Murder at the Palace by V.E.H. Masters

Sited at the other end of the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle stands Holyrood Palace. It's built on what remains of an Augustinian Priory and was the site of one of the most grim events of Mary Queen of Scots brief reign as queen of Scotland.

                                               

                                       Section of Holyrood Palace where Mary Queen of Scots lived

In the 1500s, which is when my series The Seton Chronicles is set, the palace stood outside the city walls. Inevitably it has been extended and 'modernised' over the centuries and is now considerably larger than it was in Mary's time.

In 1548 the five year old Mary was betrothed to the Dauphin of France and left for there soon after, evading a most determined effort by the English Crown to marry her to Prince Edward, son of Henry VIII.

It was a miracle that Mary arrived in France safely for the ship was beset by storms, with weather in August worthy of the worst of January, and a voyage which would normally have taken five days took fifteen. Scotland didn't want to let her queen go was the prevailing opinion.

In my book The Conversos I tell the story of this journey from the perspective of my character Will who, alongside John Knox, was a galley slave for nearly two years in punishment for their part in the siege of St Andrews Castle _ which is the subject of my first book The Castilians.

Here's an extract that gives a flavour of the journey – and they really did have to replace the rudder during a storm. 

The weather holds and they make good progress over the next few days. Ireland is behind them and they are off the Cape of Cornwall when the wind again strengthens and the sea makes a final attempt to hold them. Worse, they see ships appear – and soon it is shouted that English ships are giving chase. Will rows, looking out each time he’s in a standing position when the ship crests a wave. He feels a knot tight in his chest, knows he doesn’t want that bonnie wee lassie caught by English corsairs – even if it means he’s freed. Bung between his teeth, he pulls as hard as he can, and there’s no need for the sous-comite to ply his whip.

Another shout goes up after what feels like hours, but it is no more than one bell. The English are turning back. Will’s heart lifts, but only until he realises why... the wind is howling across the bare masts. Soon he is so lashed by the waves it’s as though he stands beneath a waterfall. Night falls and the seas rise higher and higher.

All around him men cry and shiver with fear as white spumes rush towards them out of the darkness.

The man at the wheel is roped on, so difficult is it to stay in place. Then there’s a thump and the ship shudders from stem to stern. They cease to make any headway and lie wallowing. The lamps from the escorting galleys disappear into the darkness and the stars are blacked out by the clouds.

A drag anchor is flung out to keep them pointing into wind, while the rumours run up and down the ship: they have hit a whale; they have holed on a reef; the ship is sinking. But then it transpires the rudder is broken and they cannot steer. The wind dies suddenly; they must be in the eye of the storm. It is eerily still, as the unquiet ghosts, who follow them, dance around in the darkness.

Men are hung over the lee side – Will cannot imagine anything more terrifying – and remarkably are able to replace the rudder.

This is the last attempt by God, or Satan, to prevent Mary reaching France. A few days later, after some easy sailing, they are moored off a town with a tall cathedral, a bishop’s palace, and a sandy beach. The wee queen disembarks with her coterie of small maids and ladies-in-waiting around her. She is a remarkable child, Will thinks. Not only pretty with her smooth skin and dainty manners but also a child of great courage and steadfastness. He fears she will need it in this precarious life and prays she will be safe and happy in France. He knows John Knox would not approve of Will’s sentiments but this is his queen and he owes her his allegiance, whatever her religion. 

Mary had a happy life in France. King Henri II was fond of her and she in turn of the royal family of which she was part. She returned to Scotland in 1561 aged nineteen dressed in white – the shade of mourning – because her husband, father-in-law and mother had all died within a year of one another. And she came from the warmth and luxury of Renaissance France to a bleak and chilly Scotland, which was experiencing a little ice age.

The chambers of Holyrood Palace were dull, dreary and comfortless but Mary didn't travel light. She brought with her forty five beds, five canopies, twenty coverings and twenty bolts of tapestry, plus paintings, jewellery and other furnishings. All of this was taken south by her son, James VI, when he became king of England, Ireland and Wales after Elizabeth I died.

Mary made the best of things which wasn't easy as a Catholic in a now Protestant Scotland. She was naturally drawn to people who shared her faith and love of music. David Rizzio, an Italian, became her secretary and close companion. 

