The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector from 1653-1658 is usually imagined as a joyless, military regime, presided over by a dour Puritan who killed the king, cancelled Christmas and got his kicks from pulling down maypoles. But this is a stereotype which has been...
Mark Turnbull’s latest novella, The King’s Spy, is a fast-moving thriller set in the turbulent world of the English Civil War. Captain Maxwell Walker is a widowed Royalist cavalry officer and seasoned veteran of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Following the disastrous...
A beautiful cover is the perfect portal into Miranda Malins’ debut novel, The Puritan Princess, which has successfully given readers a fresh interpretation of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate and the political twists and turns at its heart. It is a period in our history...
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? My interest in the Mediterranean world goes back a long way. My father was a naval officer who was based there in peace and in war. When I was nine he was stationed on Malta and I went out for holidays. I...
What role did Florence play at the end of the 15th century, and what were some of the factors that led to its prominence? At the end of 15th century Florence had become the epicentre of the Renaissance. This was one of the great cultural resurgences of European...
What prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? My first book, The Lady’s Slipper’is set in the 17th century, which remains a period I find endlessly fascinating. The novel explores the fate of a wild orchid, which is also functions in the...
The Role of the Constable In many of my 17th century novels, people fall foul of the law in one way or another, and so I found it fascinating to examine what was in place to keep the peace in this era before the Police Force. During the 17th century the responsibility...
The concept of dieting would have been alien to our 17th century forbears. In those days, the plumper you were, the better. Plumpness indicated wealth and class, and women aspired to be plump and white, rather than thin and tanned as is the fashion now. The 17th...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon Articles Click on the links below to read the full article [dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
On 30th January 1649 parliament cut off Charles I’s head. A year later the ‘king’s crown’, dating from the early Tudors, was ‘totally broken and defaced’. Charles’s father King James had called it ‘the symbol of a people’s love’. Parliament valued it at £1,100. The...
