I was born in Oxford and grew up in the neighbouring countryside, where a great deal of action took place during the English Civil War, and I visited many of the famous battlefields, all of which made a profound impression on me.  My father was from Spain, so my protagonist Laurence Beaumont and I share a common heritage. In my teens, I wrote a novel set during the Civil War period and I still have those pages preserved, in tiny handwriting, perhaps inspired by the Brontë children’s tales of Angria. 
I moved to Canada in the mid-seventies and ended up pursuing an academic career, with a brief break spent working in the world of high fashion retail and designing clothes.  While I was finishing a doctoral thesis and later lecturing in political theory, ideas formed in my head for a more adult story about the English Civil War than my first effort.  Although eventually I decided not to pursue teaching, themes that interested me from my studies found their way into The Best of Men and The Licence of War.
I feel at very home in both Canada and England: for nearly thirty years I’ve been coming to London frequently, so I know the city quite well and am very much ‘repatriated’ in my land of birth.  Now I spend about one month a year in Senegal, the homeland of my partner, and was inspired to create the character of Khadija, the seer in The Best of Men, through my contact with Senegalese mystical and religious practices and the Peul people who live near the coast where we have a small property.
I’m already working on the third volume of Laurence Beaumont’s adventures, as yet untitled, which take him back to Spain on a deeply personal quest and return him to England, where his faltering allegiance to the Royalist cause will endure its greatest test…

Catherine Hanley (who also writes as CB Hanley and JF Andrews) was born in Australia; since moving to the UK she has lived in many corners of it, and is currently based in rural Somerset with her husband and three children. Her love of medieval studies led to a PhD in twelfth- and thirteenth-century warfare, and a number of academic publications; she now splits her time between writing popular non-fiction history and historical fiction.

Carol McGrath is the author of The Daughters of Hastings Trilogy. The first in the series, The Handfasted Wife, was published by Accent Press in 2013. The Swan-Daughter, the second will be published on September 18^th as an e publication followed by general paperback distribution early in December. The Betrothed Sister will be published in 2015.

Carol McGrath has a degree in English and Russian Studies from Queens University Belfast with History as subsidiary. She specialized in Medieval History. She taught History and English for many years in an Oxfordshire Comprehensive. She also was History Head of Department at one point in her career before becoming part-time. Carol has an MA in Creative Writing from QUB and an Mphil from Royal Holloway, University of London. Carol McGrath lives in Oxfordshire and is currently published by Accent Press.    

 

Kenya born, Irish by blood and UK resident, Ben Kane’s passion for history has taken him to almost 70 countries, and all 7 continents. Fascinated by history, he spent his travels visiting Roman, Greek, Persian, Aztec, indigenous Australian and Native American archaeological sites. He has also walked hundreds of miles in Roman military gear. His novels are commonly seen in the Sunday Times top ten; published in fourrteen languages, they have sold more than a million and a half copies worldwide. A former veterinary surgeon, he lives in Somerset with his children, where he writes full time.

Sunday Times Bestselling Author Anne O’Brien was born in West Yorkshire. After gaining a BA Honours degree in History at Manchester University, a PGCE at Leeds, and a Master’s in Education at Hull, she lived in East Yorkshire for many years as a teacher of history.

Today she has sold a million copies of her books in the UK and internationally. She lives with her husband in an eighteenth-century timber-framed cottage in the depths of the Welsh Marches in Herefordshire, on the border between England and Wales. The area provides endless inspiration for her novels about the forgotten women of medieval history.

Anne’s new book, published in February 2025, is The Queen and The Countess, celebrating the lives of Queen Margaret of Anjou and Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick, both women under duress during the bloody conflict of the Wars of the Roses.

Visit Anne online at https://www.anneobrienbooks.com/

Sign up for Anne’s monthly News Letter to keep up to date with books, events, giveaways and what Anne is writing about. https://www.anneobrienbooks.com/

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And on Blue Sky https://bsky.app/profile/anneobrienauthor.bsky.social

 

Angus Donald is the author of the Outlaw Chronicles, a bestselling series of eight novels featuring the legendary hero Robin Hood, and set in the 12th century, during the time of Richard the Lionheart, the Third Crusade, Magna Carta and bad King John. He is also the author of Blood’s Game and Blood’s Revolution, a new 17th-century series featuring the world’s first autistic action hero, Holcroft Blood. The series will chart the career of this famous artillery officer and his friend Jack Churchill, aka the Duke of Marlborough. Under the name Angus Macallan, he’s also writing a fantasy series (The Seven Keys) which will debut in 2019 with “Gates of Stone”.

Angus was born in China in 1965 and educated at Marlborough College and Edinburgh University. He has worked as a fruit-picker in Greece, a waiter in New York and as an anthropologist studying magic and witchcraft in Indonesia. For twenty years, he worked as a journalist in Hong Kong, India, Afghanistan and London for a number of national and international newspapers. He left The Times in 2008 after six years on the staff to write novels full-time. He lives in rural Kent with his wife, Mary, and his two young children.