Who’s Who
HNSLondon14 offers an impressive line-up of bestselling authors, editors, publicists, booksellers and publishing industry leaders, literary agents and others with a particular interest and expertise in historical fiction, and will feature some of the biggest names in the genre as keynote speakers. For Guests of Honour pleased refer to their biographies here.
We will also have a list of everyone attending so that you can see who’s coming or refresh you memory after you have met someone.
Annamaria Alfieri
Annamaria Alfieri is the author of Strange Gods, set in the burgeoning British East African town of Nairobi in 1911. Kirkus said of it, “Alfieri aims for the audience who loved Out of Africa, with heartbreaking romance married to a complex mystery.” Her previous historical mysteries, which are all set in South America, have garnered critical acclaim. The Christian Science Monitor chose her Blood Tango as one of ten must-read thrillers. Of her Invisible Country, Kirkus Reviews said, “Alfieri has written an antiwar mystery that compares with the notable...
Richard Lee
Richard Lee founded the Historical Novel Society in 1997 after trying to join it, only to find it didn’t exist. The society has since developed in many unforeseen ways, following the enthusiasms of the active membership, with Richard trying to keep as light a hand on the tiller as possible. It is with bemusement but great pride that he regards the society’s robust health seventeen years on. Richard has been involved with the organisation of many HNS conferences, co-hosted the Cambridge History Festivals, and ran author talks for two...
Bernadine Kennedy
Bernardine Kennedy is the author of many novels all of which are based around family and relationship issues. Her books are gritty and occasionally violent, however there is often a lighthearted element, a touch of glitz and a satisfactory ending. Bernardine was born in London but spent most of her childhood with her ex-pat parents in Singapore and Nigeria before settling in Essex. Her diverse and varied working life has included careers as an air hostess, a swimming instructor and a social worker as well as adult education tutoring...
Michael Dean
Michael Dean studied history at Worcester College, Oxford and has a Master’s in Applied Linguistics from Edinburgh University. Michael Dean has written five novels, four of which touch on art in various ways and to varying degrees. They are I, Hogarth (Duckworth/Overlook),...
Alicia Foster
Alicia Foster trained as an art historian before becoming a novelist. Warpaint is her first novel (Penguin, Figtree, 2013), and third published book. Previous publications include Gwen John, a monograph drawing on her doctoral research (Tate/Princeton, 1999), and Tate Women Artists, the first complete survey of women represented in the Tate collections (Tate, 2004). Her next novel is set in the early 1920s in Yorkshire and will tell the story of a violent collision between the forces of modernity and reaction. Foster grew up in Yorkshire, but these days...
Deborah Harkness
Deborah Harkness is a professor of history and teaches European history and the history of science at the University of Southern California. She has published two works of historical non-fiction, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy and the End of Nature (1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (2007). In 2011, Harkness published her first work of fiction, A Discovery of Witches. The first novel in the All Souls trilogy, A Discovery of Witches is a historical fiction novel that tells the story of...
Charlie Farrow
Charlie Farrow is HNSLondo14 Coference Co-ordinator and Webmaster. She was amongst the first cohort of marketers in the UK to be awarded Chartered status. She has worked with big brands and small businesses, both agency and client-side. She currently specialises in helping writers bring their work to market, providing a full range of literary, technical and marketing services – editing, cover art, e-book production, marketing strategy, advertising and promotional materials both on and off-line, video and social media. In the parallel universe that she occupies the rest of the...
Lisa Eveleigh
Lisa Eveleigh founded the Richford Becklow Agency in 2012, and is the primary agent,working with specialist sub-agents where relevant. She has a degree in English Literature from the University of Durham and also studied American literature for two years. After graduating, Lisa worked at the BBC, and her publishing career took off in 1986, when she joined A P Watt Ltd, the world’s oldest literary agency. Authors she worked with at the agency include Michael Holroyd, Frederic Raphael, Jan Morris, Graham Swift, Ben Okri, Carol Clewlow and Tony Parsons....
Jon Watt
Jon is an editor at Heron Books. He has over a decade of publishing and editing experience and has worked with authors like Michael Morpurgo, Bernard Cornwell and Boris Johnson. At Heron Books he’s looking to work with a range of raw ideas and story-telling talent, in both commercial fiction and non-fiction. ‘I’m very keen to develop ideas and stories which capture the imagination, whether from experienced writers or new talent. I enjoy getting on-board early to develop and publish compelling stories with thought, care and innovation.’ Earlier this...
