The Harrying of the North

Ask most people what was the defining event of the Norman Conquest and they’ll probably name the Battle of Hastings, when William the Conqueror defeated and killed his rival Harold Godwineson en route to seizing the English crown in 1066.

However, it was the cruel coda to Hastings that has arguably done most to define modern perceptions of the Normans and their impact on England. Over the winter of 1069-70, William the Conqueror’s armies laid waste Yorkshire and the north-east of England in a ruthless scorched-earth campaign known today as the Harrying (or Harrowing) of the North. Entire villages were razed and their inhabitants put to the sword; livestock were slaughtered and stores of food were destroyed.

One of the most brutal episodes of the Middle Ages, even today this campaign ranks among the very worst atrocities ever to take place on British soil, and it’s against this backdrop that my latest novel The Harrowing is set.

Five facts about the Harrying of the North:

Get to know author James Aitcheson:

Terms and Conditions for In the Face of Conflict comp - June 2016

  Terms & Conditions:

1.         This is a prize draw for a set of history books including Simon Scarrow’s HEARTS OF STONE, STALIN’S ENGLISHMAN by Andrew Lownie, THE MINISTERY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE by Giles Milton, THE HARROWING by James Aitcheson and THE INVISIBLE CROSS by Andrew Davidson. To enter, please comment on the competition Facebook post on the H for History page.

2.         The Winner will be selected at random from the entries received in accordance with these terms and conditions by a member of the Author Profile team, whose decision will be final.

3.         The Winner may see their name posted on the H for History website and possibly other websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

4.         There is no purchase necessary to enter.

5.         The prize draw opens at 12:01 am BST on Saturday 18th June and ends at 11:59pm BST on Wednesday 6th July 2016. Any entries received outside these specified times and dates will not be eligible for entry into the competition.

6.         The prize draw is open to anyone aged 18 or over in UK and Eire except employees of COMPANY, their families, or anyone professionally connected to the competition either themselves or through their families.  

7.         Only one entry per person allowed. Second or subsequent entries will be disqualified. Entries will not be accepted via agents, third parties or in bulk.

8.         COMPANY is not responsible for contacting or forwarding prizes to entrants who provide unclear or incomplete information or for entries lost, misdirected, delayed or destroyed.

9.         COMPANY reserves the right to alter the prizes or cancel the prize draw without notice.  No cash alternatives to prizes will be provided.

10.       The Winner will be published H for History Facebook page after Thursday 7th June 2016.

11.       The email addresses of entrants may be shared with companies within the Hachette group of companies but will not be shared with other companies outside the group.  It will be used by the Hachette companies to send you news about our books, products and promotions.  You will be given the option of opting out in those emails if you don’t want to receive any further news from us.

12.       By entering the prize draw each entrant agrees to be bound by these terms and conditions.

13.       This competition is being organised by H for History, (Headline, Hodder and Quercus), Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DZ.

14.       These terms and conditions and any disputes or claims (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of these terms and Conditions shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of England, whose courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction.

Cecilia Ekback on Landscape and History

‘I have always been fascinated by journeying and exploring new territory, both in the actual and metaphorical sense. Maps especially intrigue me: how can something ‘factual’ also be subjective, so that two people draw two different plans of the same territory? How to draw a new map when you find the old one has become obsolete – what to portray, what to leave out, how to organise your thoughts? Or, even to some extent, what comes first, the map or the terrain… Another large fascination of mine are rocks. I collected stones as a child – had a large suitcase full of them to my father’s despair – and I still can’t stop myself from bending down and picking up many an interesting looking stone. In In the Month of the Midnight Sun, I was, to my great delight, able to work with both these things: maps and rocks.

My first book, Wolf Winter, was set in 1717 on a fictitious mountain that I called Blackåsen Mountain. After finishing, I wasn’t done thinking about that mountain and, as I am fascinated about the impact a place, physical or imaginary, has on people, I was also interested in what this mountain would be like, say, some 140 years later. What would be different? What would be the constant thread of what it was like to live near this mystical place? The inspiration for In the Month of the Midnight Sun then came mainly from a true story told in passing. At a party at my parents-in-law’s house, a man was telling me how, as a young medical doctor, he had escorted a mass murderer from a distant northern village to the closest town for medical evaluation and sentencing. While he was talking, I was feeding my twins who were then a year and a half old, and I didn’t listen closely. I regretted it. In my mind, I kept coming back to that voyage and what it would have been like for him and the perpetrator. I wanted to know.

There were benefits in setting a second story at the same location. I knew the place inside out – its physical presence and its mystical bearing over the inhabitants. But there were difficulties too; Blackåsen is almost a character in its own right and its nature is such a big component of what it is. I struggled with how to describe it a second time without repeating myself. I knew I needed to get access to it in a different way.

The middle of the 1800s is such an interesting period in Sweden. Religion/tradition and Science are almost at war. The industrialisation of Sweden begins relatively late and almost in response to the needs (for timber, mainly) of other, already industrialised, countries. The development happens hesitantly, jerkily, and tears society in different directions. It is clear that modernisation must take place, will take place, but there is much debate as to the pace and by what means. Some welcome the changes. Some long for the uncomplicated past. Many feel an increasing alienation and people begin to ponder concepts such as nation, class and gender. Others speculate and take advantage of changes when the nation removes trade barriers. In this new world, pedigree comes to mean less than who you know and the money you have. Ever since the 17th century, Sweden has been a major exporter of bar iron to Europe from Central Sweden. During the 17th and 18th century the attention is turned to the north where trees to make coal to fuel the blast-furnaces are in abundant supply. And so I let our main protagonist, Magnus, become a man of science, someone ‘without pedigree’, but successful, representing what was ‘new’ about society. I made him a mineralogist – or as we call them today – a geologist, and Blackåsen was given a large deposit of iron.

Magnus did indeed look upon Blackåsen very differently from the way the settlers in Wolf Winter had. As a scientist, he dissected it objectively. He drew maps and analysed. To draw out the societal struggle between ‘old’ and ‘new’, I contrasted him with someone who looked upon the world and maps in a very different manner; a Sami woman named Biijá.

In October 2014, I was having breakfast with my dear friend and geologist Mike Daly at Piccadilly in London.  The earlier Sami cult was strongly linked to holy places: stones, wood, an unusual stone or rock, or a whole mountain, and we were discussing what it might have felt like to a Sami person if a geologist arrived, wanting to dig it up. We also talked about how to draw a geological map from scratch and what someone like Magnus would have known at the time. On an impulse, Mike took me to the Geological Society in Burlington House. It was so early they had not yet opened and we waited outside on the pavement – me, worried about missing a flight, Mike, who has certainly travelled more than me, unconcerned – and the wait was well worth it. At the Geological Society, ‘The Map that Changed the World’ (as it is described in Simon Winchester’s book) is available for viewing. It is the first true geological map of anywhere in the world, depicting England and Wales, engraved and coloured, and quite breath-taking. The map is marked 1815 and it was made by William Smith, a canal digger, who discovered that one could follow layers of rocks, across a nation, then further, making it possible to draw the underside of the earth. To think that this was how our geological understanding began, by the work of one man, is amazing. And that was when it came alive for me and fused into one image – the currents of Swedish society, maps, rocks – all in one Godforsaken place: Blackåsen Mountain.’

