Catherine Curzon

Catherine Curzon is an author and royal historian of the 18th century. She is also co-author of the Captivating Captains series, with Eleanor Harkstead.

She has written extensively for publications including HistoryExtra.com, the official website of BBC History Magazine, Who Do You Think You Are?, Your Family History, Real Crime, Explore History, All About History, History of Royals and Jane Austen’s Regency World. Catherine has spoken at venues and events including the Stamford Georgian Festival, the Bath Jane Austen Festival, Lichfield Guildhall, the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, Dr Johnson’s House, Kenwood House, the Hurlingham Club, Godmersham Park, and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. She has provided additional research for An Evening with Jane Austen, starring Adrian Lukis, and has introduced the performance at venues across the UK.

Catherine holds a Master’s degree in Film and when not dodging the furies of the guillotine can often be found cheering for the mighty Huddersfield Town. She lives in Yorkshire atop a ludicrously steep hill with a rakish colonial gentleman, a long-suffering cat and a lively dog.

Visit Catherine’s website A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life. Follow her on InstagramFacebook, Goodreads and on Twitter.

Catherine’s Books ~

The Scandal of George III’s Court

From Windsor to Weymouth, the shadow of scandal was never too far from  the House of Hanover. Did a fearsome duke really commit murder or a royal mistress sell commissions to the highest bidders, and what was the truth behind George III’s supposed secret marriage to a pretty Quaker?

With everything from illegitimate children to illegal marriages, dead valets and equerries sneaking about the palace by candlelight, these eyebrow-raising tales from the reign of George III prove that the highest of births is no guarantee of good behaviour. Prepare to meet some shocking ladies, some shameless gentlemen and some politicians who really should know better.

So tighten your stays, hoist up your breeches and prepare for a gallop through some of the most shocking royal scandals from the court of George III’s court. You’ll never look at a king in the same way again…

Queens of Georgian Britain

Once upon a time there were four kings called George who, thanks to a quirk of fate, ruled Great Britain for over a century. Hailing from Germany, these occasionally mad, bad and infamous sovereigns presided over a land in turmoil.

Yet what of the remarkable women who were crowned alongside them?

From the forgotten princess locked in a tower to an illustrious regent, a devoted consort and a notorious party girl, the queens of Georgian Britain lived lives of scandal, romance and turbulent drama. Whether dipping into politics or carousing on the shores of Italy, Caroline of Ansbach, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Caroline of Brunswick refused to fade into the background.

Queens of Georgian Britain offers a chance to step back in time and meet the women who ruled alongside the Georgian monarchs, not forgetting Sophia Dorothea of Celle, the passionate princess who never made it as far as the throne. From lonely childhoods to glittering palaces, via family feuds, smallpox, strapping soldiers and plenty of scheming, these are the queens who shaped an era.

Life in the Georgian Court

As the glittering Hanoverian court gives birth to the British Georgian era, a golden age of royalty dawns in Europe. Houses rise and fall, births, marriages and scandals change the course of history and in France, Revolution stalks the land.

Peep behind the shutters of the opulent court of the doomed Bourbons, the absolutist powerhouse of Romanov Russia and the epoch-defining family whose kings gave their name to the era, the House of Hanover.

Behind the pomp and ceremony were men and women born into worlds of immense privilege, yet beneath the powdered wigs and robes of state were real people living lives of romance, tragedy, intrigue and eccentricity. Take a journey into the private lives of very public figures and learn of arranged marriages that turned to love or hate and scandals that rocked polite society.

Here the former wife of a king spends three decades in lonely captivity, Prinny makes scandalous eyes at the toast of the London stage and Marie Antoinette begins her last, terrible journey through Paris as her son sits alone in a forgotten prison cell.

Life in the Georgian Court is a privileged peek into the glamorous, tragic and iconic courts of the Georgian world, where even a king could take nothing for granted.

Kings of Georgian Century Britain

For over a century of turmoil, upheaval and scandal, Great Britain was a Georgian land.

From the day the German-speaking George I stepped off the boat from Hanover, to the night that George IV, bloated and diseased, breathed his last at Windsor, the four kings had presided over a changing nation.

Kings of Georgian Britain offers a fresh perspective on the lives of the four Georges and the events that shaped their characters and reigns. From love affairs to family feuds, political wrangling and beyond, it is a chance to peer behind the pomp and follow these iconic figures from cradle to grave. As their very different lives will show, being a king isn’t always about grand parties and jaw-dropping jewels, and sometimes following in a father’s footsteps can be the hardest job around.

Take a step back in time and meet the wives, mistresses, friends and foes of these remarkable kings who shaped the nation, and find out what really went on behind closed palace doors. Whether dodging assassins, marrying for money, digging up their ancestors or sparking domestic disputes that echoed down the generations, the Georgian kings of Great Britain were never short on drama.

The Captain’s Ghostly Gamble

For centuries, foppish Captain Cornelius Sheridan and brooding John Rookwood have haunted the mansion they duelled and died for. Now these phantom foes must join forces to save both their home and their feuding descendents.