Susan Watt
Susan Watt is currently Publisher at Heron Books. She has worked at a number of publishers and with authors who include; Vanora Bennett, Tracy Chevalier, Bernard Cornwell, Gavin Esler, Katie Fforde, Amitav Ghosh, Conn Iggulden, Boris Johnson, Adam Nicolson, Jeremy Paxman and Rosie Thomas. ‘I find it fascinating how writers by looking at the past can allow us to understand the present and how often observing the way characters, ordinary people, real or imaginary, have coped with crises in society can make us understand ourselves and our reaction to...
Simon Taylor
Simon Taylor is an Editorial Director at Transworld Publishers, part of the Random House Group. Like so many others of his generation, his life-long passion for historical fiction began with the likes of Rosemary Sutcliff, Henry Treece and Geoffrey Trease, and he knows he is exceedingly lucky to be able to publish the sort of fiction he adores as a reader, namely novels by such fantastic storytellers as Giles Kristian, Steven Pressfield and James Wilde, to name but three. Not all his shirts are as garish as the one...
Ian Skillicorn
Ian’s publishing imprint, Corazon Books, has published ten titles, with more to come later this year. Recent successes on Amazon include a Top Ten Kindle bestseller, a #1 in the Women Writers and Fiction chart, a #2 in the Medical Fiction chart, and Top Tens in the Romantic Comedy and Short Story charts. This year selected titles will also be available in print. Ian also runs ebook workshops for authors, and is a regular speaker at writing classes and conferences. He produces audio for writers and publishers, and audio...
Nick Sayers
Nick Sayers is a Publisher at Hodder and Stoughton, and has long been recognised as one of the best fiction editors in the industry. Previous to his decade at Hodder, he was Publishing Director at...
Cathy Rentzenbrink
Cathy Rentzenbrink is the Project Director of book industry charity Quick Reads. She is Associate Editor at The Bookseller and We Love This Book. She also writes regularly for Metro and hosts a book club with Nikki Bedi on her BBC Radio London show. She has chaired the Booksellers’ Association conference for the last 2 years. Previously she worked for Waterstones for 10 years, latterly in a Head Office role as Public Relations Manager. You can visit her blog or follow her on...
Anna Power
Anna Power joined the Johnson and Alcock literary agency in 2001 and looks after a list of award-winning and bestselling novelists, historians and journalists. Her broad interests range from literary and historical fiction through to more commerical genres such as psychological suspense and women’s fiction. She looks for great storytelling and a striking voice, and particularly enjoys discovering and working with debut writers. Her growing children’s list is made up of writers focussing on the 8+ through to teen markets. On the non-fiction side Anna is interested all things...
Juliet Mushens
Juliet Mushens is an Agent in the UK Literary Division of The Agency Group. Juliet began her publishing career in 2008 at HarperCollins, after reading history at Cambridge, and became an agent in 2011. Juliet represents a bestselling list of fiction and non-fiction writers, in every area except picture books, writing for under-10s, sport and diet books. She particularly enjoys historical fiction, fantasy, contemporary YA, reading group fiction and crime novels. On the non-fiction side she likes memoirs, popular economics, gender and history. She was shortlisted for the Literary...
Jane Judd
Jane Judd was an editor with Hutchinson for 10 years before setting up her own agency in 1986. She has always had an eclectic list of non-fiction and fiction writers, from cookery, sports and film to literary and commercial fiction. Nowadays, the emphasis is on self-help, health, biography, popular history and narrative non-fiction, general and historical fiction and literary fiction. Jane regularly visits New York and the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs and has conducted one-to-ones at writers’ festivals such as York, Winchester and...
David Headley
David Headley studied theology in London and Durham before co-founding Goldsboro Books, an independent bookseller based in central London. He has spent the last 14 years developing the company and building good relationships with the UK’s major publishing houses. He created the UK’s largest collectors’ book club and is influential in selling large quantities of hardback fiction in the UK. In 2008 David created D. H. H. Literary Agency which enables him to concentrate on discovering new talent in fiction writing. He is only looking to represent fiction writers...
Helen Hart
Helen Hart has been a published author since 1999. Represented by London literary agency Pollinger Ltd, she has written a number of novels under pseudonyms for Scholastic, Oxford University Press, HarperCollins, Virgin Books and a range of overseas publishers. Her work has been translated into many languages including Swedish, Danish, Japanese and Greek. One of her Young Adult novels, written as Maya Snow, was shortlisted for the Solihull Children’s Book Award 2010. Helen is one of the founding partners of publishing consultancy SilverWood Books which helps writers get their...