A day in the life of a history editor

Non-fiction editor Maddy Price takes us through a day in the life of a history editor!

‘I feel very lucky to have a job as an editor of, among other things, history books. Books I’ve worked on include The Bletchley Girls by Tessa Dunlop, The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman and I’m working on a forthcoming biography of Jane Austen by Lucy Worsley. It’s a dream come true for someone who loved history at school, and chose to do English literature at university. Now I’m combining my passions for history and books as non-fiction Editor here at Hodder & Stoughton.

I spend a lot of my time trying to come up with ideas for new books. I’ll look through lists of upcoming anniversaries to see if any of them might make interesting books. If I think an idea has potential, I’ll try to find exactly the right author for the project. One of my favourite parts of the job is pairing up author and subject in this way. It can lead to some brilliant combinations, for example Tracy Borman on Thomas Cromwell, or Boris Johnson on Winston Churchill (not my idea sadly!). I’ll also read submissions from agents and try to pick out projects with potential.

Most history books have picture sections, and I work with the author and a picture researcher to scour the archives for the best images to illustrate the text. It’s brilliant fun looking at paintings, photographs, letters and other documents to find the best images. We always try to include some more unusual choices that people might not have seen before.

My day mostly consists of jobs such as writing cover copy, briefing cover artwork, sorting proof readers and indexers, and having meetings with other departments like publicity, sales and marketing to discuss forthcoming books. Occasionally I’ll meet with an agent or an author. I do most of my reading and editing at home because there’s too much distraction in our open-plan office! In the evenings there might be a book launch to attend – we recently launched The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman at Hampton Court Palace. It was a real treat to spend an evening at the palace after it had closed to the public.’

HENRY VII: FATHER OF THE TUDORS

Robyn Young introduces us to the incredible figure of Henry VII, father of the Tudors:

Out in the Channel the boat lurched over another wave and plunged down, salt spray lashing the men fighting grimly to stay on course. The September sky was dark with storm. Strong winds had whipped the seas wild, raging around the beleaguered vessel, forcing it further and further west. 

Among the boat’s small crew, was Jasper Tudor, former Earl of Pembroke and a son of Catherine of Valois, widowed queen of Henry V, and her lover, Welsh gentleman, Owen Tudor. Half-brother of King Henry VI, Jasper had been brought up in England, well educated and cared for. He had grown to manhood during the dynastic struggles that would become known as the Wars of the Roses, where two rival houses of the Plantagenet dynasty, York and Lancaster, would bloody English soil for more than thirty years as each sought to place their sons upon the throne. 

Rebel soldier and proud man of the House of Lancaster, Jasper had celebrated the triumphant return of his half-brother to the throne the year before, after their Yorkist enemy, King Edward IV, was vanquished in battle and sent into exile. But over the past five months – with Edward’s return and Lancastrian defeats at the disastrous battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury – Jasper had seen his house, his hope, crumble. Hunted by agents of the newly-restored Edward, he fled into Wales. Surrounded, he sent desperate messages across the Channel asking the French court for aid, before slipping from Britain’s shores, bound, he prayed, for safe haven. But the wind and waves cared nothing for Jasper’s plans and the little boat was driven instead to the shores of the Duchy of Brittany, where Duke Francis II – enemy of France and ally of England – could not believe his luck. 

These English exiles, Francis knew, might prove useful indeed in his ongoing struggle to keep his duchy protected from the expansionist aims of French king, Louis XI – known as the Universal Spider for the webs of political intrigue he wove. Jasper was a fine prize, yes, but even more valuable was the young man who had crossed the sea with him. His nephew. Henry Tudor. 

Born in the bitterness of a Welsh winter in 1457, Henry had never met his father, Edmund – Jasper’s brother and Earl of Richmond – who died of plague in a Yorkist prison before he was born. Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, was only thirteen when she delivered him and, despite two further marriages, would bear no more children. In 1461, the brutal Battle of Towton had changed the fortunes of the Lancastrians and heralded the rising of Edward of York. At four years old, Henry was taken from his mother and placed in the household of a prominent Yorkist, trained, educated and groomed for marriage. It was not a bad life, but despite the comfort he lived in he remained a captive, his destiny controlled by enemies of his family. Two years ago, when his master was slain in battle, Henry was returned to his kin in the care of his uncle, Jasper, but this brief taste of freedom was to be his first – and last – for a long time. 

When Henry Tudor was brought, exhausted and disheartened, before Francis of Brittany, the duke saw not a fourteen-year-old boy, but a young man of royal blood who, with the recent death – some said murder – of King Henry VI, had become the last heir of the House of Lancaster. A young man with a claim to the English throne. For the next twelve years, Henry and Jasper lived as noble prisoners; birds in a gilded cage. At times together, at times separated, they were kept in well-appointed, even luxurious surroundings, but ever under the control of their keeper, who used them as pawns in the games of power between Brittany, England and France. Moved from castle to castle, they were never safe, Edward IV keen to take custody of Henry, “the only imp now left of Henry VI’s blood.” [Vergil]. Henry must have learned patience, as well as mistrust and suspicion, never knowing what might happen next. In 1475, a peace signed between England and France left Henry – and Brittany – exposed. Edward negotiated with Duke Francis for the young man’s extradition, but at the eleventh hour the deal fell through. Then, at long last, Edward changed tack. In 1482, he agreed a deal with Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, and her third husband, the enigmatic Lord Stanley – that Henry would be allowed to return to England a free man with a generous inheritance, if he came into the king’s peace. But the following year, Edward IV was dead, the deal was off, and England was in chaos. 

Edward’s eldest son was set to take his father’s crown, but instead, his uncle, Richard of Gloucester, took control, sending his nephews to the Tower and ascending to the throne as Richard III. But the new king’s reign was not destined to be smooth and within a few short months of his coronation, the fires of rebellion had set flame to the kingdom. Receiving secret word that Buckingham, Richard’s own cousin, had turned against him, Henry once again had cause to hope. What was more, his tenacious mother had made an agreement with Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen and mother of the princes in the Tower – since rumoured to have perished at their uncle’s hand – an agreement that Henry would marry her eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York. Such a match would greatly strengthen Henry’s position. His veins might flow with royal blood, but his was a line tainted by illegitimacy – a line which, despite their pedigree, had been prohibited from claiming the throne. Now, after all these years, might the fallen House of Lancaster rebuild its dreams? In autumn 1483, the stage was set for the Tudors to return, aided by their long-term gaoler, Duke Francis. Francis, it seemed, had grown close to Henry, coming to see him more as a useful ally than a prisoner. The Bretons had a long association with, and love of, the legends of King Arthur, Merlin thought to be entombed in a forest there. Henry may have used this to his advantage, playing up his Welsh ancestry and his family’s claim to be descended from Cadwaladr – the last king of the Britons – who prophesied the return of one of his line. Cadwaladr was said to have been aided in his attempt at a British invasion by the ruler of Brittany. History, Henry and Francis now determined, would repeat itself. Taking as his symbol the red dragon of Wales, Henry set sail at the head of a fleet of ships, supplied by the duke. He was going home to join Buckingham and the rebels, and defeat Richard III. He was going home to marry Elizabeth of York and take the throne of England. But those seas, those treacherous seas, once more betrayed him. A storm blew half his ships back to Brittany and when Henry’s vessel finally struggled to the Dorset coast, he found royalist troops waiting for him. He was forced to turn around, never having set foot on English soil. 

