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First few pages of Levitation For Beginners
Whenever I think of what happened all those decades ago, what comes to mind is something I know for a fact had nothing to do with it. What I picture is the injured, abraded face of my teacher’s son. A bloodied and bruised twelve- or thirteen- year- old, unfit that day to attend his own…
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Extra material for The Queen Of Subtleties
It’s a story with everything, isn’t it: you name it, but any list would have to include love and passion, heartbreak, scandal, rivalry, politics and the pursuit of power, revolution (kind of ie the reformation), paranoia, betrayal and murder. And – particularly good, in my view – it’s all true, too! A big plus for…
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Extra material for The Sixth Wife
The Sixth Wife focusses on the last days (well, year and a half) of Katherine Parr, Henry’s sixth wife, the one who survived him (…by a year and a half). Her story fascinates me, because she was such a clever, sensible woman, so good a judge of character, outstandingly diplomatic, not only surviving difficult (indeed,…
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Extra material for The Queen’s Sorrow
Mary Tudor was England’s first ruling queen: something that most of us forget, if we ever knew it. Her five-year reign, overshadowed by that of her half-sister Elizabeth, is notorious for the burning at the stake of almost three hundred ‘heretics’. For many of us who do know something of Mary, it’s only that she’s…
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Extra material for The Confessions Of Katherine Howard
Almost nothing is known about Katherine Howard (not even how old she was – she’s estimated to have been between seventeen and twenty at the time of her execution) and there are no verified likelinesses of her. Unfortunately for Katherine, what we do know of is her sexual history, which we know in great, lurid…
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Extra material for The May Bride
Chances are, if you’re a Tudor afficionado, you’ve come across the Seymour family scandal of the 1520s. But you’re probably thinking: Remind me again? It’s not your fault: there’s almost nothing, officially, to know. As far as I’m aware, the historical record gives us only this: Edward Seymour – eldest brother of Henry V111’s third…
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Extra material for The Lady Of Misrule
Nine things you (probably) didn’t know about the Nine Days Queen…
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The History Girls Interview
I first met Suzannah Dunn in 2008 when she was my tutor on an Arvon course. That week was an important turning point for me – Suzannah, an insightful and inspiring teacher, encouraged me to begin writing the novel that would eventually become my debut, The Crimson Ribbon.
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Extra material for Alys Twist
It’s not a mistake, not an oversight – I do realise English hasn’t always been spoken as it nowadays is. Nor is it some silly kind of attention-seeking, a for-the-sake-of-it bid to stand out. No, I do have my reasons, and the first is simply that we don’t know how sixteenth century people spoke. We…
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Why The Modern Language?
It’s not a mistake, not an oversight – I do realise English hasn’t always been spoken as it nowadays is. Nor is it some silly kind of attention-seeking, a for-the-sake-of-it bid to stand out. No, I do have my reasons, and the first is simply that we don’t know how sixteenth century people spoke. We…