Media Kit

Book Title: The Dartington Bride

Series: Daughters of Devon

Author: Rosemary Griggs

Publication Date: 28^th March 2024

Publisher: Troubador Publishing

Page Count: ~ 368 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

Twitter Handle: @RAGriggsauthor @cathiedunn

Instagram Handle: @griggs6176 @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFiction #Devon #Elizabethan #FrenchWarsOfReligion #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2024/02/blog-tour-the-dartington-bride-by-rosemary-griggs.html

Book Title and Author Name:

The Dartington Bride

Rosemary Griggs

Audiobook narrated by Rosemary Griggs

Blurb:

1571, and the beautiful, headstrong daughter of a French Count marries the son of the Vice Admiral of the Fleet of the West in Queen Elizabeth’s chapel at Greenwich. It sounds like a marriage made in heaven…

Roberda’s father, the Count of Montgomery, is a prominent Huguenot leader in the French Wars of Religion. When her formidable mother follows him into battle, she takes all her children with her.

After a traumatic childhood in war-torn France, Roberda arrives in England full of hope for her wedding. But her ambitious bridegroom, Gawen, has little interest in taking a wife.

Received with suspicion by the servants at her new home, Dartington Hall in Devon, Roberda works hard to prove herself as mistress of the household and to be a good wife. But there are some who will never accept her as a true daughter of Devon.

After the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Gawen’s father welcomes Roberda’s family to Dartington as refugees. Compassionate Roberda is determined to help other French women left destitute by the wars. But her husband does not approve. Their differences will set them on an extraordinary path…

For When Angels Fly:

How walking in their shoes helps me write historical fiction

In this post I’d like to share a little of how I came to start a new life as an author, history interpreter and sixteenth century seamstress. I’d also like to explain how my costume work dovetails with my writing to bring me closer to the lives of sixteenth century women.

After a long career in the Civil Service, working in Whitehall, I retired to Devon. At first I thought pottering in the garden would keep me happily occupied.

Anyone who follows me on social media will know that I love my garden. I spend many happy hours there. I also have an allotment. But it soon became clear that would never be enough. I began to research the county’s sixteenth century history. At about the same time, I became immersed in the world of Tudor and Elizabethan fashion. I have even brushed up my dressmaking skills to recreate garments from that era. I’m often asked which came first, the history research or the clothing. I honestly can’t say. They are aspects of my work that entwine together so intricately I can’t separate them. They are what underpins my writing.

I first discovered history in primary school. Over time, it has become a passion that has never faded, even though my career took a different direction. The Tudor and Elizabethan eras have always held a special fascination for me. The tales of Henry VIII and his wives, all the courtiers around Mary and Elizabeth, still captivate me. But what I really wanted to know was what life was like for all the other women of Tudor England who lived outside the royal court, particularly those in Devon.

While volunteering at National Trust Compton Castle, a small fortified manor house, they invited me to create a costume in order to portray a historical character for visitors. I agreed to see what I could do.

But I didn’t just want to look the part by “dressing up.” I wanted to delve deeper and understand the construction of those amazing outfits. Above all, I needed to know what it felt like to wear them. This led me to conduct extensive research, which unveiled many unexpected links between clothing and Tudor life.

Studying clothing and fashion, I’ve also learned about health, hygiene, fabrics, and dyes. I’ve come across all the people involved in making clothes, people like weavers, dyers, tailors, lace-makers and embroiderers. I’ve also discovered the Guilds overseeing their crafts and trade. Along the way, I’ve met Devon merchants who made fortunes selling and exporting wool and woollen cloth. I’ve even delved into politics, international relations, and piracy. All of this adds to my store of knowledge of their time.

The late Dame Hilary Mantel advised that those who aspire to write historical fiction should aim to inhabit the era in which their writing is set.

“Live in that world,” she said, “and this magic day comes and it becomes solid and real. If you can get your five senses working for you, you are home and eventually your dreams will move to your chosen period as well.”

I’ve taken that advice on board, and I now spend much more time in the sixteenth century than the twenty-first.

I visit wonderful old buildings, churches, castles, and manor houses and marvel at the craftsmanship of those who created beauty from wood and stone long ago. Tudor food flavoured with surprisingly tangy spices which I’ve ground in a pestle and mortar tingles on my tongue. I listen to sixteenth century music, be it a lute in the great hall of a timber-framed mansion or wonderful voices lifted in song in a magnificent space like Exeter Cathedral. And I often I walk in Elizabethan knot gardens and linger beside their low clipped hedges to fill my lungs with the scent of herbs and the perfumes of flowers like roses, gilly flowers and lavender. Damp wool, wood-smoke, beeswax or tallow candles are just some smells I recognise. I’ve slept in a carved oak fourposter bed, and I’ve stitched by candlelight.