Now, the cloak was off the wolf. King Richard could no longer rest, knowing a man who hungered for his crown was out there, waiting, with the will to return. The following year, he was plotting Henry’s capture with Francis’s chief minister, Pierre Landais. By this time, Henry and Jasper had a small army of men with them in the Breton court. Most had joined them from England, many of them Yorkist gentlemen from the southern counties, deeply resentful of Richard III – who had supplanted them with men of his northern faction – and enraged by the rumour he had murdered his own nephews. 

Forewarned of the plot against him, Henry disguised himself as a groom and fled Brittany with a small band of men, crossing the border into France where he found a new ally in the boy king, Charles VIII, who was concerned by this resumption of the old Anglo-Breton alliance that might impact on France. Duke Francis, old and unwell, must indeed have become fond of his prisoner, for not only did he hang Landais for his treachery, he also granted Henry’s forces safe passage into France. There, over the winter of 1484, with the aid of the French king, Henry built himself an army. 

The following year, in July, his fleet set sail once more, his forces bolstered by French soldiers and prisoners released from the gaols of Normandy. At last, Henry Tudor, the so-called “son of prophecy” landed on the sands of Milford Haven, not far from his place of birth, on 7 August 1485. Raising the red dragon, he marched north, drawing crowds of Welshmen to his banner, to where King Richard was waiting for him, under the standard of the white boar. 

On a marshy plain near the small town of Market Bosworth, the dragon and the boar met. The king’s vast array of troops was far in excess of his enemy’s, among them Henry’s own stepfather, Lord Stanley. King Richard was confident. He was a son of the House of Plantagenet, a proud man of York. He had commanded armies since he was seventeen. This young upstart before him – with his tainted blood – was untested in battle. At dawn on 22 August, they clashed. 

We know the outcome. Henry, bloodied and battle-burned, took the crown that morning, when Richard III lay dead, betrayed at the eleventh hour by the treacherous Lord Stanley. He was the last English king to die in battle, the last king of York, the last Plantagenet. Claiming the throne not by right of his blood, but by conquest, Henry married Elizabeth, uniting the rival houses of York and Lancaster, and greatly strengthening his royal claim. His symbol became the Tudor rose – the red and white roses of each house combined. 

Thus, the Tudor dynasty was born, a dynasty that would rule England for the next one hundred and eighteen years, and Henry VII – prince in exile, son of prophecy, conqueror – its father. 

[For more information on Henry VII, I highly recommend Thomas Penn’s brilliant biography Winter King, and The Hollow Crown, Dan Jones].

Pre-order your copy of Sons of the Blood now.

Alice Morley on Katherine of Aragon

In this month’s H for History review, team member Alice Morley reviews Alison Weir’s mighty new 

History has not been kind to Katherine of Aragon. Her image, in most people’s minds is of the frumpy, foreign, Catholic first wife of Henry VIII, rightly supplanted by the far more glamorous Anne Boleyn.

Alison Weir has rescued Katherine from this spectacularly. Her Katherine – who we meet when she first arrives in England – is young, beautiful, intelligent and gracious. After her brief marriage to Arthur, Prince of Wales ends with the sickly young man’s death, Katherine is left to fend for herself at the English court, a challenge she manages with skill and diplomacy. These early years of Katherine’s time in England are not so well known as her second marriage, and Alison Weir vividly and sympathetically portrays how she must have felt, miles from home and her family, sent to an alien, cold land and unsure who she can trust.

Katherine’s marriage to Henry, Arthur’s younger brother and the future Henry VIII, was a true love match and for years the couple were passionately happy. It helped, of course, that Katherine, who embodied the late medieval image of the loyal wife, was the perfect devoted queen to Henry’s dynamic rule. Where the marriage tragically failed, was, of course, in the sad sequence of Katherine’s miscarriages, still births and sickly children. Again, Alison handles this with such sympathy, as Katherine heart breaks with each child who dies.

This is a fantastic read for any Tudor or historical fiction nut, like myself! Katherine has at last been given the leading role she deserves.

Get to Know Damien Seeker

I first encountered Damian Seeker on cold, misty December afternoon, walking through scrubland in a Highland wood. I was there alone, but for our black Labrador, who didn’t seem to notice the tall, black-clad and helmeted stranger who’d just emerged on to the path in front of us. Usually, such an encounter would have absolutely terrified me, but this one didn’t – I’d never seen the man before, but I knew instantly who he was and why he was there, and I knew his name was Damian Seeker.

           To go back a little: I had recently watched a documentary on seventeenth century London, presented by Dan Cruickshank. Cruickshank is a very engaging presenter and within minutes I was hooked on the vibrant, teeming city he described. When he got to the emergence of the London coffee house in the 1650s I felt that unmistakeable buzz of excitement: there was a story here. Coffee houses were amazingly egalitarian institutions where individuals from all walks of life, strangers or friends, met to drink coffee, smoke, and talk of anything and everything – trade, politics, gossip, sedition. Concurrent to this was the rise of the news sheet or news book – forerunners of our newspapers – and it was in the coffee house that people read and exchanged news. The London of Oliver Cromwell was obsessed with news, absolutely buzzing with rumour, gossip and intrigue, and it struck me that a coffee house would make the perfect setting for an ensemble cast of diverse characters amongst whom a murder would take place.

           The 1650s were also, of course, when Oliver Cromwell’s regime virtually usurped the place and function of the Stuart kings. Throughout England, political and religious radicalism threatened to run amok. The republicans also had to contend with endless royalist plots from the Stuarts in exile. The resourcefulness of the royalists was matched only by their indiscretion. And while an ingenuous and sophisticated intelligence network developed to counter these threats, this was also a time when the man and woman in the street, the common soldier, the radical thinker, made their voices heard. I have always found the anonymous of history more interesting than the kings, queens and statesmen who governed them, 1650s London, offered the ideal opportunity to bring them to life in a tale of intrigue, espionage and murder. I just had to find my main protagonist, my hero, hence the walk in the woods with the dog, to think.