Carole Blake
Carole Blake has worked in publishing for 51 years. She started in a secretarial position and rose to become the first-ever Rights Manager for Michael Joseph. She was headhunted to start W H Allen’s first rights department, then approached to become Marketing Director of Sphere. After 14 years in publishing, she started her own literary agency which merged to become Blake Friedmann in 1983; Carole heads the book division. It was chosen as one of only twelve British agencies commended by the Society of Authors in their first survey...
Katie Bond
Katie Bond is the publisher for the National Trust. Previously she was marketing and publicity director at...
Matt Bates
Matt Bates is the Fiction Buyer for WH Smith Travel. He has worked for the company since he was 16 as a Saturday boy on the News Department (but always to be found in the Book Department!). In 1998 he became Non Fiction Buyer for the WHS Travel business before moving to manage Fiction in 2004. He has been named as one of the 1000 most influential Londoners in the Evening Standard, and in 2006 was delighted to be a judge for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award....
Sandra Alvarez
Sandra is co-founder and owner, with Peter Konieczny, of Medievalists.net, a website for people interested in the Middle Ages, including scholars, writers, historians, readers and anyone who enjoys medieval history or culture. The website creates a central online hub for news, resources and videos on medieval topics. Sandra is Canadian, but now lives in London. When not running her history empire, she works as social media manager for the Jemm...
Prof Diana Wallace
Diana is Professor of English Literature at the University of South Wales. Her teaching and research focuses mainly on women’s writing, with special interests in historical fiction and the Female Gothic. She teaches the first year module, ‘Reading/Writing Women’, a second year module on ‘Modernism’, and the third year module ‘Historical Fictions: Women Writing the Past.’ She also teaches the following MA modules: ‘Gothic Histories’, ‘Writing as Re-Vision: Post-war Women’s Writing’, and ‘Becoming Modern’. She wrote The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000, published by Palgrave in 2004....
Maureen Lee
Maureen Lee was born in Bootle, England, UK, near Liverpool during World War II. She attended Commercial College and became a shorthand typist. She married Richard, and they have three sons, now adults. They currently live in Colchester, Essex. She published over one hundred and fifty short-stories, before publishing her first novel, Lila, in 1983. Since 1994 she has continued to publish dramatic historical sagas mainly set in her home city of Liverpool – she is working on her 22nd novel this year. In 2000, her novel Dancing in...
Martin Sutton
Martin Sutton won the inaugural 2013 Historical Novel Society International Award, with a prize of £5,000, for his novel Lost Paradise. Lost Paradise tells of William Pascoe, a young gardener on the Heligan estate in Cornwall, who is wrenched away from a blossoming but difficult romance to fight at the front on the Somme. W H Smith Travel fiction buyer Matthew Bates, described Lost Paradise as a “haunting, generational novel of war, love, secrets and lies… with the scope of, say, a Kate...
Hallie Rubenhold
In 2005, Hallie’s first non-fiction book, The Covent Garden Ladies was published to great acclaim. This true story of a notorious guidebook to Georgian London’s prostitutes grabbed hold of the public imagination and served as the inspiration for two separate art exhibitions, two television programmes and a student film. The Harlots Handbook, the BBC’s documentary based on The Covent Garden Ladies (first broadcast in 2006) was presented by Hallie as part of the highly successful, The Century that Made Us season. Her equally celebrated second book, Lady Worsley’s Whim;...
Sally O’Reilly
Sally O’Reilly has worked as a journalist and editor and freelanced for the Guardian, Sunday Times and New Scientist. She is the author of two contemporary novels, The Best Possible Taste and You Spin Me Round, both published by Penguin books (2004 and 2007). Her debut historical novel Dark Aemilia was published by Myriad Editions in the UK in March 2014, and by Picador US in May 2014. Sally has also written short stories published in South Africa, Australia and the UK, and has been shortlisted for both the...
Clare Morrall
Clare Morrall was born in Exeter and now lives in Birmingham. She works as a music teacher and has two daughters. Her first novel, Astonishing Splashes of Colour, was published in 2003 by Tindal Street Press and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She has since published four novels: Natural Flights of the Human Mind, which is being adapted for a film, The Language of Others, The Man Who Disappeared, which was a TV Book Club Summer read in 2010, and the Roundabout Man. Her latest novel, After...