Starved of entertainment in an austere Reformation Scotland where singing (apart from psalms), dancing and theatre were all disapproved of she, supported by Rizzio, provided it all within her court – for which the reformer John Knox openly castigated her, even having her in tears one day.

Rizzio (pictured below) was deeply unpopular with the Scottish courtiers who surrounded Mary, including her husband Lord Darnley. There were even rumours that Rizzio was the father of her unborn child. 

One night when she was having supper in the small room off her bed chamber with Rizzio and her ladies, a large group of men burst in including Darnley. Mary was six months pregnant at the time but they pushed her out of the way and grabbed Rizzio. He was dragged into the bedchamber where he was butchered in front of her. 

David Rizzio was stabbed fifty four times with Lord Darnley taking a lead in the attack. His blood stains the floor still – although I suspect it may have been occasionally re-reddenned over the subsequent centuries because it looked remarkably bright when I recently visited Holyrood Palace.

            Murder of David Rizzio by William Adams - painted significantly later in 1833

Mary gave birth a few months later in a small chamber in Edinburgh Castle with a number of men watching to verify the birth of the future monarch. Darnley was called to see his new son, who would become James VI, and gazed down as Mary held the babe in her arms.

'My Lord,' she said, 'God has given me a son begotten by none other than you.'

Darnley blushed, one would hope shamed by the accusation he'd made of Mary's adultery, and bent to kiss his son. She never forgave Darnley for Rizzio's murder and when Darnley in turn was murdered a few months later she was held partly responsible. He was a vile man and here's the re-telling of a quarrel had with Mary over dinner during a stay at Traquair House a few months after their son's birth and as reported by its owner.

Mary, who was feeling unwell, whispered in her husband's ear that she thought she may be with child again and could she be excused from the stag hunt on the morrow. 

Darnley replied, 'Never mind, if we lose this one we can make another.

The laird rebuked him sharply, saying he did not speak like a christian whereupon Darnley replied,

'What! Ought we not to work a mare when she is with foal?'

Holyrood Palace fell into disuse once Mary's son became king of England and removed there. By the 1800s, with the popularity of Sir Walter Scott's novels, Scotland became a place for those of romantic sensibilities to visit and the story of Mary Queen of Scots and Rizzio's murder drew visitors especially to Holyrood.

In the first year it opened there were over 67,000 visitors and they had to fence off her bed to stop people touching it. But of course it wasn't her actual bed and when Sir Walter Scott stage managed George IV's successful visit to Scotland the dilapidated bed was replaced by one of red damask. Indeed there is nothing much left of Mary's time beyond the audience room ceiling (pictured above) which was commissioned by Mary's mother, Mary of Guise, to celebrate Mary's betrothal… and, of course, Rizzio's blood stains are also to be found. 

V.E.H.Masters is the award wining and best selling author of The Seton Chronicles. She lives with her husband, and two cats, in the Scottish Borders.  You can find out more on her website here: https://vehmasters.com/, And there's also some short stories available there - free to download.

References

Mary Queen of Scots Bedchamber - a talk given at Holyrood Palace

Visit to Traquair House

Rizzio is the Scottish spelling of the Italian pronunciation. His name was actually spelt Riccio.

BLOODLINES by Eleanor Updale

Sometimes the best events at book festivals aren't the ones that draw huge queues.  One of the delights is stumbling across the unexpected: a book or an author of whom you have never heard, telling you things you didn't know, or kindling an interest in something you previously thought of as dull.

I hit the jackpot on this week at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, when, on a whim, I went to hear the Dutch Author, Frank Westerman, talking about his book Brother Mendel's Perfect Horse. I was completely unprepared for the revelations that followed, and the new light they shone for me on a huge range of historical events.  As a good Festival-goer, I bought the book. It made me dump the blog I had started for this month, to share with you just a few of its highlights.  My apologies if you knew all this already. Most of it (and much more I have no room for here) was news to me.

Westerman’s book is about the famous Lipizzaner horses – the beautiful grey stallions of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.  There was a time in the 1960s when their stylised dancing to music was shown quite often on British telly, and I have to admit that I had always thought of them as rather naff  – even slightly comic -- coming in a close second behind the Greek soldiers who kick up their legs as they march along in silly bloomers.  Well, I’ve changed my mind, and not just because I now know more about the rigorous training they and their riders undergo.  It’s because of the insight their story offers into our past and present.