           That is when, in my mind’s eye, I ‘saw’ Damian Seeker. I’d always thought I preferred the Cavaliers, but I knew straight away that Seeker was a republican through and through. I wanted him to be something of an outsider, so I made him a Yorkshireman rather than a native Londoner. To distinguish him from my earlier series character Alexander Seaton, an introspective, self-doubting intellectual, I made Seeker tough, uncompromising. And then I let him loose in the corridors of Westminster, and the streets and alleyways of 1650s London.

The Seeker by S.G MacLean is available to buy now: http://amzn.to/1TgQirB 

T & Cs for May and Tudor Competition

  Terms & Conditions:

1.         This is a prize draw for a set of history books including KATHERINE OF ARAGON, THE TRUE QUEEN by Alison Weir, THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE TUDORS by Tracy Borman, KATHERINE HOWARD by Josephine Wilkinson, THE SEEKER by S G McLean and THE NAZI HUNTERS by Damien Lewis. To enter, please comment on the competition Facebook post on the H for History page.

2.         The Winner will be selected at random from the entries received in accordance with these terms and conditions by a member of the Author Profile team, whose decision will be final.

3.         The Winner may see their name posted on the H for History website and possibly other websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

4.         There is no purchase necessary to enter.

5.         The prize draw opens at 12:01 am BST on Saturday 21st May and ends at 11:59pm BST on Wednesday 8th 2016. Any entries received outside these specified times and dates will not be eligible for entry into the competition.

6.         The prize draw is open to anyone aged 18 or over in UK and Eire except employees of COMPANY, their families, or anyone professionally connected to the competition either themselves or through their families.  

7.         Only one entry per person allowed. Second or subsequent entries will be disqualified. Entries will not be accepted via agents, third parties or in bulk.

8.         COMPANY is not responsible for contacting or forwarding prizes to entrants who provide unclear or incomplete information or for entries lost, misdirected, delayed or destroyed.

9.         COMPANY reserves the right to alter the prizes or cancel the prize draw without notice.  No cash alternatives to prizes will be provided.

10.       The Winner will be published H for History Facebook page after Thursday 9th June 2016.

11.       The email addresses of entrants may be shared with companies within the Hachette group of companies but will not be shared with other companies outside the group.  It will be used by the Hachette companies to send you news about our books, products and promotions.  You will be given the option of opting out in those emails if you don’t want to receive any further news from us.

12.       By entering the prize draw each entrant agrees to be bound by these terms and conditions.

13.       This competition is being organised by H for History, (Headline, Hodder and Quercus), Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DZ.

14.       These terms and conditions and any disputes or claims (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of these terms and Conditions shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of England, whose courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction.

The Story of the Cover: Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen by Alison Weir

Siobhan, from Headline’s Creative Department tells the story of the cover...

Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen is the first book in Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series. Being the first in the series of six books, it was key to establish a distinctive cover look that will follow through across the entire series.

The brief was to move away from the photographic covers that are often found in this genre, and nod back to the classic portraits of Henry VIII’s wives. As this fictional series is bringing new life into the six queens, they needed to have a contemporary edge, whilst still maintaining the authenticity of the original portrait – quite a challenge!

When working on an illustrative brief, the first step is to research illustrators who might be a good fit for the brief. I love working with illustrators as they are able to bring life to my ideas in a way I am unable to. They are experts in their given field for a good reason. I pulled together a number of suggestions to discuss with the editor, providing examples of previous work to show how they might be able to bring the brief to life.

One suggestion I had in mind was the Balbusso Twins. I had admired Anna and Elena’s work for many years; the level of detail in their portraits is incredible, and for me they were the perfect fit. The editor and I were in agreement, so we were able to get the process of commissioning the artwork underway.

When briefing an illustrator, I try to give a pretty descriptive brief, providing plenty of visual references – which the author had helpfully provided in this instance – and visual inspiration, whilst allowing for plenty of room for personal interpretation. The first step is always to get a black-and-white rough visual in before working up in colour, so that there is an opportunity to make changes at this stage in the process. Once the cover has been approved, we then ask the illustrators to create the final artwork. Getting this final artwork in is always an exciting moment, particularly in this case, as there is so much captivating detail in the final painting.

With the illustration underway, the next step was to create the branding for the series. I had mocked up an option myself, but the best way to get the authentic period look we were after was to get a calligrapher/lettering artist involved. Stephen Raw was the natural choice for this, and he provided a range of rough visuals – experimenting with different letter styles and word formations until we came to a style that was liked by all. This style was then followed through to the title, subtitle and other lettering elements across the book, keeping a consistent look throughout.

With the illustration and lettering completed, then came the job of pulling it all together; how could we get the elements to work together in one cohesive cover? In the end we lead with the series title against a rich Tudor tapestry background, with the portrait fitting into a cameo style frame.

As the portrait of Katherine of Aragon now appeared much smaller on the cover, we wanted to find another way to show the full painting. The best way to do so was to include in the full-colour endpapers, which I think are incredibly beautiful. Below you can see how the final copy looks! We are now getting the artwork for the next book in the series, Anne Boleyn, underway – and can’t wait to show you what we come up with!

Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen by Alison Weir is out now

May Highlights

WINNER OF THE 2015 CWA ENDEAVOUR HISTORICAL DAGGER

London, 1654. Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord Protector. Yet he has many enemies, at home and abroad.

London is a complex web of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins. One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector. No one knows where Seeker comes from, who his family is, or even his real name. All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be long hidden from him.

In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip. Suddenly they are ringing with news of a murder. John Winter, hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army, is dead, and the lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found standing over the bleeding body, clutching a knife.

Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen by bestselling historian Alison Weir is the first in a spellbinding six novel series about Henry VIII's Queens. Alison takes you on an engrossing journey at Katherine's side and shows her extraordinary strength of character and intelligence.

'Shatters the many myths about Henry VIII's long-suffering first wife' - Tracy Borman

A Spanish princess. Raised to be modest, obedient and devout. Destined to be an English Queen.

Six weeks from home across treacherous seas, everything is different: the language, the food, the weather. And for her there is no comfort in any of it. At sixteen years-old, Catalina is alone among strangers.

She misses her mother. She mourns her lost brother.

She cannot trust even those assigned to her protection.

KATHERINE OF ARAGON. The first of Henry's Queens. Her story.

History tells us how she died. This captivating novel shows us how she lived.

5th May

@AlisonWeirBooks

www.sixtudorqueens.co.uk

The Stunning new novel from the bestselling author Schindler’s Ark.

On the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic ocean, Napoleon spends his last years in exile. It is a hotbed of gossip, and secret liaisons, where a blind eye is turned to relations between colonials and slaves.

The disgraced emperor is subjected to vicious and petty treatment by his captors, but he forges an unexpected ally: a rebellious British girl, Betsy, who lives on the island with her family and becomes his unlikely friend.

