Hear ye! A week after submitting my completed (pre-edited) manuscript of Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain, I am very pleased, and also a little anxious, to tell you that I have just signed two contracts with Pen & Sword History to write two biographies of two very, very different Stuart-era ladies. Whilst both ladies have been written… Read on
Elizabeth was the second daughter of Charles I, the ill-fated king who would unprecedentedly lose his life after years of civil war. Born in 1635 to a London covered in snow, this daughter was named after her godmother and aunt, Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen and would earn the nickname ‘the winter princess’. Elizabeth would grow up… Read on
An Instance of the Fingerpost, published in 1998, is a rather large work of historical fiction – 704 pages long! As I had this read aloud to me by my husband whenever we had some free time – which was not often – it took over a year to get through it – but it was totally worth… Read on
It’s eight thirty am, the drummers in full uniform march through the soldier’s camps drumming ‘call to arms’. A rapid brrrr…umph, brrrr…umph on their drums. This is closely followed by our Sargent shouting “Kings Guard, form up in fifteen minutes.” There follows a rapid dressing session. My husband is always late for parade sometimes even running to join the… Read on
Eleanor Herman, who earlier this year posted a guest post here on The Seventeenth Century Lady (“A Glorious Poison: The Deadly Toxins of Palace Life”), is a popular historian whose past book titles include Sex With Kings and Sex with the Queen. In The Royal Art of Poison: Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Poisons, and Murder Most Foul, published this… Read on
Hear ye! For those of you who haven’t already seen my announcement via Twitter, Instagram, and/or Facebook, my news is that I have been commissioned by Pen & Sword Publishing to write Sex and Sexuality in Stuart Britain! This will be part of a new series of history books that “explores our ancestors’ ingenious, surprising, bizarre and often… Read on
This week marks the end of my family’s two-year stay in Clungunford, Shropshire, England. This weekend, we’ll be back in London, having moved out of Balham back in 2011. After a somewhat nail-bitingly stressful removal over the weekend, I have a bit of time to reflect on what was a momentous couple of years, with the launch of… Read on
Mothers and Midwives in the 17th Century by Kate Braithwaite Alice Wandesford was born in Yorkshire in 1627 and in 1651, aged twenty-four, she married William Thornton of East Newton. Alice was soon pregnant and carried the child to term, but it died within half an hour of birth. Her second child, Betty, survived almost being ‘overlaid’ –… Read on
What Kate Braithwaite did with the Affair of the Poisons scandal of Louis XIV’s France (Charlatan) she’s done again – this time in the volatile late 1670s England. Nearing the second decade of the Restoration and told first-person through the eyes of several different characters, The Road to Newgate gives us the horrific episode of the Popish Plot (1678-1681) – a fabricated… Read on
The Institution of Marriage in 17th Century England By Deborah Swift My new book, A Plague on Mr Pepys, has at its heart a marriage. During my research for the book I had to look into attitudes to marriage in the 17th Century, and how these attitudes might affect my characters, Bess and Will Bagwell, when their marriage… Read on
A Glorious Poison: The Deadly Toxins of Palace Life by Eleanor Herman, exclusively on The Seventeenth Century Lady. The royal lifestyle of yesteryear used to make me swoon. I imagined myself living in a gilded palace, wearing gorgeous gowns, and dancing with Baroque studs at candlelight balls. I thought of the past as a time of romance, grandeur,… Read on
When one considers that Dr Ian Mortimer is one of the best-known medieval historians in the world, it is perhaps natural to be slightly dubious of a work about the Restoration by a person who specialises in the medieval period. Wonderfully, this book was fantastic and any reservations I may have had melted away quite quickly. I’m a bit late… Read on
Tulip Fever is a 2017 film and based on Deborah Moggach’s book of the same name. Directed by Justin Chadwick, the film stars Alicia Vikander, Dane DeHaan, Christoph Waltz, Holliday Grainger, and Judi Dench. In 17th Century Amsterdam, an orphaned girl Sophia (Alicia Vikander) is forcibly married to a rich and powerful merchant Cornelis Sandvoort (Christoph Waltz) –… Read on
The Illumination of Ursula Flight is a largely lighthearted coming-of-age historical novel set in 1670s/1680s England and centres on the life (from birth to adulthood) of Ursula Flight. The book begins with a style often used by novels of the 17th century and made me immediately think of Daniel Defoe’s works. This tale is told in the first person… Read on
After having read Antonia Fraser’s great book on the Gunpowder Plot, I wanted to read a biography of Guy Fawkes. Unfortunately, I waded through several of those cheap and inaccurate (and, therefore, largely ultimately worthless) Kindle biographies of Guy Fawkes, and was left rather annoyed. Happily, I came across Nick Holland’s book on NetGalley, which I only recently… Read on
The Scottish Coronation of King Charles II by Cryssa Bazos There is an iconic painting of Charles II, commemorating his coronation in 1661 at Westminster, following the Restoration of the monarchy. An ermine robe is draped over his shoulders, he holds the orb and sceptre in each hand, and the English crown rests firmly on his head. But… Read on
Hi, folks! It’s been a while since I posted anything other than reviews and guest posts because I spend most of my days running after my toddler (which is a mixture of fun, joy, frustration, and a looooot of cooking and cleaning up). As of March 1st, 2018 I am no longer published by Endeavour Press. When I… Read on
Londoners and the Great Fire by Jacob F. Field Pepys and his buried parmesan, Charles II and the Duke of York directing the fire-fighting efforts, Lord Mayor Bludworth saying (allegedly) saying ‘Pish! A woman might piss it out!’, Wren’s grand plans for a rebuilt metropolis, and Thomas Farriner’s bakery in Pudding Lane: the main stories of the Great… Read on
In writing The Coffin Path, a ghost story set on the Yorkshire Moors sometime after the English Civil War, I read accounts of as many 17th-century hauntings as I could find. The most striking thing I noticed is how the elements of a good ghost story have remained relatively unchanged over the centuries. Belief in ghosts, or in… Read on
Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women’s Lives, 1540-1740 by Sara Read is a book I’d been wanting to read since it was originally published in 2015 by Pen & Sword. I became acquainted with Dr Read through Twitter, and she subsequently has contributed two popular articles here on The Seventeenth Century Lady. In her book, which is… Read on
Hear ye! Hear ye! I have great news for you lovely readers of The Seventeenth Century Lady. I’ve just received word from Waterstones that my followers are entitled to a special discount on Leanda de Lisle’s fantastic new book, White King – but for a short time only! Here are the details: Available from today for two weeks… Read on
The Wilding by Maria McCann is a novel (originally published in 2010) set during the early 1670s (with some events having previously occurred during the English Civil Wars). Jonathan Dymond, the twenty-six-year-old protagonist of the novel, is a cider maker who makes his living by travelling from place to place turning people’s apple harvests into cider (the popular alcoholic drink). … Read on