I grew up in North Wales, an area of outstanding beauty that is steeped in history. The region has been home to
my family for generations and my ancestry is mostly Welsh. For over a century my father's family lived in the same quarryman's cottage whilst my mother's
family travelled around the Welsh market towns, finally making Caernarfon their home in the late 19th century.
Growing up, I loved to visit the mystical medieval castles that are everywhere in North Wales. I loved to
hear stories of Welsh princes, magical princesses, sunken royal kingdoms, and of fairy glens and mountain-high giants.
I had a very active imagination and loved to read books that took me out of this world into a fantasy realm. My dream was
to one day be on the stage, singing and dancing in musicals, and for several years I was a tap-dancer in the junior chorus of the local Pantomine Company.
Every Christmas we put on a production in the local theatre and over the years I grew from a child-clown in
Goldilocks and the Three Bears to one of the ladies at Cinderella's ball.
It was not until my teens that I truly developed a passion for history and for writing. I no longer wanted to act in stories, but to
write stories, stories of people and places both real and imagined. I was enthralled by the Tudors, especially by Henry VIII and
Elizabeth I, and captivated by the wonderful works of Shakespeare. I studied History and Literature at university and after graduating spent a
decade as a postgraduate researcher. My area of specialism, at the time, was Elizabethan political history, and it was in this field that I was
awarded an M.Phil, but over the years my interest has shifted from the political to the more personal world of Elizabeth's court, specifically to
the remarkable women who served her. Many of these women were of Welsh descent or had strong connections to Wales, like Blanche Parry
and her aunt, Blanche Milborne, Lady Herbert of Troy Parva.
I have been studying the early modern era for over thirty years and love it no less than when I started. I believe there
is still much to learn about the sixteenth century world and the fascinating people who occupied it. History is never
static, for what we know, or think we know, is shaped as much by the values and ideals of historians as it is by fact.
As those values and ideals change, so does our perspective on the past, and I have learnt over the years how important it is
to consult primary sources rather than to rely on the judgement of past historians. The Victorians, for example, did not
have a high opinion of Queen Elizabeth and this dislike unfairly prejudices their narrative.
For a quarter of a century I have been the webmistress of elizabethi.org, a website dedicated to the life and reign of
Queen Elizabeth I. Millions of people have visited my website over the years and, despite the many changes to the world wide web in that time,
it remains a popular resource. Unfortunately, maintaining the website, which somehow took on a life of its own, has been
challenging, and in recent months I have slimmed it down considerably. My knowledge, and my writing skills, have evolved
over the years but my website has fallen behind with some sections unchanged for two decades. I have therefore
removed or revised those sections and updated others.
Although Tudor history is my greatest love, I am also interested in Welsh history, in the age of Jane Austen,
and in the Victorian era. I am also very passionate about Shakespeare, about writing poetry and fiction, and in the
little spare time that I have I like to knit and listen to music.