When Westerman was a child, he was told ‘touch a Lipizzaner, and you are touching history’.  And what a history!  Originally the ‘living crown jewels’ of the Hapsburg Empire, the fate of these beasts, and their enforced peregrinations across Europe and beyond in times of war, reflects not just political changes over four centuries, but the intellectual ferment centring on the concept of pure bloodlines and genetics which shaped the horrors of the twentieth century.

 Picture from Wikimedia Commons, by Machoxx

From the late sixteenth century to the present day the horses have been status symbols for kings and tyrants.  As human societies crumbled around them, heroic efforts were made to preserve the breeding stock – not just by Austrians, but by invaders from Napoleon to the American General George Patton who, in 1945, oversaw ‘Operation Cowboy’ which (bending the rules so recently established at Yalta) diverted military resources into ensuring that the Lipizzaners were a prize for the West.  

Nevertheless, some ended up on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Because the first of the line came from Lipica, in what became Yugoslavia, Marshall Tito was given the makings of a Lipizzaner stud farm (the offspring of which were starved, or massacred and buried in mass burial pits in war of the 1990s).

Tito used the horses as prestigious gifts, to leaders including Ceausescu of Romania, Nehru and Nasser.  Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia bought thirty – who came to a sticky end. In Western Europe, the Pope, our Queen, and Hollywood stars like Gary Cooper and Walt Disney all celebrated the Lipizzaners, despite their staus as emblems of the Nazi mindset. General Patton took some back to the USA.  Their descendants performed at the inauguration of President Regan in 1980.  Everybody wanted them – not just for what they looked like, or what they could do, but as representations of perfection, and for the majesty they projected onto their owners.  

That, Westerman argues, had a lot to do with their place in the evolution of ideas about genetics – the science inaugurated by the nineteenth-century monk Gregor Mendel (hence the book’s title). 

  

 Picture from Wikimedia

 

Mendel's story is well-known.  It was he who, long before the discovery of DNA, introduced the world to the science of genetics, and the possibility of the deliberate propagation of inherent characteristics.  Mendel demonstrated it with peas, and his name is not a dirty word.  But, of course,

by the mid 20^th century his theories were being taken to their logical extreme.  We all know about the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele, and his experiments in the concentration camps. You may not know, as I did not, that Auschwitz also housed a Lipizzaner stud farm – though the fact may not surprise you. Obsessed with the horses’ pure breeding , which condemned ‘substandard’ specimens to work or the butcher, Hitler was bound to be a fan.  

One of the most chilling moments in Frank Westerman’s talk was when he produced a biology text book for children issued to German schools in the late 1930s.  Along with the main tenets of Mendelian theory of heredity, it included a fold-out form, on which pupils were required to enter full details of their families, working backwards through their parents, grandparents, and so on, listing not just names but physical characteristics such as colour of eyes and hair, etc.   

Then Westerman unfolded another, almost identical document.  It was the pedigree of one of the Lipizzaner horses.

Not everyone took the same political message from Mendel’s theories, but the ideology and practicalities which lay behind the establishment and maintenance of the Lipizzaner breed could govern very different policies. Tito, for example, saw in Mendelianism the potential for making bloodlines less pure, in the cause of uniting the disparate set of territories he was handed under the post war settlement.

  Picture from Wikimedia 

Tito insisted that the troops of the new country of Yugoslavia should be stationed in different provinces from those in which they had been recruited (Croats in Kosovo, Serbs in Slovenia, etc). This was in the expectation that they would mate with local women, producing a mixed, and therefore more stable, ‘Yugoslav’ population.   

As we know, it didn’t turn out like that. 

The biggest revelation for me was the Soviet response to the Nazis’ genetic engineering. Before and during the war, the Soviet Union was home to a state-sponsored centre of excellence in Menedelian studies and application. In 1948, Stalin obliterated all scientific institutes that followed Mendel’s theories.  Through the biologist Tromfin Lysenko, Stalin imposed a scientific regime under which it was a crime to maintain that inherent characteristics are passed on from one generation to the next by physical means which could be analysed and manipulated. 

The notion was replaced by a gene-less one which acknowledged that a species could share features of its predecessors, but that these were imparted entirely as a result of (influencible) experience. This force of evolution could be harnessed by ‘drilling’ plants, animals and humans.  Until the time of Brezhnev, Nature was entirely rejected in favour of Nurture. For the soviets, acquired characteristics could be inherited. 

