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Wordly Women: Elizabeth Chadwick

30/08/202530/07/2025Sharon Bennett Connolly2 Comments

Throughout my writing career, I have been very lucky to have enjoyed the friendship of Elizabeth Chadwick. A truly generous person, Elizabeth and I shared a stage at the Newark Book Festival in July 2018. I had only published my first book, Heroines of the Medieval World the previous September, and I was a nervous wreck. Elizabeth was the star of the show, I was the newcomer, and she could have easily dominated the conversation – no one would have blamed her. Everyone was there to see her, not me. But Elizabeth was calm, encouraging and made sure I had my say. I will never forget that.

So, it is an honour and a pleasure to welcome Elizabeth to History … the Interesting Bits as part of my Wordly Women series, to discuss her writing career and her love of history – and William Marshal, of course!

Sharon: Hi, Elizabeth. So, what got you into writing?

Elizabeth: I came into the world as a storyteller. I can remember very clearly telling myself stories with beginnings, middles and ends at the age of three. Throughout my childhood I made up stories, inspired from illustrations I liked in books. I’d invent whole tales around pieces of artwork, say from the wonderful pages of Ladybird books. Even at a young age I was asking myself ‘What if this happened?’ Who, where, what why? I learned the art of story telling just by having fun – and reading a lot obviously. I didn’t write anything down until my mid-teens by which time I decided that I wanted to bring some posterity to my verbal stories and so began writing them down. I was fifteen when I wrote my first historical novel, purely for fun, and enjoyed the experience so much that I decided that I wanted to do this for my career. Eight unpublished novels later I finally got there.

Sharon: Tell us about your books.

Elizabeth: I write historical fiction set in the Middle Ages, mostly covering England and France with a bit of the Middle East thrown in. I began writing my stories with imaginary protagonists but then moved on to biographical fiction. They are character-driven stories of the life and times of the people, focussing on their family lives interwoven with political and emotional drama. I research the period meticulously and blend fact and fiction with an emphasis on telling an engrossing story without depriving the facts of their integrity. I have award winning novels and New York Times bestsellers among my published novels to date.

Sharon: What attracts you to the medieval period?

Elizabeth: It was actually chance that brought me to the Middle Ages. As I’ve mentioned above, I told myself stories throughout my childhood. I enjoyed historical TV dramas and became quite hooked on The Six Wives of Henry VIII starring Keith Michell. That led me to write down my first ever story over the summer holidays when I was fourteen. I enjoyed the exercise, but ran out of steam, however, I’d laid the groundwork. I became very enamoured of a knight in a children’s TV program put out by the BBC and dubbed from the French. It was called Desert Crusader, In French it was Thibaud ou les Croisades. My weekly doses of Desert Crusader led me to take up my pen again, and this time I didn’t run out of steam. This time I wrote a whole novel. It started out as a piece of fan fiction I guess, but within two chapters had taken on a life of its own – rather like me making up brand new stories to the Ladybird books of my childhood. Once I had the basic visual inspiration I was off. Since I knew nothing about the Holy Land and very little about the Middle Ages I had to begin researching because I wanted my story to have veracity and feel real. However if I hadn’t fallen for actor Andre Lawrence as Thibaud, ‘Le Chevalier Blanc’ I might never have taken to the Medieval period the way I did. Such are moments of chance in our lives.

Sharon: Who is your favourite medieval character and why?

Elizabeth: It would have to be the great William Marshal. You don’t get many of his kind to the pound. He had an amazing life and great integrity. He rose from the ranks of the ordinary jobbing nobility and a life in the military, and by using his charisma, intelligence, physical abilities and sheer personality, came to the attention of the Angevin royal family. Having saved the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, he was taken into royal service. He was a champion of the tourneys, a far-travelled pilgrim, a counsellor of kings. He had his ups and downs and he wasn’t perfect by any manner of means, but the Angevins trusted him enough to give him a fantastic marriage to a great heiress (and they appear to have been very compatible despite a more than 20 year age gap). He became earl of Pembroke under King John and involved in the development of Magna Carta. When King John died, William took over the rule of England on behalf of John’s 9 year old son Henry III. He dealt with the volatile political situation in a way that showed he had a firm grasp of the politics and a practical knowledge of what to do. And at the battle of Lincoln in 1217, aged approx. 71, he saw off the French and got the country back on an even keel.

