Talk by author Ann O'Brien

Sunday Times bestselling author Anne O'Brien was born in West Yorkshire. After a BA Honours degree in History at Manchester University and a Master's in Education at Hull, she lived in East Yorkshire as a teacher of history. Today she has sold over a million copies of her books in the UK and internationally. She lives with her husband in an eighteenth-century timber-framed cottage in the depths of the Welsh Marches in Herefordshire. The area provides endless inspiration for her novels about the forgotten women of medieval history.

Why write about medieval women? What is so special about Joan de Geneville?

Medieval women are for the most part invisible other than as wives, sisters and daughters of the men who rode out to war and manipulated power in their own interests. History was invariably written by men who had little interest in the role of women. But surely some of them, intelligent, well-informed and generally clever women, were involved and played a major role in their family history, and even in royal Court intrigue. These are the jewels of history waiting to be discovered and used in historical fiction. They deserve to be brought onto centre stage.

Why Joan de Geneville? The Mortimer family dominated the Welsh Marches in the Middle Ages, with their widespread ambitions, the often tragic consequences of their political choices, and their important marriage alliances. Joan de Geneville was the wealthy heiress wife of the notorious Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March. A woman of courage, of resilience, she was also a woman imprisoned and betrayed. Could she survive the taint of treachery, for herself and for her children? A Court of Betrayal is her story.