Norah Lofts

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....

“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"....

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....

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....

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

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

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

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

“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.”....

Forced to flee Revolutionary France after the brutal guillotining of her beloved father....

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

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

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

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....

No one at Gad’s Hall could admit what they knew about the room in the attic....

When, at the Pollards Harvest Supper of 1817, Araminta Glover was seduced by Jan Honeywood, the outcome seemed inevitable....

For the Spender family, the ancient, beautifully kept house had seemed a godsend....

Over two generations, and throughout the turbulent years of the Civil War, Pargeters comes to stand as a symbol of unity for a household divided by conflicting political loyalties and abandoned by its menfolk....

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"....

In the autumn of 1817, the arrival of the Ipswich coach and its occupants – a strange, ill-assorted company – changed the lives of those who lived at the Fleece Inn forever....