Based on fact, Napoleon's Last Island is the surprising story of one of history's most enigmatic figures and a British family who dared to associate with him. It is a tale of vengeance, duplicity and loyalty, and of a man whose charisma made him dangerous to the end.

An exclusive full-length digital novel from Paul Doherty, the master historian.  Roman soldier Manoletus must face the most formidable creatures yet, and his time is running out . . .

Germany, A.D. 9. Highly-esteemed Roman soldier, Manoletus, finds himself trapped, immersed in Varus' camp surrounded by dead comrades, but manages to flee. Thinking himself safe, he encounters a more fearsome enemy than the German army: the Tenebrae and its Ataru. This deadly, cloaked, blood-sucking killer and keeper of the Underworld, capable of slaying villages of people, trains its gaze upon Manoletus.

The Tenebrae are born from Cleopatra's death, and Manoletus' path becomes tied with the legend and is drawn to Egypt to delve deeper into the mystery of these immortal creatures.

Still on the run, Manoletus  meets a late comrade's daughter and vows to protect her. When the Tenebrae send her back to Rome, Manoletus is determined to make his way home to her. But will Manoletus find her before the Tenebrae find him?

5th May

Ebook

http://www.paulcdoherty.com/

Why the Balkan War? Annabelle Thorpe discusses her inspiration behind writing The People We Were Before

"Wars are not easy to sell." one agent wrote to me, when I was trying to find a home for The People We Were Before, "And the Balkan War?  That's more difficult than most."  It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but in all honesty it wasn't a huge surprise.  From 1990-1995 a vicious, horrible civil war took place in the heart of Europe.  Our continent.  And yet most people know little about it and understand even less.  

Before I wrote The People We Were Before, I was one of them.  When I decided to write a novel set in Croatia - a country I've been visiting for over thirty years - my first thought was not to write about the war. Vague memories of ethnic cleansing and concentration camps that harked back to the Second World War made me feel that to fictionalise something so traumatic for so many people wouldn't be right.  But as I got more into my story, I began to change my mind.  These characters that I was coming to know, and care about, would have had to face the conflict, and I became intrigued. What had really happened?  And why?

I began by reading everything I could about the conflict.  One book, The Death of Yugoslavia, by BBC correspondent Alan Little who reported on the war, I read over and over again, trying to get the chain of events straight in my mind.  Gradually, as I came to understand the long-standing grievances between the different ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, and the way politicians such as Milosevic manipulated ordinary people, I began to feel it was something I should write about. One of the reasons people didn't engage with the Balkan War is that the blurring of races and ethnicities makes it hard to understand who was right and wrong.  Early on, I decided that that was not a judgement I was going to make. Instead I wanted to try and make the war real, by focusing in on one family, and the terrible changes and events it forced them to undergo.

I'm lucky in that I like doing research.  And these days it's easier than it's ever been; I watched documentaries on the internet, searched for feature articles on Google, flicked through hundreds of images of Dubrovnik and Sarajevo, burning, almost totally destroyed.  For me, it's not enough to simply know what happened, to understand the sequence of events.  I wanted to try and understand how people felt, to give my characters real insight into the difficulties that Croatians faced every day for five years.

The most valuable research came from talking to people who had been through the war, particularly those who lived through the siege in Dubrovnik.   It brought it home that this was a war that happened in our lifetime, to people like us; people who - when they first heard the explosions - simply thought it was thunder.  They couldn't believe war could possibly happen in their peaceable part of the world.  And then it did.

But my concerns remained; by putting the war into an novel, was I somehow trivialising it, being disrespectful to those who suffered so much?  In Dubrovnik, last just week, my fears were laid to rest.  "It is so good there will be a book about it," said Maya, a lady who lived through the siege.  "Because people should know.  Life is good now, tourists have come back, but still...It is important people know what happened."

The People We Were Before is available to buy now: http://amzn.to/1VmL6T0

Reading to accompany EDEN GARDENS

Louise Brown collates some additional reading and the books she used in her research of EDEN GARDENS. 

Many of the books that have contributed to the making of Eden Gardens are out of print. The following is a small selection of things I’ve found useful, and that are still widely available either because they are in print, or can be found in libraries and second hand book shops.

Novels and short stories

Bardhan, Kalpana, (ed.) Of Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels: A Selection of Bengali Short Stories, University of California Press, 1990.

Some of the best Bengali short stories.

Godden, Rumer, The River, Michael Joseph, 1946.

Beautifully written, semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in pre-Independence Bengal.

Langley, Lee, Changes of Address, William Collins, 1987.

Wonderful, semi-autobiographical novel about a young girl growing up with a hopeless mother in 1940s India.

Orwell, George, Burmese Days, Victor Gollancz, 1935.

Novel that eviscerates the social world of the British in Burma at the end of the Raj. Orwell served in the Burmese Police in the 1920s.

Scott, Paul, The Jewel in the Crown, New Edition, Arrow, 1996.

Masterpiece about the dying days of British India.

Memoirs

Allen, Charles, Plain Tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the Twentieth Century, Andre Deutsch, 1975.

Rich, detailed oral history of the last decades of British rule in India from the perspective of the colonisers.

Chaudhuri, Nirad C., The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Macmillan, 1951.

 Fabulous account by a renowned scholar. His recollections of growing up in rural Bengal and Calcutta in the early twentieth century are invaluable.

Fleming, Laurence, and Tully, Mark, Last Children of the Raj, vols 1&2, Radcliffe Press, 2004.

Wonderfully vivid and fond reminiscences from British people who grew up in the last days of the Raj.

Fraser, Eugenie, A Home by the Hooghly, Corgi, 1991.

An account by a British woman who was married to a jute wallah and lived on a jute compound before and immediately after Independence.

 Godden, Rumer, and Jon Godden, Two Under the Indian Sun, Companion Book Club, 1966.

An account of English people who grew up in East Bengal before Independence.

 Godden, Rumer, A Time to Dance: No Time to Weep, Macmillan, 1987.

 Memoir of the last days of the Raj.

Greave, Peter, The Seventh Gate, Penguin, 1978.

Astonishing account of a man who struggled to live in India, contracted leprosy, and eventually survived long enough to write this memoir.

Hansen, August Peter, Memoirs of an Adventurous Dane in India 1904-1947, British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 1999.

Interesting account of a man who worked in the Calcutta Police.

 Martyn, Margaret, Married to the Raj, British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 1992.

Memoirs of a woman in the late 1930s and 1940s who was married to a senior official in the Indian Civil Service. This influenced my depiction of the living conditions Maisy experienced when she lived with Gordon.  

 Solomon, Sally, Hooghly Tales: Stories of Growing up in Calcutta under the Raj, David Ashley, 1998.

Memoirs of a Jewish woman who grew up in pre-Independence Calcutta.

 Stephens, Ian, Monsoon Morning, Ernest Benn, 1966.  

Informative, if a little dry, account by the man who was editor of Calcutta’s premier British newspaper, the Statesman, during the Second World War.  

