My Lord John: Georgette Heyer.

 

Georgette Heyer
Wikimedia Commons 

Every so often a book gains a reputation that becomes difficult to shake. Readers hear that it is disappointing, flawed or unsuccessful and approach it already expecting to be underwhelmed. Georgette Heyer’s My Lord John is one such book.

Published after Heyer’s death in 1975, the novel has often been dismissed as an unfinished curiosity rather than a major work in its own right. Many readers expecting the wit and romance of her Regency novels were disappointed to discover a dense, highly detailed story set in the late fourteenth century. Yet having recently revisited the book, I find myself wondering whether it deserves far more credit than it usually receives.

The first misconception concerns the title itself.

Many people assume that the “John” of My Lord John is John of Gaunt. In fact, the title refers to his grandson, John of Lancaster, the future Duke of Bedford and son of Henry IV. Heyer intended the novel to be the opening volume of an ambitious trilogy exploring the House of Lancaster. Sadly, she never lived to complete it.

That said, John of Gaunt remains one of the most important figures in the book.

When we encounter him, he is in the final years of his life. This is not the fiery young commander of the Castilian campaigns or the controversial political figure denounced by some chroniclers. Instead, Heyer presents an ageing statesman whose long experience has given him both wisdom and perspective. He is shown as a devoted family man, deeply concerned with the future of the Lancastrian dynasty and conscious that his life’s work is nearing its end.

For those of us interested in Katherine Swynford, this portrayal is particularly fascinating.

Popular culture has often struggled to know what to do with John of Gaunt. Depending upon the author, he can appear as a villain, a romantic hero, a political opportunist or a tragic figure. Heyer’s version feels much closer to the John emerging from modern scholarship. He is intelligent, pragmatic, loyal to those he loves and, above all, conscious of his responsibilities.

What struck me most on rereading the novel was how naturally Katherine Swynford and the Beaufort children are woven into the story.

By the period covered in the book, Katherine is no longer the duke’s mistress but his wife. The long years of uncertainty are behind them. The Beaufort children are increasingly visible within the Lancastrian family circle and are treated as part of that world. Modern readers sometimes forget how remarkable this transformation was. Within a few years the Beauforts would be formally legitimised and become one of the most influential families in England.

For anyone researching Joan Beaufort, as I currently am, these scenes carry particular resonance.

Joan is not a central character, but she is present within the wider family network. We are reminded that before she became Countess of Westmorland and matriarch of the Neville dynasty, she was a daughter of the House of Lancaster. Her childhood and early adulthood were shaped by the political and familial world that Heyer recreates so effectively.

Indeed, one of the novel’s greatest strengths is its understanding of family.

This is not simply a story of kings and battles. It is a story of relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and nephews. John of Gaunt’s influence extends through every page, not because he dominates events but because his legacy shapes the lives of those around him. The future Henry V, the young Duke of Bedford and the Beaufort children all inhabit a world that he helped create.

Critics frequently complained that My Lord John was too historical and not sufficiently novelistic. There is some truth in that observation. The book contains lengthy discussions of politics, administration and dynastic affairs. It demands patience from the reader. Yet these are also the qualities that make it rewarding.

Heyer spent decades researching the period. She immersed herself in chronicles, records and medieval scholarship. Reading the novel often feels less like reading historical fiction and more like stepping into the late fourteenth century. The texture of everyday life, the political assumptions of the age and the intricate web of family loyalties all feel authentic.

Perhaps that is why I enjoyed it more on this reading than I did years ago.

As my own research has increasingly focused upon Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt and Joan Beaufort, I found myself appreciating details that I might once have skimmed past. The novel captures a moment when the Beaufort family stood on the threshold of greatness. Their future importance is not yet fully visible, but the foundations are already being laid.

The tragedy of My Lord John is not that it is unfinished. Rather, it is that Heyer never had the opportunity to complete the larger story she intended to tell. One cannot help wondering what her portrayal of Henry V, Bedford and the later Beaufort generation might have looked like.

Even in its incomplete state, however, the novel offers something valuable. It provides one of the most sympathetic and thoughtful fictional portrayals of John of Gaunt that I have encountered. It presents Katherine Swynford as a respected member of the Lancastrian family rather than a historical footnote. Most importantly, it reminds us that the Beauforts did not emerge from nowhere. They were part of a family whose influence would shape English history for generations.

For readers interested in Katherine Swynford, John of Gaunt and the Beaufort dynasty, My Lord John deserves to be remembered not as a failure but as an ambitious and often overlooked achievement. It may not be Heyer’s easiest book, but it is certainly one of her most interesting.

Strong Northern Women

Coronation street epitomises strong northern women

This week has felt rather different from most others. For the first time, Joan Beaufort has begun to feel less like a distant historical figure and more like someone whose life I am genuinely beginning to understand.

