Sharon Penman has Died

 Another sad loss - Sharon Penman had been ill for some time, but her death was still an unpleasant surprise.  She had recently been diagnosed with a rare cancer.  She was 75.

She was one of my favourite historical novelists, and one of the few who wrote about Welsh medieval history.  Both Sharon Penman and Edith Pargeter wrote about Prince Llewelyn, the last independent Prince of Wales.  Edith Pargeter wrote four books under the umbrella title Brothers of Gwynedd, and Sharon Penman wrote the magnificent trilogy which begins with the life of Llewelyn the Great, the Last Llewelyn's grandfather: Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning.  Falls the Shadow brings in Simon de Montfort as the main character, as his daughter Ellen eventually married Llewelyn (no thanks to Edward I, who I despise with a deep and abiding passion!). 

 I wept non-stop through the last 200 pages of The Reckoning, partly because I was so involved with the characters, and partly because I already knew the history, so I knew what was going to happen to them.  When I was an archaeologist, I did the site tours of Caergwrle Castle in North Wales, which is where Dafydd, Llewelyn's younger brother, launched his attack on nearby Hawardan Castle (which was held by the English), thus starting a war with England which Edward I very decisively finished.

Sharon didn't only write about Welsh history, though.  Her first book was The Sunne in Splendour, about Richard III, and it is magnificent.  It was also completely re-written after the original manuscript was stolen, while she was still working as a tax lawyer.

She's also written about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Anarchy under King Stephen, and Richard I.  Her most recent book was The Land Beyond the Sea, about King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the war against Saladin - the same period that was covered in the film Kingdom of Heaven, but with a more historically accurate Balian d'Ibelin.

For lighter medieval fare, there are the lovely Queen's Man books, shorter medieval mysteries about a young man who works for Queen Eleanor.  I'm very fond of Justin de Quincy (and his dog Shadow).