Margaret George specializes in epic fictional biographies of historical figures, taking pains to make them as factually accurate as possible without compromising the drama.
Her AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY VIII had its 25th publication anniversary in 2011 and continues to be popular.  ABC-TV based its 1999 Emmy-nominated “Cleopatra” miniseries on her THE MEMOIRS OF CLEOPATRA.
All of her books have been New York Times bestsellers, with twenty-one foreign editions.  Margaret’s father was in the Foreign Service and so she lived overseas for her early life, in such different places as tropical Taiwan, desert Israel, and cold war Berlin, all of which were great training for a novelist to be.  She started writing books about the same time as she could write at all, mainly for her own entertainment.
It was a diversion she never outgrew.  Her published works are: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HENRY VIII (1986), MARY QUEEN OF SCOTLAND AND THE ISLES (1992), THE MEMOIRS OF CLEOPATRA (1997), MARY CALLED MAGDALENE (2002), HELEN OF TROY (2006), ELIZABETH I (2011), and an illustrated children’s book, LUCILLE LOST (2006).  Margaret lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and Washington DC, and has a sextagenarian tortoise as a pet.

She is currently at work on a novel about the Emperor Nero, due for publication in late 2017.

Novelist, columnist, screenwriter and political activist Manda (MC) Scott trained as a veterinary surgeon in Glasgow and worked at the Universities of Cambridge and Dublin, specialising in anaesthesia. A brief three year stint as a Director of the computer games company Frontier Developments bridged the gap from veterinary medicine to professional writing.

Her novels have been short listed for an Orange Prize, nominated for an Edgar Award and translated into over twenty languages.  She was a long term columnist for the Glasgow Herald, is a reviewer for the Independent and has contributed to the Telegraph, Times, Daily Express and BBC History Magazine. She has appeared on Time Team as an expert on the Boudican era and on Radios 4 & 5 as a reviewer and commentator. She is the founder and former Chair of the Historical Writers’ Association.

Her early crime thrillers were all set in Scotland, while her move to historical novels took her south for the international best-selling Boudica: Dreaming series and then further afield for the ROME series of ancient world spy thrillers.  Her most recent novel, INTO THE FIRE is a dual timeline thriller featuring Capitaine Inès Picaut of the Orléans police as she investigates the third in a series of fires that are eating her city – an this most recent has eaten a man, too.  As the investigation continues, Picaut comes to understand that the lies and spin of the present are intimately linked with the lies and spin of an ancient past: the life of Jehanne d’Arc, known as the Maid of Orléans: the saviour of France, who was not the vapid mystic peasant of myth – although so many have invested so much in the mythology that they will kill to preserve the fiction.  As her investigation continues, so does that of Tod Rustbeard, adventurer, mercenary and spy, sent into the camp of France’s new military commander, to find the truth of her origins and to use that truth to destroy her. A Sunday Times Book of the Month/Year and ‘a Masterclass in historical writing’, this book breaks genres and sets a new baseline for multi-time line writing.

She is working on a sequel ACCIDENTAL GODS which continues the lives of the survivors of Into the Fire’s contemporary thread with the historical thread set in WW2 – exploring the relationship between with NSA/GCHQ and the SOE/Jedburghs agents of WWII.

She is also working on a television version of INTO THE FIRE, bought by a UK/US consortium and with the contemporary action moved to the US in 2020: what will America look like after four years of Trump/Bannon in the White House and with the next election on the horizon?

She is currently also taking an MA in Economics for Transition (that’s transition to a sustainable economy) at Schumacher College in Devon with particular interests in Universal Basic Income and the use of time in an automated culture – and in regenerative (Carbon negative) farming.

 

 

Maggie Craig writes Scottish historical fiction and non-fiction. Her non-fiction covers the Jacobite women and men of 1745, the Scottish Radical Rising of 1820 and Red Clydeside of the early 20th century. Her novels and family sagas are set in Edinburgh and her home town of Glasgow. She has served two terms on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland and is an experienced and popular speaker around Scotland’s libraries and book festivals. She now lives in her mother’s native Aberdeenshire.

 

Elizabeth Fremantle is the award winning author of Disobedient (HWA Gold Crown 2024). Set in seventeenth century Rome, it focuses on a year in the life of the remarkable painter and prodigy Artemisia Gentileschi. Another Rome-set novel, Sinners, publishes in July 2025, about the tragic Italian noblewoman Beatrice Cenci.

Elizabeth’s first novel, Queen’s Gambit was adapted for the screen as Firebrand, starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law. The film premiered in competition at Cannes Film Festival 2023, screened in cinemas in 2024 and is now streaming on Prime UK. A revised edition of the novel was published under the title Firebrand.

Fremantle is also the author of a quartet of novels set in the late Tudor period with the emphasis on women and power. Under the name E C Fremantle she has written two Stuart set historical thrillers The Poison Bed and The Honey and the Sting. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages.

She has contributed to a number of publications, including, The Sunday Times, Vogue uk, Vogue Paris, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. She also mentors aspiring writers.

She lives in London.

‘Fremantle is surely a major new voice in historical fiction.’ The bookseller

Lindsay Powell is a historical detective. He is motivated to uncover and tell the stories of the under-reported personalities and events of history in the belief that they deserve to be told if our knowledge and understanding of the past is to be complete. A historian, researcher and writer by training and vocation, Lindsay has a particular passion for the military history of the Roman Empire. He scours ancient documents, inscriptions, coins and museums for stories, and archaeological, engineering, medical and scientific reports to reveal deeper truths.

He is news editor of Ancient Warfare and has written for Military Heritage and Strategy & Tactics magazines, Pen and Sword Books, Osprey Publishing and UNRV.com. His books include All Things Under the Sun, and the ground breaking biographies Eager for Glory and Germanicus. His latest works, Marcus Agrippa and Combat: Roman Soldier v Germanic Warrior will be published in 2014.

He divides his time between Austin, Texas and Wokingham, England.

I have been fascinated by crime for as long as I can remember, mainly due to watching Edgar Lustgarten on the television at an impressionable age. An early ambition to be a policewoman lasted the five minutes it took me to realise I was six inches too short,  so I began to collect true crime books. After qualifying as a chemist’s dispenser I took a degree in psychology and entered the civil service. Writing was always a hobby and being published was something I never seriously thought would happen, then in 2001 I was commissioned to write a history of chloroform. This was followed by several non-fiction crime history titles, and three biographies. My first novel, a Victorian whodunit The Poisonous Seed featuring lady sleuth Frances Doughty was published in 2011, and the sixth in the series will be out in 2016. A new series the Mina Scarletti mysteries set in Brighton was launched in 2015. I live in Walthamstow but am often to be encountered in libraries