Sharon: Who is your least favourite medieval character and why?

Elizabeth: I don’t have a least favourite. Even the villains are interesting. I have some very least favourite modern politicians, but that’s because they’re in my face and I am having to deal with emotions engendered as consequences of their actions rather than being more objective. I do find it fascinating how people almost come to blows over Richard III and Henry VII and hold such passionate loyalties over a pair of men who are now bones. The War of the Roses is fought over and over and over again all day online! Having said that, I do admit I have a huge fondness for William Marshal which is certainly not dispassionate. I don’t however, get in a lather about King John!

Sharon: How do you approach researching your topic?

Elizabeth: I’ve been studying the Middle Ages since I was fifteen years old and I am a few decades older now, so I have a good grounding in the general research of the period. I don’t have to start from scratch. I research using academic and specialist books of which I have a wide-ranging library – in several rooms of my house! I research online these days – when I began my career that wasn’t an option, but now it is, and it’s more a case of limiting the information and knowing which are the bona fide sites. While there’s a great deal of marvellous research resources out there, it has to be said that sadly copious amounts of rubbish exist too and one has to become an expert at sifting. I might do bits of experimental living history. I used to re-enact before I ran out of time and I still have all the kit and friends in the business toward whom I can direct questions. I also have friends in the academic community who are very helpful.

Sharon: Tell us your ‘favourite’ medieval story you have come across in your research.

Elizabeth: I think that would have to be the great William Marshal who attended a tournament with his lord the Young King, eldest son of Henry II. During the tournament they captured another knight for ransom and brought him back to their own camp sitting on his horse with a lead rein. However, on the way there they had to pass some buildings and the captured knight lifted himself off his horse and shimmied up a gutter pipe and clambered onto a house gallery (upstairs veranda sort of thing). Meanwhile, William Marshal was riding along, holding the reins of a riderless horse and not realising his captive had absconded until the Young King, doubled up with laughter, let him know – he’d been in on the joke for a while!

Sharon: Tell us your least ‘favourite’ medieval story you have come across in your research.

Elizabeth: There are quite a few, but here’s a typical one. It would be in a work I was reading on criminal cases in Medieval Coventry. Someone stole a horse and was put in the stocks for it by the bailiff. But it was a very, very cold night and the criminal got frost bite which resulted in his lower legs perishing and then dropping off! He died, and the bailiff was arrested for murder – pretty gruesome!

Sharon: Are there any other eras you would like to write about?

Elizabeth: Arthurian might be interesting, although I’d need to do a lot of reading up because history has changed a lot since I became a fan of that era via various novels. When I first began writing as a teen, I almost wrote a Regency novel, but Medieval pipped Regency at the post. It might still be interesting to do, but again, I’d need to get stuck into the research so probably not.

Sharon: What are you working on now?

Elizabeth: I’ve just completed The Uncrowned Queen, the second part of Joan of Kent’s amazing story and I am now working on an untitled novel about Katherine Swynford and her two husbands – Hugh Swynford and John of Gaunt. I am finding it fascinating, especially the way research has moved on and changed datelines, nuances and our understanding of the period and the protagonists. It goes to show that so much of the time what we think we know is actually what we don’t know. Actually, if we are prepared to swallow long-cherished beliefs and re-learn, it’s immensely exciting and rewarding!

Sharon: And finally, what is the best thing about being a writer?

Elizabeth: Being your own boss to an extent. As long as I put in the word count, I can get up as I please and go to bed as I please. Equal with that are the many good friends I have made over my career, both the readers and the historians – and I’ve learned a lot of cool things too!

