Book
Roses in the Tempest
First published 2015
In Tudor Staffordshire, Isabella Launder enters the small Benedictine community at Black Ladies after accepting that her love for courtier Thomas Giffard cannot give her the life she wants. As Isabella advances within the convent and Thomas follows the obligations of family, property and court service, their attachment survives in altered form. The private story is overtaken by Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the systematic suppression of religious houses, forcing Isabella and her fellow nuns to confront the possibility that a community built around vows, work and local charity can be dissolved by royal policy.
The novel is inspired by real people. Isabel Launder was prioress of Black Ladies by 1521 and remained in office until its dissolution in 1538; Thomas Giffard, a Staffordshire landowner and MP, acquired the site after the surrender. Westerson uses those surviving facts to imagine the emotional history that records cannot supply. The result places the Dissolution of the Monasteries at local level, showing how Henrician reform altered women’s religious life, patronage, landholding and long-established relationships far from the centre of court.
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