I have spent much of the week working on the opening sections of my Joan Beaufort biography, particularly the introduction and Chapter One. There is something slightly daunting about beginning a first history book after years of writing talks, blog posts and academic work. A book feels more permanent somehow. It demands not only research, but structure, confidence and patience. Some days I have felt immersed in fourteenth-century England; on others I have stared at the screen wondering whether any of it truly works at all.

Alongside the writing itself, I have also been exploring publishing options. I have had encouraging communication with a publisher, which has given me some hope that Joan’s story might finally find the wider audience she deserves. At the same time, I have also been researching alternative publishers and considering what route might best suit a serious but accessible work of medieval history. The publishing world can feel almost as complex and political as the late medieval court itself.

Much of the week has also been spent searching archives, chasing references and trying to untangle long-repeated assumptions from actual evidence. That process, although often frustrating, is also one of the things I enjoy most. There is a strange excitement in finding a small overlooked detail buried in a patent roll, ecclesiastical register or nineteenth-century antiquarian text. Slowly, a clearer picture begins to emerge.

What has surprised me most, however, is how much I have begun to like Joan Beaufort herself.

History has often treated Joan as an appendage to others — daughter of Katherine Swynford, wife of Ralph Neville, mother of Cecily Neville. Yet the more I read, the more I sense a woman of intelligence, resilience and political awareness moving quietly through an unstable world. She survived scandal by birth, dynastic insecurity, political upheaval and the constant demands placed upon aristocratic women, eventually becoming matriarch of one of the most powerful family networks in England.

Perhaps it is not entirely surprising that I feel drawn toward writing about strong northern women.

Long before Joan Beaufort entered my life, my MA dissertation explored another formidable northern female world: the women of the UK soap opera Coronation Street. Although separated by six centuries, there is something oddly familiar in the emotional strength, endurance, wit and survival strategies of women navigating difficult environments. Medieval noblewomen and Weatherfield matriarchs may appear very different on the surface, but both inhabit worlds shaped by family loyalties, reputation, power and resilience.

One of the pleasures of historical writing is discovering those unexpected human connections across time.

At the start of this project Joan Beaufort felt important. Now she is also beginning to feel real.

 May 10th marks the anniversary of the death of Katherine Swynford in 1403. She died in Lincoln, probably at the so-called Priory within the Cathedral Close, and may well have been in declining health for some time before her death. Over six centuries later, her presence still lingers quietly across the city she came to call home.

Katherine remains one of the most recognisable women of fourteenth-century England. To many, she is remembered primarily through the lens of romance: the long relationship with John of Gaunt, the eventual marriage, and the extraordinary rise of their Beaufort children. It is certainly a remarkable story, but I have increasingly come to feel that reducing Katherine to a romantic heroine alone does her a considerable injustice.

What fascinates me most is not simply the love story, but the woman herself. Katherine survived at the heart of one of the most dangerous royal courts in medieval Europe. She endured public criticism, political upheaval, widowhood, exile from court life, and the uncertainties of dynastic politics, yet emerged with influence, dignity, and lasting significance. In many ways she represents something more complex and more interesting: an intelligent, resilient, and independent medieval woman navigating a world largely controlled by men.

Lincoln forms an important part of that story. Here she spent some of the final years of her life. Here she died. Here she was buried in Lincoln Cathedral beside her daughter Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland. Even now, standing near their tombs in the Cathedral, there is a powerful sense that these are not simply distant historical figures but women whose lives shaped the course of English history.

Increasingly, my own research has begun to turn towards Joan Beaufort. Overshadowed at times by both her parents and her descendants, Joan was nevertheless one of the great matriarchs of fifteenth-century England. Through her children and grandchildren, her influence stretched deep into the Wars of the Roses and ultimately towards the Tudor dynasty itself. Yet Joan also had her own story of power, family, grief, survival, and political importance.

As I begin my journey into historical non-fiction writing, it is Joan who is increasingly drawing me in. There is something compelling about attempting to recover the lives of medieval women not simply as supporting figures in the stories of powerful men, but as individuals who shaped events in their own right.

Perhaps that, ultimately, is what continues to draw me back to Katherine Swynford and her family. Their story is not simply one of romance or scandal, but of legacy, resilience, motherhood, ambition, survival, and memory. And in Lincoln, their story still feels very much alive.

Finding Joan Beaufort

The last couple of weeks have been spent debating whether I could actually write a book about Joan Beaufort. Given my lifetime of imposter syndrome I can think of many reasons why I shouldn’t. However at my stage of life there is a strong argument there is nothing to loose and I might actually enjoy it.

So I have accumulated a pile of biographies, a jumble of documents from the National Archives and a whole host of other potentially useful records.