So pigs were to be made hardier by being subjected to freezing weather.  Crops would be stronger if many seedlings were planted in the same hole and had to compete for light and nutrients. What one generation of animals or vegetables ‘learned’ they would pass on.  ‘Mendelian’ cross-breeding was forbidden, with the result that Soviet agriculture failed to support the Russian people. And the idea of long-term reprogramming was applied to humans, too, in the labour camps. 

Under Lysenko's influence, all commemoration of Mendel was expunged from his home town of Brno (in what is now the Czech Republic) and any Lipizzaner horses which had ended up on Soviet territory after the upheavals of World War II were destined for the cooking pot.

Stalin died just before the double-helix was revealed to the world. In the era of the genome, his attitude might seem laughable (were its consequences not so tragic). Mendel has been rehabilitated with a new museum in Bruno. But Westerman postulates that, because of our forefathers’ history and our own scientific outlook, we are in danger of slipping into a mindset where we feel compelled to take one side or the other in the Nature/Nurture debate (at a time when the latest experimental science suggests that the two are probably interlinked). There is, for example, no mention of the Lysenko years in the reconstituted Mendel museum in Brno. 

  

Are we tempted to believe that, in the age of cloning, the argument is over, and DNA determinism has won?  Once again, the horses of the Spanish riding school (now subject to artificial insemination) and their American cousins (one of whom has been cloned) are in symbolic of society's attitude to breeding.  In this climate, Westerman warns, genetic tyrants of all political persuasions may find space to grow.  And we can guess which horses they would like to ride.

Picture from Wikimedia

  

Brother Mendel's Perfect Horse is not a perfect book (no index, no pictures) but it would be satisfying enough as an exciting account of the preservation of prized animals in the most extreme circumstances. That Westerman describes hidden corners of history and raises questions with profound implications for our understanding of our past and our future is a bonus.  And he leaves us with a stark assessment of where we stand now:  

'The ‘eighth day of Creation’ dawned some time ago. The human species has not only deduced the workings of evolution, but has succeeded in taking apart its motor, boring out the cylinders and reassemblng the whole contraption.  On this souped-up moped we then hurtle forwards at breakneck speed -- cockily and without a helmet.

www.eleanorupdale.com

By the way, at the Edinburgh Book Festival today at 5pm, I will be interviewing History Girl contributor Sally Nicholls about her novel set at the time of the Black Death: All Fall Down.

Until Monday, you can still see the dramatisation of my book, Montmorency, at C Venue in Chambers Street. 7.25 every night.

And, passing though Brimingham after I heard Frank Westerman speak, I saw a huge poster announcing that the Spanish Riding School of Vienna is coming to the National Exhibition Centre in November, to perform alongside our Olympic dressage stars.

Mary Queen of Scots - Escape from Borthwick Castle, by Theresa Breslin

She was a game girl was Mary Stuart, and escaped from ‘secure’ premises quite a few times. The most widely recorded, and certainly the one I remember being told in my childhood was when, disguised as servant, she escaped from Loch Leven aided by the young lad, Willie Douglas.   

While researching Spy for the Queen of Scots the escape that most impressed me took place at Borthwick Castle where, poignantly, she spent her last night with the Earl of Bothwell. It is a forbidding fortress with hugely thick walls. Lord Borthwick offered Mary shelter when rebel Lords threatened to kill Bothwell after Mary married him. Immediately the would-be assassins gathered an army, closely pursuing the newly weds, to besiege the castle. Once Mary was safely inside Bothwell daringly slipped out of the castle to gather his men to defend the Queen:

Spy for the Queen of Scots is told in the first person of the main character, Jenny, who is Mary’s companion. That night Mary and Jenny sit together, huddled under a blanket in the window embrasure of the Queen’s bedroom, praying that Bothwell will elude the surrounding rebel forces…

‘Do you love him?’ I asked Mary.

‘He is going out to risk his life for me. How can I not love him?’

We held onto each other until dawn, when we heard the blast of a hunting horn from the distant hills. Then we knew he’d won free, whereupon we both gave way to a fit of weeping. 

The rebels called on Mary to surrender, telling her they’d sent for heavy cannon to bring down the castle walls. She refused to betray Bothwell and donned disguise to make her own bid for freedom.