Douglas Jackson
Douglas Jackson lives in Bridge of Allan and is the author of the historical novels Caligula, Claudius, Hero of Rome, Defender of Rome, Avenger of Rome and Sword of Rome. His latest, Enemy of Rome, continues the critically acclaimed Valerius Verrens series, and was published on August 28. Doug was born in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders and his first job after leaving school was restoring a Roman marching camp in the Cheviot Hills. Later he joined his local paper and for the next 36 years worked in local...
Helen Hollick
Helen is published in the UK and the US with her books about King Arthur and the 1066 Battle of Hastings, officially making the USA Today best seller list with her novel Forever Queen. She also writes a series of historical adventure seafaring books inspired by her love of the Golden Age of Piracy. As a firm supporter of independent authors, publishers and bookstores, she is the Managing Editor for HNS Indie Reviews. This year she has organised the inaugural HNS Indie Award – and its first winner will...
Antonia Hodgson
Antonia Hodgson was born in Derby and studied English at the University of Leeds. She has worked in publishing for over fifteen years and is Editor-in-Chief at Little, Brown UK. When she is not writing or working or watching Game of Thrones she enjoys reading eighteenth-century murder confessions in the British Library. She does not react well to people who say The Smiths are depressing. THE DEVIL IN THE MARSHALSEA is her debut novel. She lives in London. Follow Antonia on...
James Heneage
James Heneage has been fascinated by history from an early age, in particular the rise and fall of empires. He was the founder of the Ottakar’s chain of bookshops which, between 1987 and 2006 grew to 150 branches before being bought by Waterstones. James spent these twenty years reading and researching historical subjects before settling on the end of the Byzantine Empire as the period he wanted to write about. After Ottakar’s, he chaired the Cheltenham Literary Festival before setting up his own festival entirely devoted to history with...
Margaret George
MARGARET GEORGE specializes in biographical novels of epic personalities. She has written about Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, Helen of Troy and Elizabeth Tudor. She is currently at work on a novel about the Emperor Nero. All these have been New York Times bestsellers, and have been translated into twenty-one languages. The Cleopatra novel was made into an Emmy-nominated ABC-TV miniseries in 1999. She has been a featured speaker on TV documentaries, at Hampton Court and the Tower of London, and the Folger Shakespeare Library...
Jean Fullerton
Jean was born in East End of London and grew up a short walk from the London Docks in Wapping and Whitechapel. She is a qualified district nurse and started writing thirteen years ago to relieve work-place stress. Jean was born in East End of London and grew up a short walk from the London Docks in Wapping and Whitechapel. She is also a qualified district nurse. In 2006 Jean won the Harry Bowling prize, which secured her a two-book contract with Orion Fiction. She wrote three further novels...
Elizabeth Fremantle
Elizabeth Fremantle is the author of two Tudor court novels published by Penguin: Queen’s Gambit tells the story of Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr, and Sisters of Treason shines a light on the lives of Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, the younger sisters of the tragic Lady Jane. She holds a BA in English and an MA in creative Writing from Birkbeck and has contributed to various publications including Vogue, Elle, The Sunday Times, The Wall street Journal and The Express. She lives in...
Essie Fox
Essie Fox lives in Windsor, and Bow in East London. She has worked on the editorial side of magazine and book publishing, as a commercial designer – and now she is a full time writer, creating dark Victorian novels published by Orion Books. The Somnambulist, her debut, was shortlisted for the 2012 National Book Awards, and also featured on Channel 4’s TV Book Club. Elijah’s Mermaid achieved excellent critical reviews. And now, The Goddess and the Thief explores the exoticism of India with the Victorian cult of spiritualism. For...
Emma Darwin
Emma Darwin grew up in London, with interludes in Manhattan and Brussels. The Times called her debut novel The Mathematics of Love “that rare thing, a book that works on every conceivable level”. It was shortlisted for many awards including the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book, and has been widely translated. Her bestselling second novel, A Secret Alchemy, was described by the Daily Mail as “powerful and utterly convincing”. Emma is an associate lecturer in Creative Writing with the Open University, a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, and has a...
Jenny Barden
Jenny Barden is the author of The Lost Duchess, an Elizabethan adventure about a lady-in-waiting to the queen caught up in the tragedy behind the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. She has also written Mistress of the Sea, a love story within the audacious attack on the Spanish bullion supply that launched the career of Francis Drake. Both books are published by Ebury Press. Jenny is an active member of the HNS, having co-ordinated their last London conference, she is also a member of the Society of...