In short, I take every opportunity to experience the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of their world.

Dressing as they did adds the fifth sense — touch. This is the part of my writers research that connects me most to the women I write about — the forgotten women who stood behind their menfolk, the women who played their part in Devon’s and England’s story, but have left the lightest of footprints on the historical record.

Dressed as the Lady Katherine, the soft touch of linen on my skin becomes familiar. I know exactly what it’s like to wear a smock beneath layers of skirts and farthingale hoops while constrained within boned bodies. Running my hand over fine silks and velvets, I feel the texture of the cloth. I can practise the exact tilt of the head needed when wearing a starched ruff. When I braid my hair Tudor style, the headdress fits well.

“You can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.”

Whoever first said this is lost to history, but it’s so true. The experience of wearing those clothes opens a window on women’s lives which I doubt can be achieved in any other way. As Historian Susannah Lipscombe wrote in an article for History Today some time ago.

“Dressing in historical clothes can reveal things about the past that no book can.”

For this to work, it’s important that the outfits I create are as close as possible to those they wore. Over the years, I’ve set out to learn more about the way they constructed their clothes and increasingly I use materials and techniques used by Tudor and Elizabethan tailors. I now have a wardrobe of shifts, kirtles, partlets, kerchers and coifs, stockings and petticoats, gowns, sleeves. I have clothing suitable for a highborn lady and also for a working woman. It is quite amazing how, without even thinking about it, I hold myself differently when I put on the clothes of the Lady Katherine. As Bessie the Serving Woman, I’m busy, always rushing around with so much more freedom of movement.

By dressing as they did and walking in their footsteps, I’ve been able to connect with the women of Devon who lived through the challenging Tudor years. Simple things we take for granted — doing the laundry; keeping warm; getting enough food for a household and preserving it for winter use must have been so much more challenging. I’ve discovered little details. For example, I can have my characters slip from a bed, but they must climb up into it. I understand how to manage a call of nature under those skirts, which certainly won’t allow them to carry anything at all as they run up a spiral staircase. It has brought home to me the total lack of privacy. Servants often sleep in a truckle bed in the same room. A fine lady cannot even dress herself unaided.

This ‘lived experience’ is just as critical to my writers’ research as poring over old parchments in the Devon Archives. The documents may tell me what happened, the glimpses I get into their world by wearing their clothes can help me understand more of what it felt like to be there.

At Dartington Hall, the setting for my latest novel, I’ve been following Roberda as she gets to know her new home.

I’ve walked with her in the gardens, imagining the physick garden she will create. We also walk there together in my dreams.

I love sharing all I’ve learned with others through my writing. But I also enjoy bringing history to life for museums and community groups throughout the West Country. My appearances are a unique blend of theatre history and re-enactment that embody the idea that history is fun. If I had a pound for everyone who has said to me ‘How I wish my teacher at school had been like you.’ I’d be wealthy indeed.

Rosemary Griggs

24 March 2024

I am grateful to the Dartington Trust for allowing me to explore this wonderful old manor house and its wonderful gardens so often. Thanks also to the National Trust English Riviera Group, who got me stated on this journey.

Buy Links:

Universal Buy Link: https://rosemarygriggs.co.uk/books/2/The%20Dartington%20Bride/

Author Bio:

Author and speaker Rosemary Griggs has been researching Devon’s sixteenth-century history for years. She has discovered a cast of fascinating characters and an intriguing network of families whose influence stretched far beyond the West Country and loves telling the stories of the forgotten women of history – the women beyond the royal court; wives, sisters, daughters and mothers who played their part during those tumultuous Tudor years: the Daughters of Devon.

Her novel A Woman of Noble Wit tells the story of Katherine Champernowne, Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother, and features many of the county’s well-loved places.

Rosemary creates and wears sixteenth-century clothing, a passion which complements her love for bringing the past to life through a unique blend of theatre, history and re-enactment. Her appearances and talks for museums and community groups all over the West Country draw on her extensive research into sixteenth-century Devon, Tudor life and Tudor dress, particularly Elizabethan.

Out of costume, Rosemary leads heritage tours of the gardens at Dartington Hall, a fourteenth-century manor house and now a visitor destination and charity supporting learning in arts, ecology and social justice.

Author Links:

Website:https://rosemarygriggs.co.uk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RAGriggsauthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladykatherinesfarthingale

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/griggs6176/

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@griggs6176

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ragriggsauthor.bsky.social

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Rosemary-Griggs/author/B09GY6ZSYF

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21850977.Rosemary_Griggs