Borthwick Castle is now a private hotel http://www.borthwickcastle.com/  You can book dinner (delicious!) to eat in the great hall, or indeed hire the whole castle for a weekend for family and friends! Situated not far from Edinburgh in beautiful countryside, it has the most hospitable staff who will happily give you a free guided tour before your meal to tell you of the history of the wild Border Clans and the ghosts they have heard laughing and chatting in the corridors. You can see the window Mary climbed out during the night of her own escape. You can stand in the top towers and look at the hill beyond and imagine the campfires of the rebels. You can sit in the window alcove of her bedroom and look down into the forest as she did, hoping that her lover would not get caught by the vengeful Scottish rebel Lords. I thought of her, orphaned, scarce out of her teens, twice Queen, twice widowed, a mother with no access to her baby, betrayed by family and former friends and in dire danger of losing her throne and her life.  With Research comes Insight. With similar insight I hope that historians might judge her less harshly.    

Debates with leading authors will be streamed live world-wide from 17^th – 21^st August during the Edinburgh Book Festival at a special World Writers’ Conference. These will be interactive – you might like to join in!

Theresa Breslin events in EDINBURGH this August include discussing the Researching & Writing  Historical Novels with fellow novelist Berlie Doherty (author of  Treason)  on 27^th August plus an event about the Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, illustrated by Kate Leiper on 28^th August – both at the Edinburgh Book Festival.  

Divided City - Conversation and Performance extract from the musical is on at the Festival of Spirituality and Peace Venue on 25^th  August with excerpts from the play at the closing ceremony on 26^th August    

Random Thoughts in August - Celia Rees

I was lucky enough to be asked to the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year.  A flying visit,  up one day, back the next, so I didn't have much time to mooch round Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities. I have never actually set a book there but I did once go on a ghost tour and found plenty of material for a whole series of spooky books (back when I wrote that kind of thing).

I was there for an event, in conversation with Sally Gardner, who although not a History Girl, is an excellent writer of historical fiction, whose titles include I, Coriander, The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade. Our Chair was ex History Girl, Nicola Morgan. We were there to talk about our latest books. Her novel, The Double Shadow, is historical but like her other fiction has a fantasy twist to it. I was talking about This Is Not Forgiveness, which is not historical, but I guess soon will be. 

Afterwards, we were taken for lunch (there have to be some perks) and Sally and I had a very different, more intense, more private conversation about writing. What else? Put two writers together, especially when they write in a similar genre, and the conversation always comes round to some aspect of our craft. It is always interesting to know how someone else works, what someone else does, how they go about things, with historical novels, how they research. Sally is very different from me. She likes to consult experts in the particular field that interests her. I don't do this. That's always made me feel vaguely guilty, that I'm really a dilettante. I've always been a tiny bit scared that when I explain what it is I want to know, what it is about, they will tell me, 'Oh, no, you can't do that!'. So I prefer to nose about on my own.

The beauty of these conversations lies in what you learn about yourself as a writer, not just the other person. Talking to Sally, I realised, yet again, that there are no rules, no right or wrong way to go about things. There's just what works for you. One can can learn from other people, but one doesn't have to be like them. 

You can even break your own rules or working habits. For example, I don't usually consult documents. My primary sources have tended to be published letters, diaries, novels, plays, poems, songs. I don't go to the archive offices and ferret about in dusty papers. I'm not a historian, I tell myself, I don't have to do that, but recently you would have found me in the Imperial War Museum Research Room, opening boxes and undoing bundles of letters. It's not how I normally work, but it seems right for the project I'm working on now. 

Every writer has to learn to follow his or her instincts. Do what feels right. Fiction writing differs from non fiction. It is much more intuitive. A lack of discipline is sometimes an advantage. What I really like is being able to explore odd avenues, go off on tangents. As you can see, I have been doing 'proper' research, which also includes going to the library (I have always done that). In my case, Warwick University Library. August is a good time to visit. It's quiet in vacation time and they have a coffee bar downstairs, as well as an excellent collection of books. I'm still capable of being distracted, however, going 'off task'. Walking along the shelves, I spotted this book. 

Not on my reading list, nothing directly to do with my research at all, I just knew I had to get it out. Through the wonders of the internet, I have now downloaded it as a pdf file. It is not directly relevant, but I'm not writing a definitive history of the period. I'm looking for plot lines, ways into characters. That is what this book can give me. I also know that I'm past the background research stage and into something new. 