It is clear at this stage that planning is going to be the most important part of the whole project.

It’s tempting to rush into writing, but with Joan that simply isn’t going to work. She isn’t a figure with a ready-made narrative. More often, she appears briefly—through family connections, landholdings, or the actions of others—before disappearing again. So the first  has to be to take a step back andthink carefully about how her story can be told.

At the moment, my focus is on shaping the approach rather than drafting chapters. Do I follow a

straightforward chronological structure, or build the book around themes—power, land, family,

widowhood? Joan sits at the centre of all of these, but rarely in a way that is obvious at first glance.

A lot of this stage is about mapping: identifying where she appears in the records, and just as

importantly, where she doesn’t. That means working through sources and resisting the temptation to write yet, but to understand the landscape I’m dealing with.Place is also feeding into the planning. 

Locations such as Raby Castle and Lincoln Cathedral are helping me think about structure. These aren’t just settings—they may well become anchors for different parts of the book.

I’m also very aware of what I don’t want to do. Joan is too often reduced to a supporting

role—daughter of Katherine Swynford, or matriarch of a family caught up in the Wars of the Roses. I need to find a way to keep her at the centre, even when the story of those around her take centre stage.

So for now, this is slow, deliberate work. No dramatic breakthroughs, just building a framework that feels honest to the evidence. If I get this stage right, the writing should follow

 

Painting of Joan

Painting of Ralph first Earl of Westmorland 

Raby

 

Visiting Raby Castle as part of my ongoing research for a forthcoming talk on Joan Beaufort.

What a place. Peaceful, beautiful and steeped in history — yet once home to one of the most influential women of the fifteenth century.

Raby is forever linked with Joan’s marriage to Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland. Together they had fourteen children, and through them Joan became ancestress to an extraordinary cast of later history. Their daughter Eleanor Neville was mother of Henry Percy, Hotspur. Cecily Neville became mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Another grandson was Richard Neville, remembered as the Kingmaker.

Yet Joan’s life was no fairytale. Her first marriage to Robert Ferrers brought two daughters before early widowhood. Her second marriage brought status and power, but also years of bitter inheritance dispute with her Neville stepchildren.

After Ralph’s death, Joan appears to have turned increasingly to religion and later took a vow of chastity — perhaps understandable after a lifetime of childbearing, politics and family conflict.

It strikes me that Joan’s story is so often told through others: in books about Katherine Swynford as daughter, or Cecily Neville as mother. Yet Joan herself deserves centre stage. I am increasingly tempted to try to tell her story myself.

For now, Raby was a reminder that Joan Beaufort was never merely adjacent to history. She helped shape it.

Elanor of Castile is very much part of Johns Story as his Great Grandmother

Millennium window Harby

Harby Church today

 Victorian representation 

Looking towards the supposed site of Harby Manor 

It is easy to think of Eleanor of Castile in terms of what came after her death—the great crosses, the long funeral journey, the tomb at Westminster. Yet the story does not begin there. It begins here, in Harby, a small and otherwise unremarkable village that became, for a brief moment in 1290, the centre of royal attention.

In November of that year, Eleanor was travelling with Edward I. By the 13th, her health was clearly failing, and the court left Clipstone heading towards Lincoln, perhaps intending to visit the shrine of Hugh of Lincoln to pray for her recovery. The journey, however, was cut short. On 20 November, Eleanor was brought to Harby, to the manor house of Richard de Weston—a reminder that this was not a grand royal residence, but a local house drawn suddenly into royal history. Suffering from what contemporaries described as a “slow fever,” she declined steadily over the following days.

Her final hours were carefully attended. Present at her deathbed were the local priest, William de Kelm, and the Bishop of Lincoln, Oliver Sutton. On the evening of 28 November 1290, Eleanor died. The setting could hardly have been more modest, yet the consequences of that moment would extend across the whole of England.

The response was immediate and practical. Eleanor’s body was taken to St Catherine’s Priory in Lincoln, where it was eviscerated and embalmed. Her viscera were buried in Lincoln Cathedral, while her body and heart began the long journey south. On the morning of 4 December, the funeral cortège set out on the first stage of a journey of some 172 miles to Westminster Abbey. Travelling in the short daylight hours of December, it moved along medieval roads, stopping at twelve places that would later be marked by the Eleanor Crosses. These monuments have come to dominate the narrative, fixing Eleanor’s memory across the landscape, but Harby was the point from which that process began.

Edward did not forget the place of her death. At Harby he founded a chantry chapel so that prayers would be said for Eleanor’s soul in perpetuity. Consecrated in 1294 and served by its first incumbent, Roger de Newton, the chantry was supported by an endowment that included the manor of Navenby. Unlike the great crosses, which proclaimed royal grief in public, the chantry represented something quieter and more enduring: a daily act of remembrance rooted in place. It is here that Edward’s words—“I loved her dearly during her lifetime … I shall not cease to love her now that she is dead”—feel most appropriate.

