Norah Lofts

Sir Walter Raleigh was one of the brightest stars in the Elizabethan firmament. Born into relative obscurity in rural Devon, he grew up in the company of smugglers and fishermen, listening to stories of voyages to far-flung lands. His lust for...

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. From those around her she inspired love and admiration or furious hatred. Nothing in between. And somehow Jassy...

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. But the men of the Conquest had no time for the niceties of land tenure and legal possession. Rolf,...

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” to a man who was no more than a name. The Dutch East Indies, in the seventeenth century, were the...

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 fourteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Covering the turbulent years of 1496 to 1680, it follows six...

“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.” This was the London life of Felicity Hatton in 1740 –...

Out of the courts of twelfth-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. Here is the story of the Soldier-King and the Third Crusade –...

“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… the man whose lightest word was to us, his villeins, weightier than the King’s law or the edicts of our Holy Father…” So began the story of...

When, at the Pollards Harvest Supper of 1817, Araminta Glover was seduced by Jan Honeywood, the outcome seemed inevitable. Araminta, like so many servant girls, would marry her poor suitor and prepare to raise a large family on nine shillings a week....