Due to her efforts, all her daughters married dukes and earls. Jane, Duchess of Gordon, had five daughters and her main occupation in life was matchmaking. I had read a lot about her mother, Jane Gordon, a political hostess and rival of the infamous Duchess of Devonshire.
It began with The Decadent Duke because I wanted to write a story about Lady Georgina Gordon who became the Duchess of Bedford and got to live at Woburn Abbey. The names of the people, even minor characters, have to beactual regional names.My last series of books that I now think of as Peers Of The Realm, did not start out as a series. When I select a time period and the real historical people I want to write about, I usually start with a map. At my age, my short term memory is non-existent and I have to keep looking things up over and over.
When you're reading some period's history or scanning the entries in Burke's Peerage (or do you have it memorized by this point?), what factors start to pull what you're reading out of the realm of fact and into the realm of fiction? How do you decide which of these figures from the past gets to live in a Virginia Henley novel?I don't have it memorized. We were taught to relish English history. LOL.I was born in Bolton, Lancashire, England and went to school there until I was twelve. Writing the book usually brings me close to a nervous breakdown. Doing the historical research brings me pleasure. My second goal is to please my reader.History is my passion, and doing the historical research for a book is what makes it bearable for me.Writing a book is extremely hard work that takes me a whole year. Thank you for joining us today - let's talk right away about history! Your latest novel, "The Dark Earl" is scrupulously researched - reading it, I sometimes thought you went out of your way even to verify an individual's height and hair color, if there was any hint of such things in the historical record! What prompts you to go to such efforts, especially when the genre itself isn't exactly overflowing with scholarship? My number one goal in writing is to please myself. Best-selling romance author Virginia Henley talks with Open Letters:
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