Val Morgan is a retired academic with a lifelong passion for literature and history. She taught at Essex University between 2002 - 2015. Living in the south-east of England, her interest in the Anglo-Norman period was triggered by the local landscapes, the mottes and baileys, the castles, churches and scattered ruins that still lie in an enduring pastoral countryside. Her four novels set in that period required extensive research in museums, strongholds, churches, landscapes as well as studying the biographies of many astonishing and little known personalities, reading the chronicles and making use of the latest academic research and secondary historical sources. In this book, drawing on these resources and going beyond the novels, she has created a vivid collection of true life stories, told through the dramatic interplay of personalities. Val Morgan was born in Ipswich but has spent most of her life in Colchester. She is a keen walker in the landscapes of the Essex-Suffolk border. She has been married since 1973 and has two grown up children.