Mary, Queen of Scots: Courageous Tragic Heroine… or Rash and Reckless Romantic? by Theresa Breslin

Growing up in Scotland I heard many tales of the adventures of our bewitching captured Queen. As her death mask shows, an ambassador’s description of her as “the most beautiful Queen in Europe” was not exaggerated. Mary’s striking good looks are apparent, even beyond the grave. 

Novels and stories give varying accounts of her youth in the glittering palaces of France, and then in the turbulent grandeur of Scottish castles. Mary’s life was crammed with incident. As her father died when she was born, while still a baby she was crowned Queen of Scotland. Henry VIII of England, with ideas of merging the two kingdoms under his rule, wanted her wed to his son, Edward, so he tried to abduct her, laying waste to vast tracts of Scotland in the attempt. Separated from her mother when a young child, she was sent to France as a bride for the French Dauphin. Mary was married at 15, became Queen of France at 16, and was widowed at 17 – great trauma to suffer in a short space of time. In Scotland, her mother, who was acting as Regent on Mary’s behalf, was overthrown by a rebellion of the Scots Lords and subsequently died. A sense of duty plus loyalty to her mother and her native land, combined with hostility in France, and a promise of support by her duplicitous half-brother led Mary back to Scotland, where she had already sent emissaries in the hope that the people would accept her. This they did with great joy. But, in addition to leaving her a troubled country in constant war with a larger neighbour, her father also bequeathed his daughter never-ending strife by siring nine illegitimate sons, who, with family / clan connections, constantly sought advancement and control of the throne by treachery and violence. 

Like her cousin, Elizabeth I of England, Mary was aware that mostly everyone: father, family, statesmen and subjects, would have preferred her to be male. Unlike Elizabeth she enjoyed a pampered early life, and was schooled in the role of Queen Consort. It was never anticipated that Mary would have sole governance of a country.

Early Queens needed a lot of grit and guile to survive. Although not so good with guile, Mary was strong on grit - even her implacable enemy, John Knox, admitted that. She stood up to Catherine de’ Medici, a seriously scary lady. She defied Queen Elizabeth, a most formidable foe.  Faced with an uprising by her Scottish nobles, Mary put on armour, stuck pistols in her belt, and rode out at the head of her army to chase the rebel Lords right over the Border. When seven months pregnant she was subjected to serious assault while her husband and co-conspirators murdered her secretary in front of her by stabbing him fifty-six times. During the next few days she managed to fool the plotters, plan her escape, and, during one night, rode many miles to safety. With the birth of her son she was aware that she was in even greater danger, as, if she was assassinated or imprisoned, the rebels could control the child, who was the undisputed legitimate heir.

While doing the research for my new book Spy for the Queen of Scots I began to realise why Mary was drawn to the rascally James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. He was the most notable of the few Lords who consistently supported the Scottish Crown. Unswervingly loyal, Bothwell mustered men and arms for Mary’s mother and the Queen herself when they were most in need. Crucially at that time Scotland had no standing army. For support in battle the monarch relied on the Clan chiefs, who fought privately with each other, and often changed allegiance to side with rebel factions.  

Mary tried to find solutions to the many problems that beset Scotland at that time, including religious strife. When she arrived Scotland was predominantly Catholic and although she personally held to this, she passed laws awarding grants to the Reformed Church and creating stipends for ministers. She travelled by horseback over rough roads to visit numerous remote places and meet as many people as possible, and was generous to her hosts and to the poor of the towns she visited. It’s a tribute to Mary that she kept peace in her realm for the number of years she did. 

   

In Spy for the Queen of Scots the character, Jenny (Ginette) is Mary’s closest friend, who shares her secrets, her triumphs and heartaches, and, at great risk, becomes a spy to try to protect the Queen against would-be assassins. As Jenny tries to find her own destiny and love, the reader experiences a Royal Court of passionate romances, magicians foretelling destiny and doom, ruthless murder and intrigue, battles, horrific revenge and plots by poisoners. Discovering fascinating facts and weaving them into a story made me realise that throughout her life, Mary, Queen of Scots was incredibly brave, with her kindness and personal loyalty inspiring admiration, even to this day.

Theresa Breslin is doing 3 events at the EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL this year. She will speak about her latest novel Spy for the Queen of Scots and about writing historical novels with fellow novelists - Elizabeth Laird on 12^th August  &  Berlie Doherty on 27^th August. An event about An Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, illustrated by Kate Leiper is on 28^th August.