Elizabethan English

Jack and Annie are whisked back to Elizabethan England where they meet the Bard of Avon himself, William Shakespeare, and luckily for them, he is desperate for two small actors for his latest play! An exciting adventure and a wonderful introduction to Shakespeare.

England and Spain - 1586: A dangerous rivalry, a cunning plot, a web of intrigue and the threat of an armada ensnare a handsome English privateer and a beautiful young woman of Spanish-English heritage. Swept up in the furor of an impending war, their love and desire will face the ultimate trial. A practical woman who had stopped waiting for love, Anne Morgan wed a Spanish diplomat to forge an alliance between their two warring countries. But when her husband disappeared overboard after their ship was attacked by a privateer, Anne found s herself forced into a fierce duel of wits, willpower...

London 1558. An orphan from a far-off land is renamed “Noah Ames,” and given every advantage the English Crown can bestow. London 1592. Now an experienced barrister, Noah witnesses what appears to be a botched robbery outside the Rose Theater, a crime he soon suspects to be part of a plot against Queen Elizabeth herself. Steadfast in his loyalty to the Queen, Noah must use every bit of his knowledge and skill to lure her most disloyal subject onto the only battlefield where Noah has the advantage ... a court of law – though in doing so he risks public exposure of his darkest secret, a...

From the coral reefs of Barbados to the jungles and fabled cities of the Orinoco and on to the great sea battle with the Spanish Armada, this vibrant novel captures the daring spirit of Elizabethan adventurers who sailed with Sir Francis Drake.

Lady Penelope Rich is one of the most beautiful and sought-after women in Elizabethan England. The daughter of the Earl of Essex, she is married to the wealthy Baron Robert Rich. Penelope's life is full of love and scandal. The inspiration for Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet "Astrophel and Stella", she is involved in the Essex Rebellion. A complex and fascinating woman, her life is a story of love, betrayal, and tragedy.

Normal Women is a radical retelling of our nation’s story – not of the rise and fall of kings and the occasional queen – but of social and cultural change, powered by the determination, persistence and effectiveness of women – from 1066 to modern times. Did women really do nothing to shape England’s culture and traditions in nine centuries of turmoil, plague, famine, religious reform and the rise of empire and industry?

For almost two decades before her execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was a prisoner. From her chambers, she wrote countless letters, many encrypted using complex ciphers to prevent her communications from being intercepted. In this way, she used language to exert her will and her influence, even while incarcerated. More than four hundred years after Mary's death, the discovery of further encoded letters has led to renewed interest in the breadth of her correspondence while in captivity.

Hans Holbein the Younger is chiefly celebrated for his beautiful and precisely realized portraiture, which includes representations of Henry VIII, his advisors Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, his wives Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and an array of the Tudor lords and ladies encountered during the course of two sojourns in England. But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion.

Sixteenth-century Europe was a time of destabilization of age-old norms and the waging of religious wars - yet it also witnessed the remarkable flowering of a pacific culture cultivated by a cohort of extraordinary women rulers who sat on Europe's thrones, most notably Mary Tudor; Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Catherine de' Medici.

Each Tudor monarch made their name with a Dudley by their side - or by crushing one beneath their feet. The Dudleys thrived at the court of Henry VII but were sacrificed to the popularity of Henry VIII. Rising to prominence in the reign of Edward VI, the Dudleys lost it all by advancing Jane Grey to the throne over Mary I. Under Elizabeth I, the family were once again at the centre of power and would do anything to remain there. With three generations of felled favourites, what was it that caused this family to keep rising so high and falling so low?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "Bad Blood is a fantastic historical fiction novel that does not shy away from the dark complications of the world," - Reedsy Discovery A gripping fast-paced historical fiction adventure set in rebellious Ireland in the 1590s. Eunan Maguire lives in a small village in Fermanagh. He is mistreated by his parents and then taken to Enniskillen as a hostage to ensure his father’s loyalty. He returns after being trained as a Galloglass warrior to confront his parents and to ensure his father pledges to the prospective new Maguire. But before he can do that the English raid ...

For many Catholics, the Elizabethan "Golden Age" was an alien concept. Following the criminalization of their religion by Elizabeth I, nearly 200 Catholics were executed, and many more wasted away in prison during her reign. Torture was used more than at any other time in England's history. While some bowed to the pressure of the government and new church, publicly conforming to acts of Protestant worship, others did not - and quickly found themselves living in a state of siege.

The newly-wed Anne Hastings faced her husband's wrath when her affair with William Compton was made public. Mary Tudor married to satisfy her brother's political need to ally with France, but when her decrepit royal husband died, she married the dashing Charles Brandon for love. William Parr, humiliated by his wife's extramarital affair, sought a divorce to marry the woman he loved.

Sir Walter Ralegh’s life is romantic, irresistible, and of central importance to our island story. His death is a convoluted and contested tale of bargaining, failure and betrayal. Through the Elizabethan golden age and Ralegh’s famous adventures to the final act, Anna Beer presents his stranger-than-fiction life in all its richness. How could a man once the Queen’s favorite find himself consigned to the Tower by her successor? Should his legacy be fame or infamy? Who was the real Sir Walter Ralegh?

In Behind the Throne, historian Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking the listener on a remarkable journey from one Queen Elizabeth to another and exploring life as it was lived by clerks and courtiers and clowns and crowned heads: the power struggles and petty rivalries, the tension between duty and desire, the practicalities of cooking dinner for thousands and of ensuring the king always won when he played a game of tennis.

In this novel of alternative history from best-selling author Harry Turtledove, the Spanish Armada has conquered England, King Phillip holds the English throne, and Elizabeth I languishes as a prisoner in the Tower of London. Meanwhile, in London, a mysterious stranger approaches young playwright William Shakespeare with an offer that could change the course of history.

Alexander “Sander” Cooke is the most celebrated “boy player” in the Chamberlain’s Men, William Shakespeare’s theatre company. Indeed, Sander’s androgynous beauty and deft portrayal of female roles have made him the toast of London, and his companionship is sought by noblewomen and -men alike. And yet, now at the height of his fame, he teeters on the cusp of adulthood, his future uncertain. Often, he wishes he could stop time and remain a boy forever.

AS FEATURED ON ITV's THE ALAN TITCHMARSH SHOW, 1 NOVEMBER 2011 NEW AND IMPROVED SECOND EDITION 2025 First Edition published by Peter Owen Publishers, 2010 FROM THE BACK PAGE Initially published in 2010, Pity For The Guy was the first biography of Guy Fawkes to paint a detailed portrait of the man behind the infamous Gunpowder Plot. For hundreds of years, Fawkes has been portrayed as an extreme figure: a rabid Catholic and cold-blooded would-be murderer who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, killing James I and much of England’s nobility. Such was the threat that the Gunpowder Plot...

At the start of the 16th century, England was hardly involved in the wider world, and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city. Stephen Alford's evocative, original new audiobook brings to life the network of merchants, visionaries, crooks, and sailors who changed London and England forever. In a sudden explosion of energy, English ships were suddenly found all over the world - trading with Russia and the Levant, exploring Virginia and the Arctic, and fanning out across the Indian Ocean. The people who made this possible are as interesting as any of those at court.

In England in the Age of Shakespeare, Jeremy Black takes readers on a tour of life in the streets, homes, farms, churches, and palaces of the Bard’s era. Panning from play to audience and back again, Black shows how Shakespeare's plays would have been experienced and interpreted by those who paid to see them. From the dangers of travel to the indignities of everyday life in teeming London, Black explores the jokes, political and economic references, and small asides that Shakespeare’s audiences would have recognized.