Jessie Burton
Jessie Burton’s first novel is called THE MINIATURIST, and it is set in Amsterdam in 1686. It focuses on two women’s very different journeys to find a slice of freedom in a repressive, judgmental society. There’s a trial, a hidden love, a miniaturist who predicts the fate of her customers, a parakeet called Peebo and a plan to escape to the sea. It is published by Picador in the UK in July 2014, and by Harper Collins in the USA and Canada, and will be available in 29 other...
Stephanie Renée dos Santos
Stephanie Renée dos Santos is a fiction and freelance writer, poet, and yoga instructor. She leads “Saraswati Writing & Yoga Workshops” in the United States and abroad. She’s published fiction in American Athenaeum and Lalitamba, and writes features for the Historical Novel Society and Historical Novel Review. Currently, she is nearing completion of her first art-related historical novel, Cut From The Earth, a story of Portuguese tile and its surprising makers – The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 – and the wisdom of nature to guide and heal. Visit...
Alison Morton
Alison Morton writes Roman-themed alternative history thrillers with strong heroines. A ‘Roman nut’ since age 11, she has visited sites throughout Europe including the alma mater, Rome. Both INCEPTIO, the first in the Roma Nova series, which was also shortlisted for the 2013 International Rubery Book Award, and PERFIDITAS, the second in series, have been honoured with the B.R.A.G. Medallion. Alison’s third book SUCCESSIO came out in June 2014. Connect with Alison at...
Ann Chamberlin
Ann Chamberlin is the author of fourteen historical novels and a non-fiction History Of Women’s Seclusion in The Middle East. Her trilogy set in the 16th-century Ottoman Empire was on the bestsellers list in Turkey for over six months. She is the author of many plays which have been produced across the US from Seattle to New York. JIHAD, produced by New Perspectives Theatre in New York City, won The Off-Off Broadway Review’s best new play of the year in 1996. She lives in an old farmhouse on nearly...
Bryan Crockett
Bryan Crockett, Ph.D., teaches and writes as a professor of English literature at Loyola University Maryland. His first novel, Love’s Alchemy, short-listed for the HNS Novel Award and the Tuscany Prize, features the brilliant, tormented poet and adventurer John Donne as he attempts to outwit the Machiavellian politician Robert Cecil. Love’s Alchemy will be released by Five Star in March, 2015. Review copies are available at the 2014 HNS Conference. Crockett enjoys reading (of course), playing in the surf, and working with his hands. He once designed a house...
Hazel Gaynor
Hazel Gaynor is a novelist and freelance writer. Her debut novel THE GIRL WHO CAME HOME – A Novel of the Titanic (William Morrow/HarperCollins) was published in April 2014 and quickly became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Hazel was the recipient of the 2012 Cecil Day Lewis award for Emerging Writers and is a guest blogger and features writer for national Irish writing website writing.ie for which she has interviewed Philippa Gregory and Sebastian Faulks, among others. Originally from Yorkshire, she now lives in Ireland with...
Andrew Taylor
Andrew Taylor is a crime and historical novelist, winner of the Cartier Diamond Dagger and other awards. He is the only person to have won the Historical Dagger three times. His books include the international bestseller, The American Boy (a Richard and Judy selection); the Roth Trilogy (filmed for TV as Fallen Angel); the Lydmouth Series; Bleeding Heart Square; The Anatomy of Ghosts; Broken Voices, an Edwardian ghost story; The Scent of Death, set in eighteenth-century New York; and The Silent Boy, set in the French Revolution. For more...
Elisabeth Gifford
Elisabeth Gifford studied French literature and world religions at Leeds University. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway College. Secrets of the Sea House (The Sea House in the US) is shortlisted for the HWA Crown debut. Her second novel Return to Fourwinds is set around the Second World War and explores the cost of having to keep secrets from those you love. Her third novel will follow some of the 1% who escaped the Warsaw Ghetto. She is married with three children. She has written...
Lindsey Davis
Historical novelist Lindsey Davis is known for The Course of Honour, the true story of the Emperor Vespasian and his mistress Caenis, and for her twenty volume mystery series featuring Roman detective, Falco. Master and God set the scene for Albia in the paranoid reign of Domitian. She has also written Rebels and Traitors, an epic novel set in the English Civil War and Commonwealth; this year she contributes to the Quick Read series, with A Cruel Fate, also set in the Civil War. She has won the CWA...
