Anne's Blog

It's at about this time of every year that I get nostalgic for an Easter-family Christmas. (Yes, I have heard all the Easter/Christmas jokes!) One of my first Christmas memories was at five years old during our three years in Germany. Our German nanny, Anneliese, taught my mother how to make an adventscrantz to hang in the hallway at the bottom of the wide staircase in our rented house in Hamburg. (My father was a British Army colonel and Port Commandant of the port just after WWII.) We learned the tradition of singing carols and lighting one of the candles each Sunday of the four weeks before Christmas. There were a few celebrations where we were not altogether as a family, while my parents lived in Egypt and we three kids were farmed out to grandparents, godparents or aged great-aunts--and sometimes not together. But when we were back as a family in England, music played a big part in the festivities--my father being a trained singer and a self-taught pianist, and all ...

Anne signing after the Jabberwocky launch on Nov. 15th. "But surely this isn't right?" I told the bellman of the brand new Trump Hotel in Chicago (yes, I know!). "I am just a lowly novelist." "I assure you this is your suite, madam," he replied, grinning and opening the door wider into two enormous rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and a marble bathroom with a bath I could swim laps in. I squeaked a "thank you," and he retired with a paltry tip in his hand. That was then --2009 to be exact--on one of the stops on my third book tour across the country in support of The King's Grace .. I'd made enough of a name for myself as a Simon & Schuster author to warrant them sending me to Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Portland OR, and Seattle. Now, it's couch-surfing with friends and Holiday Inns at our own expense. Then : At each airport I was met by an escort who drove me to the hotel and checked ...

Medieval bones found during renovations at the Tower of London recently. I found this new story really interesting pertaining to another medieval-bones discovery at the Tower... This discovery reminded me of the more famous unearthing of the alleged bones of the two young princes, who disappeared in Richard III's time, by workmen doing renovations at the Tower of London in the 1660s. So the story goes, the workers threw them in a heap with other rubbish but reported the finding to a higher up, who wondered if perhaps these were the bones of those princes and so retrieved them. Why would he have assumed they might be the princes' remains, you ask? Here's where Tudor propaganda once again comes to the fore. Sir Thomas More, writing at the court of Henry VIII, wrote "The Historie of King Richard III," a damning book about Richard, used by Shakespeare as one of his sources, in which More describes the princes' deaths by murderers sent by Richard: ...

I am so pleased to have been asked to share my thoughts about This Son of York with my friend and fellow historical-fiction author Sophie Perinot. If you haven't read her book Medici's Daughter about Marguerite of Valois (Queen Margot), then you are missing out! Sophie is a fabulous writer and has spent a weekend at our house when she was a panelist at the Newburyport Literary Festival. Her latest collaboration is Ribbons of Scarlet about the French Revolution with five other authors. I'm in the middle of it and am learning A LOT! Thanks again for hosting me on your blog , Sophie!

The gatehouse of Brancepeth Castle, Co. Durham Most of my on-the-ground research has been in England and Belgium, and I pride myself that I have pretty much explored everywhere my characters would have walked, although not all the venues look the same as they did in the 15th century. Two incidents—one serendipitous and one funny—come to mind when I look back on nearly 20 years of traveling for research. In Mechelen, Belgium (Malines, Burgundy in Margaret of York’s time), my travel companion Maryann and I were traipsing around the town, she taking photos and I scribbling descriptions, making our way to one of Margaret’s principal residences. I knew it was now used as a theater but I really wanted to go inside and see if I felt any Margaret vibes. It was shut up tight, and I groaned. Undaunted, I circled the building and saw a modern, glassed-in staircase tacked on the back. Before Maryann could stop me, I tried the door, found it open and marched up the stairs, no knowing where ...

I have been to the Bosworth Battlefield Center three times, and each time I am impressed by the changes that have been made. When I was there in 2017 on my pilgrimage to my homeland to see Richard's grave and new tomb in Leicester, I was welcomed by the staff at Bosworth as a member of the Richard III Society and given the royal treatment. There is much to see and experience (photos below), and I will never forget being able to use an electric wheelchair (due to an ankle injury) and turn up the speed going down the same hill they think Richard charged down! My poor husband must have felt as helpless as Richard's closest friends did as they watched him suddenly take off down the hill to engage directly at Henry of Richmond. Scott was able to head me off before I turned the cart over, however, and crisis was averted. Not so for Richard, who, as we know, lost first his horse and then his life on Bosworth field on August 22nd, 1485. He was the last English king to die in battle. ...