One of Katherine’s dower castles, and one which she is known to have enjoyed. Hertford is where Katherine spent much time with Owen and their children. Today there is very little to see of her property other than the gatehouse, which is referred to as the ‘Castle’ but the setting is very attractive. It is not difficult imagining Katherine enjoying life here, isolated from the royal court. http://www.hertford.net/history/castle/

Leeds Castle, Kent

Another of Katherine’s dower castles which she is known to have visited. This is also the castle where Joanna of Navarre was kept in confinement by her stepson, Henry V, when she was charged with witchcraft. It is a beautiful place—although I imagine incredibly damp in winter and I doubt that Joanna recalled it with any affection—and it must be on your list of places to visit. Do drop into my blog on Leeds Castle to discover the royal connections to this extraordinarily beautiful palace: A Palace Fit for a Queen. http://www.anneobrienbooks.com/blog/

Knaresborough Castle, North Yorkshire

Another of Katherine’s dower properties. I’m not certain that she ever visited Knaresborough, but she may just have done so when she accompanied Henry on their progress through the north in their months together when we know that she was at Pontefract, York and Beverley. It is splendidly situated on a cliff overlooking the River Nidd. http://www.knaresborough.co.uk/castle/

Bermondsey Abbey

The abbey, where Katherine went into retreat in the last sad months of her life, is no longer in existence, the site of it covered with later buildings, but reconstructions have allowed some archaeological investigations and the outline of some of the buildings that Katherine would have known have been discovered. http://www.londononline.co.uk/abbeys/bermondsey/

Hereford

This is an important city for the final days of Owen Tudor. Taken prisoner after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, when Edward, Earl of March defeated the Lancastrian army, Owen was taken to Hereford and executed in the market place. He was buried in Greyfriars. The remnants in Hereford are not outstanding, but Owen can be discovered. Try my blog: Owen Tudor: a Right Royal Revenge http://www.anneobrienbooks.com/blog/

And for those straying as far as France:

Hotel de in St Pol in Paris

This royal palace where Katherine spent her earliest turbulent years no longer exists. It was completely destroyed in the early sixteenth century, except for one wall of the church.

Convent at Poissy

Unfortunately this too no longer exists.

Church of St Jean-au-Marche, Troyes

The scene of Henry V’s marriage to Katherine. This can of course still be visited. A lovely church.

http://en.tourisme-troyes.com/discover/the-city-of-10-churches/saint-jean-au-marche-church-13th-14th-c

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

I was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire. After gaining a BA Honours degree in History at Manchester University and a Master’s degree in education at Hull, I lived in the East Riding for many years as a teacher of history. Always a prolific reader, I enjoyed historical fiction and was encouraged to try my hand at writing. Success in short story competitions spurred me on.

Leaving teaching—but not my love of history—I wrote my first historical romance, a Regency, which was published by Mills & Boon in 2005. To date ten historical novels and a novella, ranging from medieval through the English Civil War and Restoration and back to Regency, have been published in the UK, North America and Australia, as well as in translation throughout Europe and in Japan.

I now live with my husband in an eighteenth-century timber-framed cottage in the depths of the Welsh Marches in Herefordshire. It is a wild, beautiful place on the borders between England and Wales, renowned for its black-and-white timbered houses, ruined castles and priories and magnificent churches. It is steeped in history, famous people and bloody deeds, as well as ghosts and folklore, all of which give me inspiration and sources for my writing, particularly in medieval times.

My two previous historical novels:

Devil’s Consort: the marvellous story of a medieval Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who fought to hold her own power in a world dominated by men. Dynamic, charismatic, she divorced one husband to claim another. As for going on Crusade…

Virgin Widow, the story of Anne Neville, wife of Richard III. What if there truly was an emotional connection between Anne and Richard…?

The King’s Concubine, the dramatic ‘rags to riches’ tale of Alice Perrers, infamous mistress to King Edward III.

The King’s Concubine was the first novel in a series of Wives and Mistresses in the years of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The Forbidden Queen, telling the story of beautiful yet tragic Katherine de Valois, wife of Henry V and Owen Tudor, is the second.

I am now working on a novel of a royal mistress, the most famous of them all, who simply could not be omitted: Katherine Swynford and her famously passionate love affair with John, Duke of Lancaster.

WHY I WRITE…

I recall the days, when I was still teaching history, when I wanted to write but found it difficult. What to write, how to construct a plot, how to make it interesting—I never seemed to make any progress. What do I write about? That was the real problem. I felt an urge to write, but the subject matter defeated me. When I did, short stories were as much as I could cope with, and I admit to still finding it hard to write stories set in contemporary situations. The inspiration hit me when I realised that I could use what I knew: when I discovered the rich vein of history as subject matter, my imagination was fired. Now I find writing a compulsive necessity in my life, the ideas springing from a combination of events, characters and conflicts that enable me to visualise a situation. When my interest is caught, I feel a need to breathe life into a scene or situation by allowing the characters to speak. I particularly enjoy writing about medieval women. Their lives may be very different from our own, the pressures of family and politics and religion, the place they are expected to occupy in society, yet their emotions are no different. What a delight it is to make these women come alive again.