Anthony Riches
Anthony Riches holds a degree in Military Studies from Manchester University. He began writing the story that would become the first novel in the Empire series, Wounds of Honour, after visiting Housesteads Roman fort in 1996. He works full time in IT consultancy, and lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and three children, although he can occasionally be found roaming Hadrian’s Wall in Roman armour and swearing never to do so...
Robyn Young
Robyn Young was born in Oxford and grew up in the Midlands and Devon. Her first novel, Brethren, went straight into the Sunday Times top ten and became the bestselling hardback debut of 2006. Robyn’s new trilogy is based on the life of Robert Bruce. The third novel, Kingdom, is published June 2014 on the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. Alongside writing novels, she has collaborated on a WWII screenplay. Her books have been published in 22 countries in 19 languages and sold over 2 million...
Philip Stevens
Philip Stevens is an award-winning film and theatre director. Following critically acclaimed tours of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’, his 2010 Viking short film ‘Northmen’ was nominated for the Polar Film Festival in Scandinavia, The British Society of Cinematographers’ New Cinematography Night, Key Shorts Film Festival and a Royal Television Society award for best short drama. His short film ‘Greasepaint’ won the 2011 Royal Television Society award for best short drama. More recently, his teaser trailer ‘Humans’ won the Celtx Seeds film award, has been...
Giles Kristian
Having once been lead singer in a 1990s pop group, Giles Kristian is now a bestselling historical novelist, author of the acclaimed RAVEN Viking trilogy and a series of books about a family torn apart during the Civil War. In his new novel – God of Vengeance – Giles returns to the world of the Vikings to tell of the beginnings of Sigurd and his celebrated fictional fellowship. Giles lives in...
Ann Weisgarber
Ann Weisgarber, who lives in Texas, is the author of The Promise and The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. The Promise was shortlisted for the 2014 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. In the U. S., it is a Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist and is shortlisted for the Ohioana Book Award. The Personal History of Rachel DuPree was nominated for 2009 Orange Prize and the Orange Award for New Writers. In the U. S., it won the Stephen Turner Award for New Fiction and the Langum...
Harry Sidebottom
Harry Sidebottom was brought up in racing stables in Newmarket where his father was a trainer. He had a basket saddle on a donkey before he could walk. He was educated at various schools and universities, including Oxford, where he took his Doctorate in Ancient History at Corpus Christi College. In similar fashion he has taught at various universities including Oxford, where he is now Fellow and Director of Studies in Ancient History at St Benets Hall, and Lecturer in Ancient History at Lincoln College. His main scholarly research...
Suzannah Dunn
Launched in 1990 with her debut novel, Darker Days Than Usual, Suzannah Dunn wrote a further 5 critically acclaimed contemporary novels, and a short story collection, published by Flamingo, before writing her first historical novel, The Queen of Subtleties, which was published in 2004. She has since written a further three bestselling historical novels, The Sixth Wife, The Queen’s Sorrow and The Confession of Katherine Howard (a Richard & Judy pick in 2011). The May Bride is her new...
Angus Donald
Angus Donald is the author of the bestselling Outlaw Chronicles, which are set in the 12th/13th centuries and feature a gangster-ish Robin Hood in a meticulously researched medieval setting. He was educated at Marlborough College and Edinburgh University and has worked as a fruit-picker in Greece, a waiter in New York and as an anthropologist studying magic and witchcraft in Indonesia. For the past 25 years, he has been a journalist in Hong Kong, India, Afghanistan and London. He is married to Mary, with whom he has two young...
jay Dixon
jay Dixon is a freelance editor, specialising in historical fiction. She has written an analysis of the romance fiction of Mills & Boon, as well as numerous articles on Georgette Heyer and given many talks on various aspects of historical fiction. Her current interest is how place can be used to highlight the theme of a novel, or be used to set the atmosphere – the obvious example here being the ancient castle in a Gothic...
Fenella Miller
Fenella Jane Miller was born in the Isle of Man. Her father was a Yorkshire man and her mother the daughter of a Rajah. She has worked as a nanny, cleaner, field worker, hotelier, chef, secondary and primary teacher and is now a full time writer. She has over thirty Regency romantic adventures published plus one Jane Austen re-telling and three WW2 historical novels. She lives in a pretty, riverside village in Essex with her husband. She has two adult children and three...