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How to upstage a queen Jill Armitage's previous book was about Arbella Stuart, a possible claimant to the throne of England when Elizabeth l died, and she does make a cameo appearance here. But the star of the show - and the "Countess" of the title is Bess of Hardwick, who was Arbella's grandmother. I don't know if it's just that we know so much already about the Tudor queens and the Scottish thorn in Elizabeth's side but Bess would be a remarkable woman in any age. She was born in humble circumstances, the third child of a second son, a gentleman but only of minor gentry. Elizabeth was always known as Bess, fortunately for us, or there would be two Elizabeths as well as two Marys in this book. Her first marriage was as a teenager, to a boy younger than herself, who died the following year. She never lived with Robert Barlow and is likely to have been a virgin widow. Nevertheless she had some claim on his property and spent a long time at law, trying to ge...

To win a copy of Cynthia Jefferies' The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan, just answer the question below in the Comments section: "Which character from a book you enjoyed as a child would you like to see in adult fiction, written as an adult or a child?" Then send a copy of your answer to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk, so that we can contact you if you win. Closing date 7th November We are sorry that our competitions are open to UK Followers only. Good luck!   

As its Halloween, it is almost obligatory that I should write about things that go bump in the night. This year, I’ve been enjoying my spooky fix via Sky’s Discovery of Witches – a TV series featuring witches, vampires and demons, based on the All Souls trilogy of books by Deborah Harkness. I first read – and greatly enjoyed - the books some years ago, and have to admit to rather mixed feelings about the TV series. The actors are generally great (although personally I’m not sure about all the casting choices!) and the cinematography and locations are beautiful. But, as is inevitable with any adaptation, they’ve had to leave things out, or at least not give them the prominence they receive in the novels. In Harkness’ books, the Twilight-style romance is leavened with a real passion for history. The protagonist Diana has a non-magical career an academic historian, and her love for the subject – or rather, that of Harkness (herself a professional historian before she turned to novel-writ...

October's guest is Cynthia Jefferies, better known to some of us as Cindy, the name she used for her children's books. Cynthia Jefferies is a long-established writer for children, whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She was born in Gloucestershire and her love of history was encouraged by regular family outings to anything of interest, from great cathedrals to small museums. Having moved to Scotland and back to Stroud, she has always made time to write and her abiding interest in Restoration England has never left her. The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan is her first historical novel for adults. Author's Website: www.cynthiajefferies.co.uk/ The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan…not a jolly book for children! There I was, making a few notes about a new story for children. The protagonist would be a comic, rather hapless, gangly innkeeper, whose village had fallen on hard times, but I just couldn’t get the story to fly. Many writers will recogn...

by Ruth Downie STOLEN: VILBIA HELP OF GODDESS SUMMONED GUILTY PARTY THREATENED WITH BECOMING LIQUID AS WATER The loss of Vilbia is the most famous cold case that’s come down to us from the Romano-British town of Aquae Sulis (modern Bath). The aggrieved party – whose name we don’t know – called up the goddess Sulis Minerva’s help by writing the suspects’ names on a thin sheet of lead, rolling it up and throwing it in the pool above her sacred hot spring. It wasn’t alone: well over a hundred other curses have been found buried in the silt and others may be hidden there still. Most of the spidery letters on the scraps of lead are the work of victims asking Sulis Minerva to avenge a crime. Some name the suspects. Some don’t say what they did: presumably the goddess knew what Britivenda and Venibelia had been up to and could punish them accordingly. Often, though, the victim had no idea who had wronged them. The curse on the modern reproduction below translates as “the name of the c...

The Norfolk wedding of Rachel Gurney & Rosslyn Bruce, 1908 Just one hundred and ten years ago this month my grandmother, Rachel Gurney married Rosslyn Bruce at Northrepps in Norfolk. Rachel, aged 21, was the oldest daughter of untitled landed gentry, and Rosslyn, 37, the 7th child of a poor but well-connected vicar. Both of them were descended from 11th Century Norman invaders. They met after Rosslyn, the rector of a Nottingham parish, broke his leg out fox-hunting and was sent by his best friend, a socialist MP called Noel Buxton, to convalesce with Buxton’s cousins, the Gurneys of Northrepps. Rosslyn and Rachel fell in love. But it was not always easy. When Rachel’s nerves became frayed during their wedding preparations, she wrote to Rosslyn, ‘You Bruces are quite un ordinary in your huge amount of love. I have got mine in me, only I can’t show it like you do.’ Rosslyn replied offering ‘double thoughtfulness, in thoughtful devotion, in not being too outwardly devoted.’ Rachel ...

I am two novels along since I published THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER with Penguin in March 2016. For those who read my post last month you will know that my latest novel, THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF , to be published 16th May 2019, is set in Paris during the 1968 student riots, and from there the story unfolds. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305963/the-house-on-the-edge-of-the-cliff/9781405933346.html Usually, when a book or any work of mine has been completed, I move on. Except for editorial or marketing purposes, I find it very difficult to revisit the material because I worry over how I might have improved it. THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER seems to be an exception. Not because I am pleased with my work but because there is such a richesse of material that I might have used, and might still use one day. The story is set on a family-owned vineyard in the south of France. Within the family, there are secrets and factions. Jane, the English woman who moves into the family when she marries Luc...

   While researching my current novel, which is set in 18th snd early 19th century Rome, I came across some interesting descriptions of how it was to cross the Alps before there were any railways. Crossing them on a train is still a memorable experience but our tourism is a very feeble experience compared to theirs. Most Grand Tourists had to cross the mountains to reach Italy, and a young man was not considered truly educated and civilised until he had experienced the wonders of Italian art and architecture.    Crossing the Alps usually took eight days. There were no coach roads through the Alps until the end of the eighteenth century and so, to cross the Alps, your entire coach had to be disassembled and carried over the mountains on mule back. The Mount Cenis pass, on the route from Lyons to Turin, was the most travelled route into Italy during the heyday of the Grand Tour. Tourists were carried over the mountains by Swiss chairmen in a sort of open sedan chair...

I belong to several historical forums and every few months, the subject of medieval swear words will arise and a discussion will begin about the origins of the word 'fuck' and when it became a swear word rather than a reproduction word.  I thought I would do a little investigating. There are numerous theories as to the etymology of the word.  There is a false popular notion that it's an acronym for 'Fornicate Under  Consent of the King' (the instruction supposedly intended as a population booster) but it can be immediately be dismissed as a modern urban legend.  Acronyms were unknown in the Middle Ages. Melissa Moher in her work 'Holy Shit: A brief history of swearing'  believes that the more prosaic answer is that 'Fuck' it is a word of Germanic origin.  It is related to similar in Dutch, German and Swedish, and means to 'strike' and to 'move back and forth.'  Very possibly why, once arriving into the English language, it became anot...

  In my childhood, I went to historical novels if I wanted to find out about the lives of ordinary people: even Trevelyan's 'Social History of England,' which my father gave me when I was a young teenager, was rather too general in its narrative. I always wanted to get an idea of what life was like for ordinary people, not just for the generals, the nobles, or the King. Above all, I was interested in the lives of women. When I first started to write historical fiction, very few historians seemed interested in women's lives; they were peripheral to the main action.When I started to write about Nazi Germany, I did begin to get access to these, through diaries and journals and also covert reports from Social Democrats on life inside the Third Reich. But the lives of women in earlier times, when women were largely illiterate, were much harder to come at (though Alice Clark's The Working Life of Seventeenth Century Women was an invaluable resource.) But here is a work...