Stella Tillyard

A fascinating insight into 18th century aristocratic life through the lives of the four Lennox sisters, the great grandchildren of Charles II, whose extraordinary lives spanned the period 1740-1832.

The young George III was a poignant figure, humdrum on the surface yet turbulent beneath: hiding his own passions, he tried hard to be a father to his siblings and his nation. This intimate, fast-moving book tells their intertwined stories. His sisters were doomed to marry foreign princes and leave home forever; his brothers had no role and too much time on their hands - a recipe for disaster. At the heart of Tillyard's story is Caroline Mathilde, who married the mad Christian of Denmark in her teens, but fell in love with the royal doctor Struensee: a terrible fate awaited them, despite George's agonized negotiations. At the same time he faced his tumultuous American colonies. And at every step a feverish press pounced on the gossip, fostering a new national passion - a heated mix of celebrity and sex.

A 'magical, haunting' (Philippa Gregory) novel of a tragic love affair in a threatened worldIn 1649, Jan Brunt, a Dutchman, arrives in England to work on draining and developing the Great Level, an expanse of marsh in the heart of the fen country.

George IV spent most of his life waiting to become king: as a pleasure-loving and rebellious Prince of Wales during the sixty-year reign of his father, George III, and for ten years as Prince Regent, when his father went mad. 'The days are very long when you have nothing to do' he once wrote plaintively, but he did his best to fill them with pleasure - women, art, food, wine, fashion, architecture. He presided over the creation of the Regency style, which came to epitomise the era, and he was, with Charles I, the most artistically literate of all our kings. Yet despite his life of luxury and indulgence, George died alone and unmourned. Stella Tillyard has not written a judgemental book, but a very human and enjoyable one, about this most colourful of all British kings.

An epic novel about love and war, set in Regency England and Spain during the Peninsular War Tides of War opens in England with the recently married, charmingly unconventional Harriet preparing to say good-bye to her husband, James, as he leaves to join the Duke of Wellington's troops in Spain. Harriet's and James's interwoven stories of love and betrayal propel this sweeping and dramatic novel as it moves between Regency London on the cusp of modernity---a city in love with science, the machine, and money---and the shocking violence of the war in Spain. With dazzling skill, Stella Tillyard explores not only the effects of war on the men at the front but also the freedoms it offers the women left behind. A powerful rendering of the Napoleonic era and a brilliant examination of battles yet to come, Tides of War is "one of the most assured literary debuts in years...the perfect answer to anyone who believes that the past is out of date" (Amanda Foreman, Financial Times).

Newly-wed Harriet stands poised on the threshold of the adult world. Her husband, James, is setting off to join the Duke of Wellington's troops in Spain and left alone in London, Harriet is taken under the wing of Lady Wellington. While Harriet plunges into a new life of freedom at home, James faces the bloody reality of the battlefield. As war rages abroad and England stands on the brink of change, Harriet and James face hope and heartache in equal measure. From the mantillas and palms of Seville to the gas lamps of foggy London, Tides of War returns us to the vivid, lost world of the past.

Back home he was elect ed to the Irish Parliament and became a member of the Irish opposition His political interests became increasingly radical, and he was eventually embroiled in the Irish rebellion, dying in prison.