Haze Mystery Book 13 was just released in January, and the next instalment, Murder of Innocents, is coming in October.

Although I started my career writing time travel and Gothic romance, I eventually gravitated toward writing murder mysteries. Some might think I have a fascination with murder, but the truth is that the murder itself is secondary. What I really enjoy is creating an intricate puzzle where the pieces do not easily fit together and the big picture is not complete until the final clue is in place. And given my love of all things historical, naturally all my series are set in the past, in this instance the foggy, gaslit streets of Victorian England.

My protagonists, Jason Redmond and Daniel Haze, are as different as two men can be, with each man bringing a unique brand of reasoning and justice to the investigations. At the start of the series, Daniel Haze is a parish constable. He’s steadfast and conscientious, and not at all the sort of person to question social constraints imposed by a closed-minded and rigid society. 

Jason Redmond is an American doctor who served as a Union Army captain during the American Civil War and spent a year in Andersonville Confederate Prison. Having been raised in a country that celebrates equality and democracy, Jason has mixed feelings about claiming the title and an estate that are his due, but as the only surviving descendant of a noble family, he can hardly refuse to honor his legacy. 

Jason is intelligent, courageous, and all too aware of life’s injustices and the age-old prejudices that govern polite society. He is not afraid to speak his mind or question the status quo, nor is he disdainful of the common people who turn to him for help, his philanthropy turning his peers against him.
Although there is an ever-changing cast of supporting characters, Victorian England is a character in itself, the time period setting the stage for not only some truly puzzling crimes but also friction between the two men.

I have been fascinated with Victorian England since I was a child and read my first Sherlock Holmes story. There are those who romanticize the era and imagine a life that was charming and quaint, but the nineteenth century had a dark side, its misery and danger personified in readers’ minds by characters like Oliver Twist and Jack the Ripper. 

Victorian England was riddled with crime, plagued by poverty, and governed by people who didn’t care to waste resources on protecting its most vulnerable citizens. London was truly a study in contrasts, with some living in glittering opulence and others struggling to survive, often preferring to live on the streets than accept the hospitality of London’s many orphanages and workhouses, since those establishments were a ticket to an early grave.

It was during this time that a fledgling police force was just coming into its own, the newly minted detectives relying on their own wits, experience, and underworld informers to apprehend criminals who were as clever as they were numerous. Victorian policemen had virtually no training, carried no firearms, and were too few to police a metropolis the size of London. Crime scene photography was just coming into use, and fingerprinting suspects was still years away. It was a time when all a policeman had to rely on was his courage and powers of deduction, and he wasn’t expected to adhere to established procedure. In other words, the absolute perfect time to set a mystery series since anything went.

As attached as I am to the time period and setting, one ever-present challenge of writing Victorian mysteries is maintaining historical accuracy. I am forever looking up customs, inventions, and period-appropriate phrases, but the one area of research that always takes me down the proverbial rabbit hole is nineteenth-century medicine, which was way scarier than I ever imagined and remembered for filthy instruments, brutal amputations without anesthetic, a complete disregard for patients, and a stubborn refusal to learn or evolve that led to countless deaths that could have been avoided even by the simple act of handwashing.

Some of the hardest scenes to write focus on street children and prostitutes, who were achingly young and horribly mistreated and made up a surprisingly large percentage of the population. Thousands of children were orphaned and lived on the streets, and countless women fell into prostitution and were shunned by a society that chose to brand them as lascivious and immoral rather than acknowledge that these women were struggling to survive and try to help them.

In the course of their investigations, my protagonists encounter individuals from all walks of life and find themselves not only in the grand drawing rooms of the nobility but in some of London’s worst slums and crime-infested rookeries. The unlikely duo goes on to solve multiple murders, each man relying on his beliefs and life experiences to unravel the most baffling of mysteries. As the series evolves, Jason and Daniel experience upheaval in their personal lives and learn much from each other, especially in situations where their partnership is sorely tested. 

Although I’m still working on new instalments of Redmond and Haze, I have recently started a new Victorian mystery series, the Tate and Bell Mysteries. This new duo is a pairing of a Crimean War nurse and a rather jaded detective who secretly dreams of leaving it all behind and going to America, where he just might join the Pinkerton Detective Agency. 

Gemma Tate and Sebastian Bell are very different from Daniel Haze and Jason Redmond, their views and methods unique to their experiences and standing in society. The first book in the series, The Highgate Cemetery Murder, was released on February 29, 2024, with book two, The Murder at Traitor’s Gate, coming in June 2024. I hope you will check them out.

Irina Shapiro

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About the Author

Although initially known for her time-travel series, Irina Shapiro was always intrigued by the foggy, gaslit streets, shadowy hansom cabs, and brutal underworld synonymous with Victorian England. These images are the backdrop to her series of gripping mysteries that feature Lord Jason Redmond and Inspector Daniel Haze, a crime-solving duo as complex as the cases they investigate. Through their eyes, readers experience both the opulence of upper-crust society and the gritty reality of those less fortunate, as Redmond and Haze solve mysteries that delve deep into the historical context of the time. Irina is currently working on a new historical mystery series, the Bell and Tate Mysteries, which will introduce Scotland Yard Inspector Sebastian Bell and nurse Gemma Tate, whose personal histories and unique talents make them the perfect, if at times reluctant, partners as they investigate grisly murders in Victorian London. Find out more at Irina's website 

9 March 2024

New Paperback: Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I: The Mother and Daughter Who Changed History, by Tracy Borman


Available from Amazon UK 
and pre-order Amazon US

Anne Boleyn may be best known for losing her head, but as Tudor expert Tracy Borman reveals in a book that recasts British history, her greatest legacy lies in the path-breaking reign
of her daughter, Elizabeth

Much of the fascination with Britain’s legendary Tudors centers around the dramas surrounding Henry VIII and his six wives and Elizabeth I’s rumored liaisons. Yet the most fascinating relationship in that historic era may well be that between the mother and daughter who, individually and collectively, changed the course of British history.

