Norah Lofts

“It was in the first week of October in the year 1391 that I first came face to face with the man who owned me"....

This is the story of Sir Walter Raleigh's relationship with the two women who dominated his life: Elizabeth, his queen, and Bess, her lady-in-waiting and his secret wife....

When young John Vincent died, the outward respectability of the Cornwall household was undermined....

Isabella of Spain was a great woman, a great Queen. Crown of Aloes is presented as a personal chronicle....

Sir Godfrey Tallboys was a knight-errant, famous for his success at tourneys....

“All eyes and hair” a courtier had said disparagingly of her...

Julia Ashley was born to a life of dramatic twists and tragedy. Her future and any possible lasting happiness depended entirely on a "glove marriage"....

The house was built in the Old Queen's time: built for an Elizabethan pirate who was knighted for the plunder he brought home....

When William the Conqueror wished to reward his armourer, he made him a grant of land - land worked by freemen and already belonging to a Saxon lord....

She was the daughter of a preacher and a gypsy. A strange and elusive child with powers of prophecy, she grew into an even stranger woman....

Ataxerxes, king of Persia, needed a wife. This powerful warrior lord picked the one girl who would have given anything to have been passed over....

Thus the future of Caroline Matilda, youngest sister of George III....

Eleanor…young, high-spirited, supremely intelligent, heiress to the vast Duchy of Aquitaine – at a time when a woman’s value was measured in terms of wealth....

The House at Old Vine is the second in a trilogy of novels by Norah Lofts about the inhabitants of a Suffolk house from the late 14th century to the middle of the 20th....

“At the age of seven I was a skilful pickpocket. I could sew neatly, write a tolerable hand, make a curtsey and a correct introduction, dance a little and play simple tunes on the harpsichord.”....

Out of the courts of 12th-century England strode the legendary figure of Richard of England leading his knights onto the Saracen battlefields, inspired by a vision of the Holy Land....

A Wayside Tavern tells the story of a Suffolk drinking place from the end of the Roman occupation of Britain, until the present day....

Sir Godfrey Tallboys had come home from the Crusades....

The Wars of the Roses were over, but for Henry Tallboys the battle for survival went on....

Wherever destiny or chance took the young Scottish rebel, he carried with him the dream of Braidlowrie - Braidlowrie, the home of the Lowries - the home from which he was forever exiled....