I write because I enjoy the experience—both the process of it and its end result.

Q&A ON WRITING

What do you love the most about being a writer?

I think it is the control factor. Manipulating and directing characters to allow them—or sometimes to force them—to tell the story so that distant historical events come alive through conversation and the interaction of characters, proving that in some ways we are not too different today from our ancestors. We are driven by the same ambitions and motivations. I love seeing the scenes develop as the characters speak.

Where do you go for inspiration?

In general, my garden. Weeding a flower bed or picking raspberries frees the mind to allow ideas to flow. But ideas come in the most unlikely places. I once plotted the whole of an historical whodunnit on a motorway in a traffic jam. If I need a specific atmosphere I might visit a place associated with the character. When researching Anne Neville I visited Tewkesbury Abbey and the adjacent battle field—Tewkesbury is quite close to where I live. I know Middleham Castle well from my days of living in Yorkshire. Eleanor of Aquitaine presented me with some difficulties, but a visit to Goodrich Castle gave me the atmosphere of a small border fortress in the early twelfth century. I have also visited the magnificent Angevin tombs at Fontrevault, as well as the castle at Chinon and the remarkable ruins of Old Sarum, both fortresses where Henry kept Eleanor imprisoned.

For atmosphere for both Alice Perrers and Katherine de Valois, it has given me an excellent excuse to revisit some of the royal palaces in London. It is a great pity that many of the manors and palaces—such as Havering-atte-Bower—associated with Alice and Edward no longer exist.

Leeds Castle is a true gem, and very redolent with Katherine’s love affair with Owen Tudor.

Now I have the lovely anticipation of visiting the palaces of John of Gaunt next year, particularly Kenilworth. What a terrible shame that the great palace of The Savoy on the banks of the Thames was destroyed in 1381 in the Peasants’ Revolt.

Music helps for atmosphere and inspiration too. I have just discovered the Mediaeval Baebes. Their take on medieval music is stunning.

This year I have discovered another source of inspiration after visiting a re-enactment of the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross. The re-enactment community was something completely new for me. I don’t think I had realised their commitment to all things authentic. I loved it.

What one piece of advice would you give to a writer wanting to start a career?

To sit down and write. It is so easy, as I know, to make excuses of lack of time, lack of ideas, lack of somewhere to sit and write. I made these excuses for years. Whether it’s longhand or by PC, it will not happen unless you accept that it’s a time-consuming, often inconvenient and lonely exercise. On the other side of the coin, it can become an all-embracing way of life, bringing amazing enjoyment and fulfilment.

But you have to make a start—and persist by working out a routine and sticking to it, even if it’s a somewhat haphazard routine.

Which book do you wish you had written?

I think it has to be Dorothy Dunnett’s The Game of Kings—see my top ten books—and the other five to complete the Lymond series. I was seriously hooked when I read the first of them. I don’t think I will ever find a better advocate of historical fiction. In 2012 I felt it a great honour to be invited to speak at the Dorothy Dunnett Literary Lunch in Manchester in July.

How did you feel when your first book was signed?

Astonished, I think. The timescale from starting writing, through agents and publishers, and the inevitable rejections, is so vast and success seems to be an impossibility. It is difficult to remain confident and patient. The acceptance of my first book was wonderful—and definitely worthy of a bottle of champagne with my husband. It is still a great delight to see my books on the shelves…

How do you begin writing characters based on real historical figures and do they ever surprise you as you write?

Reading to begin with—any biography of the historical character. Once I have a plan of their life—main dates and events—with overlapping plans to indicate where they interact with the other characters in the story, then I make a list of the scenes which will obviously bring some element of tension or excitement or emotion into the story. This is most important, I find. I also make a list of areas which can be omitted or given a mere passing reference, with the pace of the story in mind or its relevance to the overall novel. Sometimes events just don’t fit and it’s as important to recognise these as it is the explosively important ones. Although sometimes it surprises me—that scenes I’ve jettisoned demand to be included when I begin writing.

Characters certainly surprise me. Sometimes they resist the direction I wish them to take. Sometimes they carry conversations into directions I had no idea of. Characters develop as I write, so I have to take this into consideration and allow them to be headstrong if that is what they wish. I know I must not force a character into an action that is not in keeping with the character I have given them. If a particular action is vital to the story, then it may be that I have to tweak the character.

Do you have a favourite character in The Forbidden Queen and what is it you like about that character?

It has to be Katherine herself. I have to admire her inherent strength of character that allowed her to grow and mature throughout the novel. At the same time, I think I fell a little in love with Owen Tudor. Who wouldn’t…?

What kind of research goes into your writing process?

General: I immerse myself in the period so that I know how people lived and to some extent thought. I need a sense of place and time for my characters. I have a good selection of reference books—I live near Hay on Wye, a magnificent place for browsing for books—on food and fashion, architecture and gardens, health, sex and witchcraft, so that I can put my characters into a scene. This research tends to be ongoing throughout the time I am writing the novel.