The future Queen Elizabeth was not yet three when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded on May 19, 1536, on Henry’s order, incensed that she had not given him a son and tired of her contentious nature. Elizabeth had been raised away from court, rarely even seeing Anne; and after her death, Henry tried in every way to erase Anne’s presence and memory. At that moment in history, few could have predicted that mother and daughter would each leave enduring, and interlocked, legacies. 

Yet as Tracy Borman reveals in this first-ever joint portrait, both women broke the mold for British queens and for women in general at the time. Anne was instrumental in reforming and reshaping forever Britain’s religious traditions, and her years of wielding power over a male-dominated court provided an inspiring role model for Elizabeth’s glittering, groundbreaking 45-year reign. Indeed, Borman shows how much Elizabeth—most visibly by refusing to ever marry, but in many other more subtle ways that defined her court—was influenced by her mother’s legacy.

In its originality, Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I sheds new light on two of history’s most famous women—the private desires, hopes, and fears that lay behind their dazzling public personas, and the surprising influence each had on the other during and after their lifetimes. In the process, Tracy Borman reframes our understanding of the Tudor era.

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About the Author

Tracy Borman is an author, Tudor historian, broadcaster and joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces.
She is a regular broadcaster and lectures on her books across the country and internationally. Tracy is also Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust, a charity that encourages children to visit and learn from historic properties. Find out more from Tracy's website 
https://www.tracyborman.co.uk/ and follow her on Twitter @TracyBorman

3 March 2024

Historical Fiction Spotlight: The Book of Days, by Francesca Kay


Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

‘At least that post-Reformation sovereignty of the word still yields novels as richly imagined and skilfully crafted as this’ 
The Spectator

Things change; we have to recognise that; the world will not stay still. What we must hope is that the new is better and stronger than the old.

Anno Domini 1546. In a manor house in England a young woman feels the walls are closing round her, while her dying husband is obsessed by his vision of a chapel where prayers will be said for his immortal soul.

As the days go by and the chapel takes shape, the outside world starts to intrude. And as the old ways are replaced by the new, the people of the village sense a dangerous freedom.

The Book of Days is a beautifully written novel of lives lived in troubled times and the solace to be found in nature and the turning seasons.

"This adds flesh to History – the impact of the Protestant reformation under Edward VI and his regents Somerset and Northumberland and Cramer sounds dry but this makes it real. Real people, real feel for the importance of the space inhabited, and for the calendar and nature." Amazon review

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About the Author

Francesca Kay grew up in Southeast Asia and India, and has subsequently lived in Jamaica, the United States, Germany and now lives in Oxford. Her first novel, An Equal Stillness, won the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers, and her second novel, The Translation of the Bones, was longlisted for the 2012 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Long Room, was published in 2016; The Book of Days is her fourth.

29 February 2024

Book Spotlight: Secret Voices: A Year of Women's Diaries, by Sarah Gristwood


Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A captivating collection of daily extracts from women's diaries, looking back over four centuries to discover how women's experience – of men and children, sex and shopping, work and the natural world – has changed down the years. And, of course, how it hasn't.

In this expansive anthology – from 1 January through to 31 December – you’ll find Lady Anne Clifford in the seventeenth century and Loran Hurnscot in the twentieth both stoically recording the demands of an unreasonable husband; Joan Wyndham and Anne Frank, at much the same time, but in wildly different settings, describing their first experiences with sex; and Anne Lister (TV’s Gentleman Jack) in eighteenth-century Yorkshire exploring her love affairs with women alongside Alice Walker in twentieth-century California.

Organised around the calendar year, with several selections for each day, this book is a fascinating record of how women were thinking, feeling and reacting to historical events. From Virginia Woolf relishing her new haircut and Oprah Winfrey meditating on her career to Emilie Davis chronicling the death of Abraham Lincoln and teenage Ma Yan yearning for education in poverty-stricken China, Secret Voices contains a rich mix of well-known diarists and less familiar ones, and often the voices echoing down the centuries sound eerily familiar today.

"United across centuries, these women's voices open doors to lost worlds and make them seem familiar. A modern classic." —Alison Weir

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About the Author

Sarah Gristwood  is a best-selling Tudor biographer, former film journalist, and commentator on royal affairs. After leaving Oxford, Sarah began work as a journalist, writing at first about the theatre as well as general features on everything from gun control to Giorgio Armani. But increasingly she found herself specialising in film interviews – Johnny Depp and Robert De Niro; Martin Scorsese and Paul McCartney. She has appeared in most of the UK’s leading newspapers – The Times, the Guardian, The Telegraph (Daily and Sunday) – and magazines from Cosmopolitan to Country Living and Sight and Sound to The New Statesman. Turning to history she wrote two bestselling Tudor biographies, Arbella: England’s Lost Queen and Elizabeth and Leicester. Sarah was one of the team providing Radio 4’s live coverage of the royal wedding; and has since spoken on the Queen’s Jubilee, the royal baby, and other royal stories for Sky News, Woman’s Hour, Radio 5 Live, and CBC. Shortlisted for both the Marsh Biography Award and the Ben Pimlott Prize for Political Writing, she is a Fellow of the RSA, and an Honororary Patron of Historic Royal Palaces. She and her husband, the film critic Derek Malcolm, live in London and Kent. Find out more at Sarah's website 
sarahgristwood.com and find her on Twitter @sarahgristwood