The medieval church associated with these events has not survived intact. Rebuilt over centuries and ultimately replaced in 1877, the present building stands on the same site, carrying forward layers of memory rather than preserving a single moment in time. Within it, one of the most striking commemorations of Eleanor is the stained glass window installed in 2008.

Designed and made by Lincoln Cathedral glazier Stephen Lewis, the window commemorates Eleanor’s death at Harby and, more broadly, celebrates two thousand years of Christianity. Eleanor stands at its centre, framed by her heraldry—the arms of León and Castile, England, and Ponthieu. Around her, twelve crosses flow across the design, symbolising the original Eleanor Crosses and echoing the stages of her funeral journey.

At the heart of the window, a roundel places the cross itself as the central symbol of Christianity, accompanied by a carnation and narcissus—emblems of enduring love and resurrection. It is a composition that brings together dynastic identity, personal loss, and theological meaning within a single visual narrative.

The use of stained glass is particularly apt. As the light changes, so too does the image: colours deepen, soften, and shift, and the sequence of crosses seems almost to move. In this way, Eleanor’s final journey is not simply depicted but quietly re-enacted, carried again in light across the interior of the church.

Other traces of Eleanor remain: a statue set into the tower, heraldry that anchors her identity, and smaller details that connect past and present. Yet even here, memory is not entirely secure. A brass plate by the altar rail records her death as 27 November 1290, a small but telling error that reminds us how easily history can shift in the act of commemoration.

Standing in the churchyard today, looking out across the fields, there is little to suggest that this was once the setting for a royal death. There is no sense of spectacle, no grand architectural statement—only the quiet continuity of a village landscape. And yet from this place, Eleanor’s memory travelled the length of England: fixed in stone, carried in ritual, and sustained here, most quietly of all, in prayer, glass, and light.

 

Harby is not simply where Eleanor died. It is where her memory began.

 

Walking the Kettlethorpe Estate: Fenton, Laughterton and the Trent

It has been on my mind for months to find a walk that explores the Kettlethorpe estate as it might have been in the time of Katherine and Hugh. Not just to walk it, but to try—properly—to find Katherine within her own landscape here in Lincolnshire. With the help of a leaflet available in Kettlethorpe Church, I have finally managed to piece together a short 4.5-mile route that does exactly that.

In glorious sunshine this afternoon, with my wife Rosemary and Henry—our cockapoo, on his lead throughout—we set out from the door of Kettlethorpe Church to test it.

The route takes you first to Fenton, then on to Laughterton, before an out-and-back stretch down to the River Trent via Marsh Lane. On the surface, it is a straightforward rural walk. But look more closely and it maps almost perfectly onto what was once the core of a medieval estate of around 3,000 acres, centred on Kettlethorpe and worked through settlements like Fenton and Laughterton.

Fenton feels exactly what it would have been: working land. Productive, organised, and essential to the estate. Laughterton is different. Its long, linear form still hints at planning—at structure imposed rather than grown. You begin to see that this is not random countryside, but something shaped, managed, and understood.

And then, if you slow down and actually look, the land starts to give itself away.

In places the pasture rises and falls in long, gentle waves—ridge and furrow. Medieval ploughing, still there under your feet. These are the strips worked by tenants of the estate, turned over season after season, year after year, building up those ridges almost imperceptibly. It is one of those moments where the past stops being abstract. You are not imagining it—you are standing in it.

We stopped in Laughterton to read the memorial to the two RAF crashes in 1944. A Stirling lost on a training flight. A Lancaster returning from operations. It is a quiet, understated memorial, but it shifts something. The same fields, six centuries later, carrying very different lives and very different losses. It doesn’t feel like an addition to the story—it feels like part of the same place continuing.

From there, Marsh Lane takes you down towards the Trent. The name alone tells you what you need to know. This is marshland—low, wet, and always slightly uncertain. In Katherine’s time, before any modern drainage, this would have been ground that demanded attention. Sometimes valuable, sometimes problematic, always needing to be managed. The estate didn’t just sit on the land—it had to work with it.

And then the Trent itself. Wide, slow, and deceptively calm. A boundary, a resource, and at times no doubt a problem. Standing there, it is easier to understand the scale of what Katherine held here—not just status, but responsibility. Land, water, people, obligation.

This walk doesn’t give you spectacle. It gives you something better.

It gives you a landscape that still makes sense.

And for me, that is where Katherine is easiest to find—not in the grandeur of Lincoln Cathedral, but here, in the fields around Kettlethorpe, where her life was actually lived.