Elizabethan Week, Day Five: Friday Fantasy Real Estate

Every Friday, I waste time, er, do Important Research, searching out fantasy houses I would love to live in.  For Elizabethan Week, in order to make all our Tudor fantasies come true, I found St. Clere's Hall!  A Grade I Listed house, it was mostly built between 1340-60 but includes Tudor additions (including a library from 1500!), a moat, a stable, and 18 acres.  What do you think??  Would we have to wear our ruffs if we lived here?

Listing here

Elizabethan Week, Day Four: Secondary Characters

One of the most fun parts of writing historical fiction (for me, anyway!) is finding ways to weave real events and real people into the stories.  I am a history geek, and have been ever since I was a kid, so stepping into a library and diving into a pile of research books is a raucously fun day to me!!  They start to really come alive for me when I "see" them in the middle of my own world...

Book two of the Kate Haywood series (Murder at Westminster Abbey, out in April 2014!) centers around Queen Elizabeth's coronation, so it involves lots of historical figures--Robert Dudley, Lady Catherine Grey and her mother Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, etc.  Book one, Murder at Hatfield House, is set in a quieter place, with everyone keeping their heads down in the dangerous, dark last days of Queen Mary, waiting to see what will happen next.  There aren't many "real" characters (though I would count Queen Mary among them--she never makes an appearance, but she is in the middle of everyone's thoughts!).  Here are a few people I did use:

--Jane Dormer, future Duchess of Feria (1538-1612), a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, beautiful, betrothed to a Spanish count, future center of the Catholic English opposition abroad.  She only makes a brief appearance here, but her arrival at Hatfield signals that things are about to change in a major way....

--Her fiance, the Duke of Feria (1520-71), King Philip's ambassador to England until 1559.  He does make an appearance in the story, a dinner at Brocket Hall, the home of Elizabeth's friend--an event that actually occurred!

--At the end we see William Cecil and Kat Ashley, Elizabeth's chief secretary and lady-in-waiting respectively, who had both already served her for many years!  We'll see more of them in book 2....

Elizabethan Week, Day Three: Palaces

If I listed all the Tudor-era palaces and castles, I think we would be here all day!!  There are so many, each with their own fascinating history and legends.  So I will stick to places I've actually used so far in my Kate Haywood books, with links where they're available.  (A great source for these places is Simon Thurley's The Royal Palaces of Tudor England.  I also keep lots of pics on my Pinterest boards for the mysteries--I am a Pinterest addict!)

First up: Hatfield House, where Elizabeth lived most of the time as a princess!  (There is only a smallish section of her house left, called Hatfield Old House, but the newer palace, built by the Burghleys in the next century, is also worth a look!)

Link to Hatfield House

The Tower!  (I love visiting The Tower, even though I always get a creepy, shivery feeling when I'm there, and am sometimes prone to crying just a little bit.  I freaked my mom out the first time she went there with me, when i started crying over things that happened in 1536...)

The Tower of London site

Whitehall!  Of course, the massive complex of Tudor times is almost completely gone, except for the Banqueting Hall and a few archaeological remains...

Whitehall Site

Hampton Court (I love visiting Hampton Court!!  It just "feels" so Tudor, and I am a sucker for costumed tour guides.  I dream of being able to attend one of their banquets or jousts someday.  I am also hoping for a tiny glimpse of Katherine Howard's ghost...)

Hampton Court

Westminster Palace & Abbey

This is the Great Hall where coronation banquets took place (I loved writing about the lavish coronation festivities for book two, Murder at Westminster Abbey!)

Westminster Abbey

And the book I am working on now takes place at the long-gone Nonsuch Palace!

The Wikipedia entry for Nonsuch...

Which is your favorite??  Do you have any good palace-visiting stories???

Elizabethan Week Day Two: Elizabeth on Film

Welcome to Elizabethan Week, Day Two!  I am celebrating my favorite historical era all week to mark the release of my first Ekizabethan Mystery, Murder at Hatfield House!!!  (Out today!  See it here on Amazon...)  Elizabeth here is very happy about it. :)

Today we're going to take a look at various actresses who have taken on the Herculean task of embodying the queen on film.  There are a LOT of them, so let's get started!

 Elizabeth Number One:  Cate Blanchett (the younger and the older...)

 Helen Mirren

 Anne-Marie Duff

 Glenda Jackson

 Bette Davis

 Flora Robson

Judy Dench


Who is your favorite Elizabeth????  (when I'm working on the mystery series, since it's set in the late 1550s, I see Cate Blanchett in my mind most of the time...)

Elizabethan Week, Day One: Hottie Tudor Monday

To celebrate the release of my first Elizabethan Mystery this week, Murder at Hatfield House, we are going to look at some fun Tudor history this week!  And we're starting out with something very fun indeed.  I used to do a feature here called Hottie Monday, so I thought we could take a look at some of the hotties of the Tudor age, and see which one we like best....

First up: the big daddy of them all, Henry VIII!

The original....

Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Henry as hipster?)

Ray Winstone (Henry as Cockney thug?)

Keith Mitchell

Charles Laughton (Henry as Ren faire turkey leg eater?)

Richard Burton


Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester!

 Jeremy Irons

 Joseph Fiennes

 Tom Hardy

 Robert Hardy

The Original

And his stepson, Robert Deveruex, Earl of Essex!

 Hugh Dancy

 Robin Ellis (aka Poldark)

Erroll Flynn

The Original

Hans Matheson

Walter Raleigh...

 Clive Owen

 Vincent Price (!!!)

The original...


And a couple of one-offs....

 Kevin McKidd as the Duke of Norfolk

Henry Cavill as Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk (my personal favorite!)


So, time to vote!  Which is your favorite of the Tudor hotties???

The schedule for the rest of the week:
Tuesday: favorite film Elizabeths
Wednesday: Tudor castles
Thursday: a closer look at historical secondary characters
Friday: fun research facts I've uncovered
Saturday: Heroine of the Weekend