About the Author:

Elizabeth Chadwick is a UK million selling historical novelist whose works are based in the medieval period. She won a Betty Trask award for her first published novel The Wild Hunt and the RNA prize for Historical fiction in 2011 with To Defy A King. Her novel The Greatest Knight is a New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for film and TV together with several others in the same series. Specialising in the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in the life and times of William Marshal and the Angevin court, she occasionally lectures on the academic circuit and gives talks on historical tours. Elizabeth is also a member of The Royal Historical Society. When not writing, Elizabeth enjoys chatting to readers on all sorts of subjects but with a strong emphasis on reading and medieval history.

My books

Signed, dedicated copies of all my books are available through my online store.

Out now: Scotland’s Medieval Queens

Scotland’s history is dramatic, violent and bloody. Being England’s northern neighbour has never been easy. Scotland’s queens have had to deal with war, murder, imprisonment, political rivalries and open betrayal. They have loved and lost, raised kings and queens, ruled and died for Scotland. From St Margaret, who became one of the patron saints of Scotland, to Elizabeth de Burgh and the dramatic story of the Scottish Wars of Independence, to the love story and tragedy of Joan Beaufort, to Margaret of Denmark and the dawn of the Renaissance, Scotland’s Medieval Queens have seen it all. This is the story of Scotland through their eyes.

‘Scotland’s Medieval Queens gives a thorough grounding in the history of the women who ruled Scotland at the side of its kings, often in the shadows, but just as interesting in their lives beyond the spotlight. It’s not a subject that has been widely covered, and Sharon is a pioneer in bringing that information into accessible history.’ Elizabeth Chadwick (New York Times bestselling author)

Available now from Amazon and Pen and Sword Books

Also by Sharon Bennett Connolly:

Heroines of the Tudor World tells the stories of the most remarkable women from European history in the time of the Tudor dynasty, 1485-1603. These are the women who ruled, the women who founded dynasties, the women who fought for religious freedom, their families and love. Heroines of the Tudor World is now available for pre-order from Amberley Publishing and Amazon UK. Women of the Anarchy demonstrates how Empress Matilda and Matilda of Boulogne, unable to wield a sword themselves, were prime movers in this time of conflict and lawlessness. It shows how their strengths, weaknesses, and personal ambitions swung the fortunes of war one way – and then the other. Available from Bookshop.org, Amberley Publishing and Amazon UK. King John’s Right-Hand Lady: The Story of Nicholaa de la Haye is the story of a truly remarkable lady, the hereditary constable of Lincoln Castle and the first woman in England to be appointed sheriff in her own right. Available from all good bookshops Pen & Sword Books, bookshop.org and Amazon.

Defenders of the Norman Crown: The Rise and Fall of the Warenne Earls of Surrey tells the fascinating story of the Warenne dynasty, from its origins in Normandy, through the Conquest, Magna Carta, the wars and marriages that led to its ultimate demise in the reign of Edward III. Available from Pen & Sword Books, Amazon in the UK and US, and Bookshop.org. Ladies of Magna Carta: Women of Influence in Thirteenth Century England looks into the relationships of the various noble families of the 13th century, and how they were affected by the Barons’ Wars, Magna Carta and its aftermath; the bonds that were formed and those that were broken. It is now available in paperback and hardback from Pen & Sword, Amazon, and Bookshop.org. Heroines of the Medieval World tells the stories of some of the most remarkable women from Medieval history, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Julian of Norwich. Available now from Amberley Publishing and Amazon, and Bookshop.org. Silk and the Sword: The Women of the Norman Conquest traces the fortunes of the women who had a significant role to play in the momentous events of 1066. Available now from Amazon, Amberley Publishing, and Bookshop.org.

Alternate Endings: An anthology of historical fiction short stories including Long Live the King… which is my take what might have happened had King John not died in October 1216. Available in paperback and kindle from Amazon.

Podcast:

Have a listen to the A Slice of Medieval podcast, which I co-host with Historical fiction novelist Derek Birks. Derek and I welcome guests, such as Elizabeth Chadwick and Bernard Cornwell and discuss a wide range of topics in medieval history, from significant events to the personalities involved.

Every episode is also now available on YouTube.

Don’t forget! Signed and dedicated copies of all my books are available through my online bookshop.

