
The Stuart period was torn by dark sectarian troubles, the thwarted Gunpowder Plot an event that, had it succeeded, would have been as dramatic as the attack on the Twin Towers and would have wiped out the new dynasty. It was a time of witch hunts, espionage, the exploration of the globe and a royal court with an openly homosexual king, a complex, flawed and unpopular individual whose son would be tried and executed in Cromwell’s revolution – an event that would irrevocably change the path of English history.

The cultural flourishing that began in Elizabeth’s reign reached it’s zenith at this time, only to be wiped out with Cromwell, who closed the playhouses. But it returned with the restoration of Charles II, the most charismatic of the Stuarts,


Elizabeth Fremantle's The Girl in the Glass Tower is out now.