A dreadful fascination
The true tales of murder that feature in Great and Horrible News cover a period of some 200 years, from approximately 1500 to 1700. It was a time that encompassed the rise and fall of the Houses of the Tudors and the Stuarts, the English Civil War, the Protectorate, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution. England split...
Fast Fashion in the age of the Sun King
Open up Tiktok – or Instagram, if you prefer. Depending on your viewing habits, you might see mostly influencers unboxing bales of new clothing from Shein and other fast-fashion retailers, or laughing over cheap knockoffs that don’t live up to the photos online, or styling their wardrobe of vintage pieces from the Victorian era up...
Lucy Jago: Making a stink
Lucy Jago’s A Net for Small Fishes is a captivating story of female friendship and solidarity amid a scandal that rocked the court of James I. It is narrated by 30-something Anne Turner, a doctor’s wife and mother of six with a talent for fashion and a patent for saffron dye, which she uses to...
A big thing or a small
Frances Quinn’s debut novel The Smallest Man is inspired by the real-life story of Jeffrey Hudson, who became ‘court dwarf’ and a true friend to Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles I. Spanning two decades that changed England forever, it’s a heartening tale of being different, but bold enough to follow your dreams. Where...
The speculative birth of a princess
The Princesse de Clèves, a historical novel about the Court of Henri II, seems to have been conceived early in the year 1671. Many French critics think that, on the evidence of her letters to the Abbé Ménage and of her earlier novels, the Princesse de Montpensier and Zayde, Madame de Lafayette must have had...