For forthcoming online and in-person talks, please check out my Events Page.

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Wordly Women: Kathryn Warner

16/08/202502/07/2025Sharon Bennett ConnollyLeave a comment

I am very happy today to welcome historian Kathryn Warner to History…the Interesting Bits in a new instalment of my Author Spotlight series, Wordly Women. Kathryn is the ‘go to’ person for all-things Edward II. She has also written about John of Gaunt, the Beaumont kings of Jerusalem, the Clare sisters and her latest book is The Black Death in England: Journal of the Plague Years in the Fourteenth Century. Her books are always well research and enjoyable reads. And when we get together to chat on A Slice of Medieval, it is always a fabulous discussion and a pleasure.

So, over to Kathryn…

Sharon: Hi Kathryn, I would love to know what got you into writing?

Kathryn: In a nutshell, my passion for Edward II and his era! It was strange, because during my time at university studying medieval history, I’d never been that interested in him, but my fascination developed some years after I graduated. I started writing stories about him, then started a blog about him and his reign as well, because my passion was so overwhelming that I just had to get it down on paper or on a screen and share it with people. Some years later, I wrote some academic articles about him, then went on to write a full-length biography of Edward and his life and reign, which became my first published book.

Sharon: Tell us about your books.

Kathryn: I’ve written at least twenty non-fiction books now. My earlier ones are biographies and joint biographies, including Edward II’s queen Isabella of France, their daughter-in-law Philippa of Hainault, their grandson John of Gaunt, Edward II’s last and most powerful favourite Hugh Despenser the Younger, Edward’s nieces the de Clare sisters, and Edward III’s granddaughters. These days, I’m massively getting into social history too, and have written a book about aspects of life in London between 1300 and 1350, one about the victims and survivors of the fourteenth-century pandemics of the Black Death, and one called Life in a Medieval Town.

Sharon: What attracts you to the 14th century?

Kathryn: It was such an astonishingly dramatic and turbulent era. As well as the chaos of Edward II’s reign early in the century – battles, rebellions, executions, betrayals, changes of fortune, hatreds and passions, Edward’s forced abdication, and much else – there were natural disasters too. The pandemics of the Black Death are well known, especially the first one in 1348/49, but there was also a massive famine in England in the 1310s. Edward III began what we know as the Hundred Years War against France in the 1330s, his grandson Richard II witnessed the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, and so on. I really don’t think I’d have liked to live in the fourteenth century, haha, but it’s an endlessly fascinating era to research and write about.

Sharon: Who is your favourite 14th century person and why?

Kathryn: To the surprise of absolutely no one who knows me, Edward II! Without question, he’s one of England’s most unsuccessful kings in history, and was the first one who suffered the fate of deposition or forced abdication in 1327. His reign of just under 20 years is dramatic almost beyond the telling of it, as Edward lurched constantly from one crisis to the next, crises almost entirely of his own making. He was completely unsuited to the position he’d been born into, and was a deeply unconventional man by the standards of his era. I feel that he makes much more sense to us than he did to his contemporaries: he openly loved men, he enjoyed the company of his common subjects and even went on holiday with them, he enjoyed being outdoors and doing hard physical labour. Edward II, born in 1284, is exactly 700 years older than Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex, born in 1984, and I often think that Edward would have been much happier and more successful if he’d been born into the royal family of the late twentieth century than he was in his own lifetime.

Sharon: Who is your least favourite 14th century person and why?

Kathryn: That’s a tricky question to answer, really, as even the people I instinctively don’t tend to like all that much intrigue me and led fascinating lives that I want to delve into. Someone like Roger Mortimer, the first earl of March, for example. He played a massive role in Edward II’s downfall in 1326/27, and as such is someone I feel I should dislike, but I really don’t, because he’s such a complex fascinating person. It’s not Roger that I dislike, it’s the way he’s often been written in modern times, in this absurdly over-romanticised way as the adored lover and saviour of Edward II’s queen, Isabella of France. It flattens his character and turns him into a caricature that has very little to do with the person he actually was. So I can’t say that I have a least favourite fourteenth-century person, but I do often profoundly dislike the simplistic, one-dimensional ways in which many fourteenth-century people are depicted nowadays.

