Gillian Bagwell

Gillian Bagwell began her professional life in theater and united her lifelong love of books, British history, and the stage by writing The Darling Strumpet. Her second novel, The September Queen (U.K. title, The King’s Mistress) recounts the perilous and romantic odyssey of Jane Lane, who risked her life to help the young Charles II escape after the disastrous Battle of Worcester in 1651. Venus in Winter is a sweeping and romantic novel of Bess of Hardwick, the formidable four-times widowed Tudor dynast who is the forebear of numerous noble lines including the current royal family of Britain.