 General Books on the British in India (with reference to Eden Gardens)

Burton, David, The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India, Faber and Faber, 1993.

This is a good survey of the food the British ate in India, and is full of fascinating glimpses of social history.

 de Courcy, Anne, The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj, W&N, 2013.

A book that focuses largely on the elite women who went out to India to look for husbands.

 Steel, F.A., The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, Oxford University Press, 2010.

 Originally published in 1888, this was the book all good memsahibs turned to. Mam, in Eden Gardens, was almost certainly unaware of it.

Travel Writing and Guides to the City

 Ali, Monica, and Colm Toibin, The Weekenders: Adventures in Calcutta, Ebury, 2004.

Great selection of travel writing from star authors.

 Briski, Zana, Born into Brothels GEB: Photographs by the Children of Calcutta, Powerhouse, 1999.

Pictures from the contemporary brothel quarter. Also available as a DVD, Born into Brothels (2007), directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski.  

 Humphrey, Keith, Walking Calcutta, Grosvenor House, 2009.

This is the best guide if you want to walk around Kolkata.

 Moorhouse, Geoffrey, Calcutta, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971.

The best overall introductory history to the city.

 Raymer, Steve, Redeeming Calcutta: A Portrait of India’s Imperial Capital, Oxford University Press,

India, 2012.Fantastic photographs of the city. A pricey book, but worth it.

 Winchester, Simon, and Rupert Winchester, Simon Winchester’s Calcutta, Lonely Planet, 2004.

Good perspectives on the city.

 Academic Books

Ballhatchet, Kenneth, Race, Sex and Class Under the Raj, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980.

A ground-breaking study of the intersections of race, class and gender in the Raj. Probably the first thing that sparked my interest in writing Eden Gardens.

 Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar, Decolonisation in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Post-Independence West Bengal, 1947-1952,  Routledge, 2009.

Detailed, scholarly account of local politics after Independence.

 Banerjee, Sumanta, Dangerous Outcaste: The Prostitute in Nineteenth Century Bengal, Seagull Books, 1998.

This is the best historical analysis of sex work in Calcutta.

 Bear, Laura, Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy and the Intimate Historical Self, Columbia University Press, 2007.

Good account of Anglo-Indian railway families.

 Bose, Basanta Coomar, and Tara Krishna Basu, Village Life in Bengal, Hindu Customs in Bengal, iUniverse, 2005.

Background to Pushpa’s early life.

 Buettner, Laura, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India, Oxford University Press, 2004.

The lives of middle and upper class Britons, and their relationship with ‘Home’ and India.

 Caplan, Lionel, Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World, Berg, 2001.

This is the best academic analysis of mixed race peoples in India.

 Chattopadhyay, Swati, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism and the Colonial Uncanny, Routledge, 2009.

An excellent, multidisciplinary history and geography of Calcutta.

 Collingham, E.M., Imperial Bodies the Physical Experience of the Raj 1800-1947, Polity, 2001.

Fascinating book on the bodies, clothes and lifestyles of the British in India.

 Cox, Anthony, Empire, Industry and Class: The Imperial Nexus of Jute 1840-1940, Routledge, 2012.

Good, specialised book for those who want to understand how the jute industry contributed to the formation of the working classes, and their living conditions, in Dundee and Calcutta.

 Das, Suranjan, Communal Riots in Bengal 1905-1947, Oxford University Press, India, 1993.

Background to the terrible riots that accompanied Partition.

 Dutta, Krishna, Calcutta: A Cultural and Literary History, Signal Books, 2008.

A good cultural history of the city.

 Engels, Dagmar, Beyond Purdah? Women in Bengal 1890-1939, Oxford University Press, India, 1996.

Background to Pushpa’s early life.

 Fischer-Tine, Harald, Low and Licentious Europeans: Race, Class and ‘White Subalternity’ in Colonial

India, Orient Blackswan, 2009.

The best analysis and detailed scholarship on poor whites in colonial India.

 Inden, Ronald B., and Ralph W. Nicholas, Kinship in Bengali Culture, University of Chicago Press, 1977.

Background to Pushpa’s early life.

 Lamb, Sarah, White Saris and Sweet Mangoes: Aging, Gender, and Body in North India, University of California Press, 2000.

An excellent ethnography of a Bengali village, and women’s ideas about aging. This book was a big influence in helping me develop aspects of Pushpa’s character. 

  Levine, Philippa, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, Routledge, 2003.

An excellent analysis of race and sexuality in the British Empire. Although the book examines the period up to 1918, and so therefore doesn’t cover the time in which Eden Gardens is set, many of the ideas it explores are very relevant.

 Macmillan, Margaret, Women of the Raj: Mothers, Wives and Daughters of the British Empire in India, Random House, 2007.

An examination of the kind of women Mam dreamed of being.

 Mizutani, Satoshi, The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the ‘Domiciled Community’ in British India 1858-1930, Oxford University Press, 2011.

Excellent analysis of the ideology and practice of race in the British Raj.

 Procida, Mary A., Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India 1883-1947, Manchester University Press, 2002.

More on British women and the family in imperial India. Mam fell short on most counts.

 Sen, Samita, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Kamala, Pushpa’s friend in Sonagachi, worked in a jute mill like the ones Sen describes.

 Sinha, Indrani and Carolyn Sleightholme, Guilty Without Trial: Women in the Sex Trade in Calcutta, Rutgers University Press, 1997.

A depressing analysis of the contemporary sex trade in Kolkata. Not for the faint-hearted.

 Steward, Gordon T. Jute and Empire: The Calcutta Jute Wallahs and the Landscapes of Empire, Manchester University Press, 1998.

This book greatly influenced my understanding of Gordon’s background and behaviour.

  Tomlinson, Jim, Dundee and the Empire: ‘Juteopolis’ 1850-1939, Edinburgh University Press, 2014.

Looks at Dundee and the Calcutta jute trade as part of global history.

  Online Resources

Open University, ‘Dundee, Jute and Empire.’

If you are interested in the links between Calcutta and Dundee, and the British Empire and India, take a look at this fantastic free course.  

 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/heritage/dundee-jute-and-empire/content-section-0#

THE LEOPARDS OF NORMANDY What to expect.

On publication of Duke, the second book in his Leopards of Normandy series author David Churchill outlines what you can expect.

Book. 1: The Devil And His Bastard Son 

Robert of Normandy is a young man in a hurry. He’s handsome, brave, impetuous, and he’s just seized Normandy’s mightiest castle. But Robert has an older brother, Richard. He’s the Duke of Normandy. He wants his castle back. And he’ll take it by force if he has to.

Herleva of Falaise is the daughter of a humble tanner, but she’s more beautiful than any princess. When she and Robert meet, they will change the course of history.

Queen Emma was a daughter of the House of Normandy. She’s been wife to two Kings of England and is mother of two Kings to come. But her princeling sons, Edward and Alfred live in bitter exile at the Norman court, waiting for the day they can return home and reclaim the birthright their own mother has denied them.

