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Historical person
1552–1618
Walter Raleigh was an English courtier, writer, soldier and explorer of the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. His colonial ventures, rivalry at court and eventual execution under James I made him one of the most dramatic figures of the age.
Raleigh rose rapidly at Elizabeth I’s court and sponsored the Roanoke colonising ventures, although he never personally founded a permanent North American settlement. His secret marriage to Elizabeth Throckmorton damaged his court position. Under James I he spent years imprisoned in the Tower after conviction in the Main Plot, wrote much of his History of the World, and was executed in 1618 after a failed expedition to Guiana.
In Giles Milton’s Big Chief Elizabeth, in the 1580s, Walter Raleigh’s backers sent a succession of English expeditions to the coast of present-day North Carolina. In Philip Gooden’s An Honourable Murderer, the acting company is drawn into the ceremonies, while opponents of reconciliation look towards Walter Raleigh and other displaced Elizabethan courtiers for resistance. Further fictional perspectives on Walter Raleigh can be found in Steven Veerapen’s Assassination, David Field’s Beyond the Setting Sun, Margaret George’s Elizabeth I, Rosemary Sutcliff’s Lady in Waiting, and Tracy Borman’s The Devil’s Slave.
Series
The King’s Witch Trilogy follows the fictional healer and secret Catholic Frances Gorges from the final days of Elizabeth I into the unstable first two decades of James VI and I’s reign. Drawn from rural Hampshire into royal service, Frances survives accusations of witchcraft, religious persecution and a…
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The Tudor Saga recounts the dynasty from Henry VII’s exile and victory in the Wars of the Roses to the final years of Elizabeth I. Historical rulers, ministers and royal relatives occupy the centre of the sequence, while fictional attendants and agents reveal how decisions at court affect…
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The Elizabethan series tells the later Tudor story through six real people whose ambitions and relationships brought them close to Elizabeth I. Francis Drake, Robert Devereux, Walter Raleigh, Penelope Rich, Frances Walsingham and Bess Throckmorton each occupy a different part of the queen’s world: the sea, war, exploration,…
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The Spycatcher trilogy follows Ned Savage, a fictional thief recruited into the intelligence world of Robert Cecil during the transfer from Tudor to Stuart rule. Succession centres on Elizabeth I’s death and James VI’s accession in 1603; Coronation uses the plague-stricken early Jacobean capital; and Assassination is set…
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The Keepers of the Ring is a multigenerational saga of English colonisation and Indigenous survival in North America. Beginning with Roanoke and continuing through Jamestown, the Pequot War, King Philip’s War and the growth of Charles Towne, the series follows a mixed family whose heirloom ring carries memory…
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The New World Nautical Saga traces English maritime expansion from the youth of Francis Drake to the settlement voyages of the early seventeenth century. Sailors, courtiers, merchants and religious dissenters cross an Atlantic increasingly contested by European empires and shaped by private enterprise. Pirates and Patriots follows Drake…
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The Nick Revill mysteries follow a provincial actor who joins the Chamberlain’s Men near the end of Elizabeth I’s reign. Each investigation mirrors a Shakespeare play being written or performed, placing murder inside rehearsal rooms, inns, country houses, court entertainments and the commercial theatre of London. The sequence…
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The Lacey Chronicles follows members and associates of the Lacey family through three connected romances set between 1582 and 1586. William Lacey inherits the title and debts of the Earl of Dorset; his brother James seeks redemption through service and Atlantic exploration; and their illegitimate half-brother Kit attempts…
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The Christopher Marlowe Spy Thrillers imagine the playwright as an intelligence operative in the years immediately before his literary fame. The Queen’s Gold is set in 1585 amid privateering and the worsening conflict with Spain; The Queen’s Jewel follows the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587;…
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Standalone books
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
