14th century

Of leading ladies and gate-crashing male protagonists

NOTE: This blog post was written for and originally posted on that most excellent blog The Bluestocking Belles – a group of authors that elevate Regency romance to dizzying heights. I recommend you drop by and visit – if Regency is your cup of tea, that is. Actually, even if it isn’t, as the belles …

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Shining a light on my lady

Welcome to a slightly different Blog Tour! Every Tuesday during October Helen Hollick has chosen to shine a light on some of the women of her novels – and has invited nine other authors to join her. Needless to say, I am one of her proud companions. More about the blog hop and its participants …

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Of divine sparks and serious talks

Very many years ago, my mother and I were out walking. We did that a lot, she and I, and we would spend most of our standard circuit talking about this and that. That day, we were talking about faith. My mother grew up believing in God, but when she was fourteen, her mother fell …

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Meet my main character

I have been tagged by the talented M.J.Logue in a Meet My Main Character bloghop, giving me a golden opportunity to introduce you to Adam de Guirande, protagonist of my upcoming series set in 14th century England. As an aside, it is interesting to note that M.J.Logue’s Hollie Babbitt lives through times of uncertainty and …

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Busy, busy bees – a work-in-progress blog hop

I was tagged by the prolific Lori Crane in a Work-in-progress blog hop. I like the word Work-in-progress, as it implies that creative juices are flowing and everything is alright in the world – at least if you’re a writer. Of course, at times the challenge lies in the fact that there is too much …

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The bloodied shirts of a dead king

They found him in the aftermath of the Battle of Lützen, 382 years ago today. His looted body was naked except for the three knee length linen shirts he had worn as protection against the cold. What little hair he had left was stuck to his skull, covered in blood and gore. There, in the …

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The lady with the trousers

Nobody ever called Margareta “the lady with the trousers” to her face. One of her contemporaries was fool enough to call her the “King without breeches” – and she made him bitterly regret doing so. And given that this was back in the 14th century when the general order of things was that men ruled …

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Brotherly love in medieval Sweden

It’s tough being a parent. Even tougher if you were a medieval king, blessed with too many sons. Just look at what happened to poor old England in the aftermath of Edward III, what with him having a number of healthy sons, all of them with their own dynastic ambitions. Maybe things wouldn’t have ended …

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Made immortal by a nursery rhyme

In my recent post about St Birgitta, I mentioned in passing the Swedish queen, Blanka. According to Birgitta, this French sissy had none of the spiritual backbone required of a queen, and besides, she was French… As for Blanka, I suspect St Birgitta was not on her Top Ten most favourite people list – especially …

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A tough cookie – meet St Birgitta of Sweden

Sweden only has a handful of saints. Given that we’ve been Protestant since the 16th century, and given that Sweden was a most remote country in the Middle Ages, on the fringes of the European world (well, to some extent we still are, stuck up here in the north with a total of nine million …

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