William is Robert and Herleva’s illegitimate son. He’s born into a world of murder and intrigue, where families are torn apart by bitter rivalries, renegade warlords stop at nothing in their lust for power and wealth, and professional assassins are never short of work.

His enemies will mock him as William the Bastard. But we have another name for him: Conqueror.

Book. 2: The Crown Across The Water

William, the boy Duke of Normandy is running out of friends. His guardians are killed off, one by one. Even his old friends turn against him and suddenly he is riding for his life through the night, with murderous rebels hot on his trail.

Fighting for survival, William looks outside the borders of Normandy to find an unexpected ally. Then he stakes his dukedom and his life on one great battle that will decide his fate.

In England, King Canute has died leaving two widows, each with a son she plans to make King. Meanwhile Godwin, the ruthless, calculating Earl of Wessex is preparing for the day when his own son, Harold will make his bid for the throne.

In Bruges, the Count of Flanders’ headstrong teenage daughter Matilda is determined to choose her own husband. But one man has decided that he will have Matilda for his bride. She doesn’t want him. Her father objects to him. Even the Pope forbids the union.

But that man is William of Normandy. And when he wants something, he will not stop until he gets it.

Book.3: The Conqueror And The King

William of Normandy has been named the heir to the throne of England. But Harold of Wessex breaks his vow to support William’s claim and claims the crown for himself. So begins the path that will lead to battle on Senlac Hill, as the fate of an entire nation and its people is decided in a single blood-drenched day.

William the Bastard becomes the Conqueror. A boy whose mother was a peasant lass now wears a crown of gold, studded with rubies and emeralds. But at the moment of his greatest triumph his greatest troubles begin.

When the North rebels, William stains his soul as well as the soil with the blood of the innocent. Enemies in Scandinavia, Scotland, Normandy and France attack his new empire from every side. But his most serious challenge comes from his own flesh and blood. William’s oldest son, Robert hates him and his beloved wife Matilda takes her son’s side in the fight.

As the shadows of age and sickness fall and his mighty strength at last fails him, William the Conqueror gathers himself for one last campaign – one final bid for the greatest prize that he has ever won …

DUKE, is out now in hardback and DEVIL, book one in paperback. 

Loafers, Vagrants and 'Low Europeans' - The Invisibility of Poor Whites in the British Raj

Louise Brown, author of EDEN GARDENS, explains more

Poor whites do not figure prominently in the histories of the British Raj. ‘Low Europeans’, as they were called at the time, can be found in the writings of Rudyard Kipling, but, today, most people’s image of the British in colonial India is formed by the social world of the sahibs and memsahibs, usually the middle class servants of Empire who aped the manners of the Victorian and Edwardian English aristocracy. However, David Arnold, a respected scholar of South Asia, has estimated that poor whites accounted for almost 50% of the European population in India in the last decades of the nineteenth century. There were low class soldiers, seamen, adventurers and chancers, and many semi-skilled workers, especially in the railways. If this is the case, why have they been given so little scholarly attention?

Conventional understandings of colonial power relations assume a clear binary division between elite white colonisers and subjugated Indians. In this racial hierarchy, the very idea of a ‘white subaltern’ is a contradiction. But just as Indian society was divided by caste, class and religion, the British too were not a homogeneous group. They were divided, principally by class, and, to a lesser extent, by the English/Scottish distinction. ‘Whiteness’ and ‘Britishness’ were stratified, and full possession of ‘whiteness’ depended on superior social class. The elite saw the very poor, or the ‘great unwashed’ of the nineteenth century metropole as a different race, and they applied a similar understanding to poor, white ‘riff-raff’ in India.

Let me be clear; whites from low social classes were still privileged in India when compared with Indians of similar, or even superior, social standing. They had the advantage of whiteness, and many went to India in the first instance because they were attracted by the prospect of an elevation in their social status. Even the lowest class of European was accorded a rank above the majority of local people. What is more, some of the worst kind of violence against Indians was often perpetrated by very low class whites. Wayward whites were given far more lenient treatment by the authorities than their Indian counterparts. For instance, it was considered unacceptable to publically flog Europeans because this might lower the prestige of all whites in the eyes of the Indian population.

The British colonial elite spent a lot of time discussing, and trying to remedy, the activities of a subset of the poorest whites. They investigated and reported on the plight and nefarious behaviour of ‘distressed’ seamen, paupers, vagrants, the unemployed, drunkards, prostitutes and ‘loafers’. Committees were set up and laws passed to deal with the problems. Homes were established to accommodate the children of indigent whites, and, in 1869, the European Vagrancy Act (amended in the 1870s) established a network of workhouses, and a system for deporting white beggars and ‘loafers’. Every year in India, several hundred white people could be found in workhouses for Europeans. There is a wealth of material on these people in the archives, indicating the elite considered them to be a serious problem. However, until fairly recently, they have not been the focus of historians’ attention. For a long time, they have been largely invisible.

The reasons for this are two-fold. First, particularly after the 1857 Indian Rebellion, or Mutiny, the British developed an Imperial ideology that stressed that their right to rule lay in their racial superiority, and the importance of their civilizing mission. A comparatively small number of British people ruled a vast number of Indian subjects. Their ability to do this was based, in part, on their prestige; their assumed entitlement to rule. In many ways it was a giant confidence trick. Unsurprisingly, the existence of white people who were poor and disorderly was an embarrassment to the elite. White prostitutes, drunkards, beggars and ‘loafers’ undermined their prestige, and claims about a civilizing mission appeared hollow when white people themselves also needed to be civilized. It was in the interests of the British elite to keep their unruly brethren out of sight. The discourse on the British in India has therefore been influenced by the rulers’ desire to erase a social and politically embarrassing group.

Second, with a few exceptions, the best recent work on poor whites in India has been done by scholars based outside the UK. The leading scholar in the field is Harald Fischer-Tine (ETH Zurich). Interesting work has also been done by Satoshi Mizutani (Doshisha University), and Sarmistha De (Historian, Government of West Bengal). It appears there has been an understandable reluctance by academics in Britain to engage fully with this topic. Focussing on poor whites may be seen as misplaced when their numbers are tiny compared with the millions of much poorer Indians. They are, moreover, associated with a discredited Imperial past, and any examination of the relative sufferings of poor whites can cast the historian in the role of an apologist for the Empire. At times, it seems as if writing about poor whites has about as much appeal as writing about kindly Nazis.  

Subaltern Studies has done wonderful work reclaiming the history and voices of Indians, particularly poor Indians. By contrast, poor whites are not seen as subalterns, and proper subjects for analysis within this field, because, according to conventional understandings of power, they are presumed to be part of the colonial elite by virtue of their skin colour. This is not to deny that ‘low Europeans’ had the privilege of whiteness, even if their social superiors considered them less than white, and ‘not quite pukka’. But poor whites are worth studying, not only because of the light they shed on the divided nature of ‘the British’ in India, but also because they show that class and race intersect in complex ways, and that the clean cut boundaries between the colonialists and the colonised are, in fact, not as fixed as often portrayed.  

