Norah Lofts

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

“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.”....

“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"....

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....

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

When William the Conqueror wished to reward his armourer, he made him a grant of land - land worked by freemen and already belonging to a Saxon lord....

Eleanor…young, high-spirited, supremely intelligent, heiress to the vast Duchy of Aquitaine – at a time when a woman’s value was measured in terms of wealth....

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

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....

When young John Vincent died, the outward respectability of the Cornwall household was undermined....

Thus the future of Caroline Matilda, youngest sister of George III....

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

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

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"....

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....

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....

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....

When Daisy Holt was dismissed from her post as a nursemaid she set off cheerfully into the jungle of mid-Victorian London....

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