Sharon: How do you approach researching your topic?

Kathryn: I think a lot of people might be surprised at just at how many sources we have from the fourteenth century, and how much information there actually is once you start delving into them. In the period I write about, pretty well all the sources are written in Latin or French, and though many have been transcribed and translated, many have not. Looking at original documents in the National Archives is such a joy! I’ve found lots of wonderful details about Edward II and his life and household from his extant accounts, for example. I often fall down a rabbit-hole of research and emerge blinking hours later, and oddly enough, some of my best finds are things I stumbled upon by accident while researching something else.

Sharon: Tell us your ‘favourite’ 14th century story you have come across in your research.

Kathryn: While I was researching a book about London between 1300 and 1350, I came across this fab story. The rector of the church of St Margaret Lothbury in London around the year 1300, whose name was William (his last name was not recorded), had an insatiable curiosity about a disease he called Le Lou. This means ‘The Wolf’ in medieval French, and probably referred to the condition we now call lupus, which means ‘wolf’ in Latin. Believing that wolf flesh could cure the disease, William ordered a cask of four dead wolves from abroad (where exactly was not specified) to be sent to his church. By the time the dead animals arrived in London, however, their corpses had become ‘putrid’, and William was hauled before the court of the mayor of London, Elias Russel, on 5 January 1300, and ordered to explain himself. To me, this situation reveals several things that are worth knowing about the early fourteenth century. Firstly, that a man in England somehow managed to contact a person on the Continent who was willing and able to send him dead wolves; secondly, that officials around the year 1300 were aware that the welfare of the general public in a crowded city might be worsened by the presence of decaying animal corpses; and thirdly, that a person was deeply interested in a particular disease and cared about its victims, and attempted, albeit in a comically misguided way, to find a cure for it.

Sharon: Tell us your least ‘favourite’ 14th century story you have come across in your research.

Kathryn: It’s one that breaks my heart. At the start of the year 1349, Agnes Stokwell was living on Whitecross Street in London with her family, who consisted of her father Walter, a painter; her mother Joan; her older brother Laurence; and her three older sisters, Christine, Imania, and Alice. She also had an aunt named Isabel and an uncle named William, her father’s siblings, and her father’s apprentice Thomas Bournham lived in the household as well. The Stokwell family were pretty well-off and thriving, but by the end of 1349, all of them were dead in the first massive pandemic of the Black Death, except only Agnes. She was just seven years old, and within a few months had lost her entire family, every living relative; her parents, her four older siblings, and her aunt and uncle. Thankfully, her late father’s apprentice Thomas Bournham also lived through the plague, the only other survivor of the household, and was given custody of Agnes at the end of 1349. They both disappear from written record after that, or at least I’ve never been able to find them again, but I hope they lived long and thrived.

Sharon: Are there any other eras you would like to write about?

Kathryn: My second favourite era after the fourteenth century is the eleventh century. I did a few courses on Old English language, literature, history and culture at university, and loved it. I’m particularly interested in the first few decades of the 1000s – the end of Aethelred’s reign, the brief reign of his son Edmund Ironside, King Cnut and his son, and Emma of Normandy, who married both Aethelred and Cnut.

Sharon: What are you working on now?

Kathryn: My current project is provisionally titled Murder and Mayhem, and is about some of the violence, homicide, gangs and feuds in fourteenth-century England. There’s a wealth of material, almost too much, in fact! The book after that is about the royal English household in the late Middle Ages, which is a subject I’ve been wanting to write about for ages.

Sharon: Now that, I want to read!

Sharon: And finally, what is the best thing about being a writer?

Kathryn: For me, it’s the chance to immerse myself in the fourteenth century, to discover fascinating stories and to share them with readers. I also love that my time is unstructured, and I can write whenever I like and take breaks whenever I like, which suits me very well. And finally, it’s simply amazing that I’ve been able to turn my passion for fourteenth-century history into a job!