For a fascinating and provocative account of poor whites in India which articulates the arguments made here in great depth, see Harald Fischer-Tine, Low and Licentious Europeans: Race, Class and ‘White Subalternity’ in Colonial India, Orient Blackswan, 2009.

April’s Military Might competition Terms and Conditions

Terms & Conditions:

1.         This is a prize draw for a set of history books including DUKE / David Churchill hb, BRITANNIA / Simon Scarrow pb, OPERATION THUNDERBOLT / Saul David pb and THE PEOPLE WE WERE BEFORE / Annabelle Thorpe pb. To enter, please comment on the competition Facebook post on the H for History page.

2.         The Winner will be selected at random from the entries received in accordance with these terms and conditions by a member of the Author Profile team, whose decision will be final.

3.         The Winner may see their name posted on the H for History website and possibly other websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

4.         There is no purchase necessary to enter.

5.         The prize draw opens at 12:01 am BST on Saturday 16th April and ends at 11:59pm BST on Sunday 8th May 2016. Any entries received outside these specified times and dates will not be eligible for entry into the competition.

6.         The prize draw is open to anyone aged 18 or over in UK and Eire except employees of COMPANY, their families, or anyone professionally connected to the competition either themselves or through their families.  

7.         Only one entry per person allowed. Second or subsequent entries will be disqualified. Entries will not be accepted via agents, third parties or in bulk.

8.         COMPANY is not responsible for contacting or forwarding prizes to entrants who provide unclear or incomplete information or for entries lost, misdirected, delayed or destroyed.

9.         COMPANY reserves the right to alter the prizes or cancel the prize draw without notice.  No cash alternatives to prizes will be provided.

10.       The Winner will be published H for History Facebook page w/c 9th May 2016.

11.       The email addresses of entrants may be shared with companies within the Hachette group of companies but will not be shared with other companies outside the group.  It will be used by the Hachette companies to send you news about our books, products and promotions.  You will be given the option of opting out in those emails if you don’t want to receive any further news from us.

12.       By entering the prize draw each entrant agrees to be bound by these terms and conditions.

13.       This competition is being organised by H for History, (Headline, Hodder and Quercus), Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DZ.

14.       These terms and conditions and any disputes or claims (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of these terms and Conditions shall be governed and construed in accordance with the laws of England, whose courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction.

The setting of The Graveyard of the Hesperides – Lindsey Davis

My novels are always rooted in daily life, so they tend to contain a lot of food and drink. If characters want to be written by me, they must have good appetites. They do other things that are often omitted from novels; they go to the lavatory, they catch colds, the women have periods. But in general much of the story takes place during meals. This is for two reasons. It’s a convenient way to get two or more people sitting down while they hold a conversation about their adventure. And I myself am interested in meals. Readers, who are mostly kind people, go along with that.

On many Roman archaeological sites one feature that survives and strikes a chord with us is the streetside eaterie. We are all very familiar with  Roman bars, their marble patchwork counters, their holes for food containers (with the controversy about how these actually worked; were they for hot foods or dry storage?), and even their painted lists of wines and prices. I have shown them often, especially of course that sad establishment on the Aventine that was once called Flora’s Caupona, and is now renamed the Stargazer.

Falco was always in two minds about Flora’s because of the redhead who ran it, his roguish father’s girlfriend. Albia has no qualms about the Stargazer, where the waiters are now ancient Apollonius, the ex-geometry teacher we know from old times, and her lovely deaf cousin, Junillus, whom we are getting to know now. It was at the Stargazer that her relationship with Manlius Faustus took hold – to the point that in the new book he is organising their wedding.

Tiberius wants the full ritual, but Albia  wants none of it. Whether she will consent to attend the ceremony remains to be seen. Whether she will last out to the end on the day is just as uncertain. But I have had a great deal of fun with the concept. Given that the only Roman wedding I have written up previously ended with the bride and groom being almost burned alive on the first night (Lenia and Smaractus in Time to Depart), there had to be scope for disaster, even before Faustus enlists the help of two very excitable wedding planners – Albia’s teenaged sisters. I suspect you will like Julia and Favonia. Though you might not be able to afford them for your own wedding.

That, however, is the sub-plot, for this is a story about Roman bars. We have seen them as background scenery enough times. Now we shall learn exactly why our mothers would have told us never to go there. Their takeaway food is bad enough, but their eat-in facilities are risky and their staff offer highly dubious services. At the Garden of the Hesperides, a hotspot on the Viminal that harbours many old secrets, even the dog was to be avoided. Rumours about a missing barmaid will lead Albia a tricky dance.

But it isn’t the dog who buried the bones that Faustus and his workmen turn up during a renovation. For yes, our diligent aedile has decided it is time he gets a job. He intends to fund his married life with Albia through hard work, as a building contractor. This, my readers will realise, could take him to endless places with undiscovered bodies or other festering mysteries – thereby ensuring a constant stream of plots.

Tiberius starting a new life is important for another reason. An aspect of Roman life that I want to explore is the way couples lived and worked in equal partnership. The family business. Of course, with Albia I was always determined to show that working women existed. Now she will have a working husband too, who will need her help get his new business established. Perhaps he has even chosen her with that in mind, after witnessing their ability to work as a team.

We possess all those Roman tombstones showing husband and wife together, portrayed as a unit with the symbols of their trade. We know the streets of ancient Rome were lined with shops and workshops, similar to those that still exist in Mediterranean cities today, where families lived and worked. Who served the customers? Who organised the order book? How often was it really the wife who looked after the money? How much were the children expected to pitch in?

Children? Oh for Albia and Tiberius that is a long way ahead. Anyone who holds a big family wedding, with terrible relatives flooding in from all directions may then shrink from providing more of them. And theirs will be a wedding to remember, as you would expect. It’s raining, there is unfinished business with a bunch of murderers, not to mention the secret of the missing barmaid - and, trust me, that’s only the start of it!

The latest Flavia Albia mystery The Graveyard of the Hesperides is out today! Pick up your copy here.

The Lion of Mistra - HFH Review

I had not read one of James Heneage’s Rise of Empires novels before and despite having quite a good (or so I thought) knowledge of history, the Byzantine empire was a definite gap, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I picked up the third in the series The Lion of Mistra. What a fantastic surprise it turned out to be!

The novel follows the exploits of Luke Magoris who must trade, battle and hunt for treasure in his desperate attempt to save Mistra, the last great outpost of Imperial Rome. He has many adventures along the way, which take him across the world, from Venice to Timbuktu, the scope of the novel and the historical detail make this book never feel anything less than epic.

With a strong plot which had me on edge until the final pages, and a wonderfully realised depiction of this formative period of history, The Lion of Mistra is definitely not to be missed!

Dan, HFH team