Jun

07

2023

THE LACES OF LOVE – Guest post by Sharon Bennett Connolly

Note from Elizabeth: My good friend Sharon Bennett Connolly’s fabulous new book on Medieval wonder woman and hero of the Siege of Lincoln Castle, Nicholaa de la Haye, has now been published.  While Sharon was researching Nicholaa’s amazing story, she came across a rather interesting artefact and I am delighted to welcome her to my […]

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Apr

18

2023

THE KING’S JEWEL: “The storm horses of Carew”

A fictional strand in THE KING’S JEWEL, but very much grounded in fact, is the part played by the warhorses belonging to both the Normans and the Welsh.  In the story I have given Nesta’s family a stud of fabulous horses that have a -golden tawny base coat covered in darker dappled rings.  I describe […]

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Apr

14

2023

THE KING’S JEWEL: Finding Gerald of Windsor

What do we know about Gerald of Windsor, first husband of Nesta Ferch Rhys, Welsh princess and lady of Carew?  Not a great deal on first glance, but a dig around allows us to discover details hiding beneath the surface – and I always enjoy a good dig around. Although we have no date for […]

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Apr

11

2023

THE KING’S JEWEL: Finding Nesta

FINDING NESTA THE KING’S JEWEL tells the story of Nesta ferch Rhys (meaning daughter of Rhys)  ap Tewdwr of Dyfed, an area roughly equating to modern Pembrokeshire.  Her tale is fascinating, but has to be assembled from numerous sources, and it’s still a jigsaw puzzle with gaps, and  alternative scenarios,  depending on the interpretation of […]

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Apr

06

2023

THE KING’S JEWEL: Gathering Threads

THE KING’S JEWEL:  Gathering the threads. THE KING’S JEWEL is set at the close of the 11th century and into the early twelfth and is the story of Welsh princess Nesta ferch Rhys who is seized by the Normans who murder her father, and becomes  a concubine to the king of England’s brother, and then […]

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Dec

30

2022

My Top Reads of 2022 – a roundup.

It’s that time of year to round up the books I’ve read and corral them for grading! I read 66  books in 2022 Of these, 51 were fiction and 15 non fiction. I rated them Amazon style with 5 stars, and then gave an extra star to stand out 5 stars which have then gone […]

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Nov

29

2022

A tribute to Reggie

On the 24th of November 2022  we lost our beloved red Patterdale terrier Reggie to a hit and run accident on the lane at the side of our house.just one year old, with all his beautiful life before him, but it wasn’t to be.   Yet however much my husband and I – and our other dogs […]

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Nov

26

2022

A CLEAN START

This is a short story that was originally published in an Anthology of writings by members of the Romantic Novelists Association titled ‘Loves Me, Loves me Not.’ The brief at the time was no more than 5,000 words and this comes in just under that.  It’s a story set in 1149 at the unspecified domicile […]

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