Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: Wars of the Roses, queenship, medieval women, royal adultery and marriage, fifteenth century, medieval piety, medieval household, good ladyship

About Me: My interests are in medieval politics and women’s lives, ranging from Anglo-Saxon royal mistresses to the Yorkist queens. I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading. My British Academy funded DPhil at the University of York was on “English Queenship 1445-1503” and was published by Oxford University Press as The Last Medieval Queens. It was a joint winner of the Longmans-History Today Book of the Year 2005 and of the Women’s History Network Book Prize.

I have taught part time at the Universities of Oxford, York, Reading and Huddersfield. I gave up teaching in order to be a full time mother (and volunteer worker), but have continued researching, writing, delivering conference papers and talking to local history groups. I recently began occasional teaching and dissertation supervision at the University of Reading again.

Recent Publications: Cecily duchess of York (Bloomsbury, 2017) Winner of the Royal Studies Network Book Prize 2018

‘”To please dame Cecely . . . that in Latyn hath littyl intellect”: Books and the Duchess of York’, in Linda Clark ed. The Fifteenth Century XV (Boydell, 2017)

‘In the Service of Cecily, duchess of York’, The Ricardian Bulletin, September 2017

ʻCecily Neville, duchess of York: the Name of the Rose and other mythsʼ, The Ricardian Bulletin, June 2015

ʻSex, Lies and Richard III’s Y Chromosomeʼ, The Ricardian Bulletin, March 2015

‘Queens, Concubines and the Myth of Marriage More Danico: Royal Marriage Practice in Tenth and Eleventh-Century England’, in The Reading Medievalist, March 2014

‘The White Queen and the White Princess: What happened next?’ BBC history website 18/8/13

‘Telling Tales of Adulterous Queens in Medieval England: from Olympias of Macedonia to Elizabeth Woodville’, in Lynette Mitchell and Charles Melville eds., Every Inch a King. Comparative Studies in Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Brill, 2013)

‘The Piety of Cecily Duchess of York: A Reputation Reconsidered’, in Hannes Kleineke and Christian Steer eds., The Yorkist Age. Harlaxton Medieval Studies XXIII (Shaun Tyas, 2013)

‘The Bayeux Tapestry: A Canterbury Tale’, History Today 62 (October, 2012)

Media Coverage: Radio 4: In Our Time, 'Margaret of Anjou' 24 May 2018; Time Team Special: '1066 The Lost Battlefield' (September 2013); BBC 2 'The Real White Queen and her Rivals'.