If you love History, you are in for a treat…

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Survivor. Rebel. Conspirator. Mother and grandmother of kings. Margaret Beaufort was one of the most remarkable and influential women of the Middle Ages.

Born the daughter of the Duke of Somerset into a century of conflict, and a descendant of Edward III, she was married at twelve; a mother, orphan and widow at thirteen; and rode the vicissitudes of the Wars of the Roses, and two further marriages, to see her only son Henry ascend the throne of England as the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty. She helped to bring about the marriage of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York, a union that helped heal the wounds of a bitterly divided nation.

During Henry's reign, she exerted considerable influence at court, and played a part in the upbringing of her grandson, the future Henry VIII.She was a lifelong artistic patron and supporter of academia. In old age she founded a professorship of divinity and two colleges at Cambridge University. By the time of her death in June 1509, she had outlived by two months the son whose birth fifty-two years previously had so nearly killed her.

Lauren Johnson's life of Margaret Beaufort brings its subject vividly and memorably to life. She delineates the decades of political upheaval that were the backdrop to her long and resilient career, and highlights the shrewdness that kept her afloat amid the churning waters of a brutal civil war, but she also tells Margaret's story with a profound and touching humanity. This was a woman whose body had to endure the trauma of childbirth when she was little more than a child; who saw her baby boy on only a handful of occasions before he reached manhood; who braved decades of danger and uncertainty, but succeeded in guiding her son – through courage, political astuteness and sheer persistence – to the greatest prize of all: the crown of England.

'The best life of Henry VI now in print' DAN JONES.
'Vivid, absorbing and richly detailed' HELEN CASTOR.
'A well-crafted moving account of a tragic reign' MICHAEL JONES.

First-born son of a warrior father who defeated the French at Agincourt, Henry VI of the House Lancaster inherited the crown not only of England but also of France, at a time when Plantagenet dominance over the Valois dynasty was at its glorious height.

And yet, by the time he was done to death in the Tower of London in 1471, France was lost, his throne had been seized by his rival, Edward IV of the House of York, and his kingdom had descended into the violent chaos of the Wars of the Roses.

Henry VI is perhaps the most troubled of English monarchs, a pious, gentle, well-intentioned man who was plagued by bouts of mental illness. In Shadow King, Lauren Johnson tells his remarkable and sometimes shocking story in a fast-paced and colourful narrative that captures both the poignancy of Henry's life and the tumultuous and bloody nature of the times in which he lived.

The King is dead: long live the King. In 1509, Henry VII was succeeded by his son Henry VIII, second monarch of the house of Tudor. But this is not the familiar Tudor world of Protestantism and playwrights. Decades before the Reformation, ancient traditions persist: boy bishops, pilgrimage, Corpus Christi pageants, the jewel-decked shrine at Canterbury.

So Great a Prince offers a fascinating glimpse of a country and people that at first appear alien – in calendar and clothing, in counting the hours by bell toll – but which on closer examination are recognisably and understandably human. Lauren Johnson tells the story of 1509 not just from the perspective of king and court, but of merchant and ploughman; apprentice and laundress; husbandman and foreign worker. She looks at these early Tudor lives through the rhythms of the ritual year, juxtaposing political events in Westminster and the palaces of southeast England with the liturgical and agricultural events that punctuated the year for the ordinary people of England.

1193. A Crusader returns from the Holy Land to his home in Nottinghamshire, where he is known as a murderer and outlaw. His name is Robin of Locksley. After a youth spent with lowborn friends Robin is determined to settle into the role his father wanted for him: a lord dispensing justice to the county. But a false rumour of his death in the East has stolen Robin's lands from him, and the country he left only four years before is now crippled by taxation and struggling to maintain the King's law. It seems Robin must choose between his desire to regain his lost inheritance and his intention to help the commons beneath his lordship. In this vividly imagined and carefully researched recreation of the era of King Richard 'the Lionheart', England is torn between the landowning Norman lords and their English subjects, and it soon becomes clear to Robin that more can be accomplished outside the law than within it...In this her first novel, Lauren Johnson brings the sensibilities of a historian to the project, presenting us with an authentic depiction of the sights, sounds, conflicts and furies that defined this era and those at home within its confines. A story of redemption, loss, romance and adventure, the novel possesses all the component features necessary to enthrall.

Dan Jones

Wall Street Journal

Daily Telegraph

New Statesman

The Times

Times Literary Supplement

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Medieval Warfare

Times Literary Supplement

History of Royals (U.K.)

Sir Read-a-lot

Michael K. Jones

Helen Castor