But when Captain Sheridan sacrifices his afterlife for the sake of true love, will Rookwood risk everything to keep his companion by his side, or is it too late to say “I love you”?

 

 

 

The Captain and the Cricketer

Captain Robert Thorne is the fiercest officer in the regiment. Awaiting the command to go to the front, he has no time for simpering, comely lads. That’s until one summer day in 1917, when his dark, flashing eye falls upon the newest recruit at Chateau de Desgravier, a fresh-faced farmer’s boy with little experience of life and a wealth of poetry in his heart.

Trooper Jack Woodvine has a way with strong, difficult stallions, and whispers them to his gentle will. Yet even he has never tamed a creature like Captain Thorne.

With the shadow of the Great War and the scheming of enemies closer to home threatening their fleeting chance at happiness, can the captain and the cavalry trooper make it home safely? More importantly, will they see peacetime together?

The Captain and the Cavalry Trooper

Captain Robert Thorne is the fiercest officer in the regiment. Awaiting the command to go to the front, he has no time for simpering, comely lads. That’s until one summer day in 1917, when his dark, flashing eye falls upon the newest recruit at Chateau de Desgravier, a fresh-faced farmer’s boy with little experience of life and a wealth of poetry in his heart.

Trooper Jack Woodvine has a way with strong, difficult stallions, and whispers them to his gentle will. Yet even he has never tamed a creature like Captain Thorne.

With the shadow of the Great War and the scheming of enemies closer to home threatening their fleeting chance at happiness, can the captain and the cavalry trooper make it home safely? More importantly, will they see peacetime together?

An Actor’s Guide to Romance

For twenty years, Adam Fisher and Thomas Fox have been the best of enemies. From their first meeting at drama school to shared stages, shared bills and a competition to amass the most illustrious awards, they have been the names on every theatregoers’ lips. Separately they can sell out an entire run in an hour, so when they’re cast as lovers in London’s hottest new play, the tickets are gone in minutes.

But for rakish Adam and gentlemanly Thomas, the small matter of their first on-stage kiss is causing a headache for everyone. Over a bottle of wine on one rainy night in the city, these two acting legends will do whatever it takes to banish their first-night nerves. After all, as everyone knows, the show must go on!

 

The Angel on the Northern Line

Christian Winter used to save the world. In World War II, when good and bad was a simple matter of whose side you were on, life seemed so much simpler. Back then it was easy for a superman to see the troops safely home. Back then it was easy to be Mithras.

Long since retired to teach Latin in a London school, the man who used to be Mithras wants nothing more than a cup of tea and a quiet life. All that changes thanks to a runaway train on the Northern Line, and a red-headed Scottish angel whose eyes are bluer than a summer sky, who just happens to have a thing for chaps in tweed.

Christian is swept along by Freddy Rose’s passion and enthusiasm, and his efforts to resist the Scottish angel’s attractions aren’t exactly heartfelt, but can the passionate angel and an encounter with a very important lady tempt Mithras back to a life of adventure?

The Crown Spire

Alice Ingram escapes her brutish husband and leaves a glittering life in London far behind. With her niece at her side she flees north, determined to save the girl from the fate she has endured but after an encounter with two mysterious highwaymen, life for the women will never be the same again…

Devoted to his daughter and resigned to a life of loneliness, James Dillingham has built a reputation as the finest physician in the land and a man for whom romance is a notion best avoided. He leaves all that to his best friend, who is just the sort of rogue to catch a girl’s adventurous eye…

By day Alice finds herself ever more at odds with the straight-laced doctor who becomes her neighbour whilst by night, moonlit escapades with a masked highwayman lead her into a life of excitement in the shadow of the Crown Spire. Yet with her husband in relentless pursuit, are some shackles too strong to break?

The Star of Versailles

As the Reign of Terror tears Paris apart, a dandy and a spy are thrown together on a desperate race through France.

In the darkest days of the Reign of Terror, rumors grow of the Star of Versailles, the most exquisite treasure ever owned by the doomed Marie Antoinette. For Vincent Tessier, the notorious Butcher of Orléans, this potent symbol of the ancien régime has become an obsession and he’ll stop at nothing to possess it.

When Alexandre Gaudet arrives in France to find his missing sister and nephew, the last thing he expects is to fall into Tessier’s hands. With Gaudet tortured and left for dead, salvation stumbles accidentally, if rather decorously, into his path.

For Viscount William Knowles, life as a spy isn’t the escape he had hoped for. Yet a long-held secret won’t let him rest, and the fires of Revolution seem like the easiest way to hide from a past that torments him at every turn.

Adrift in a world where love, family and honor are currencies to be traded, the world-weary Viscount Knowles and the scandalous Monsieur Gaudet have no choice but to try to get along if they want to survive. With Tessier in pursuit, they search for the clues that will lead them to the greatest treasure in revolutionary France—the Star of Versailles.

The Mistress of Blackstairs

In the winter of 1784 the most illustrious men in London seek their discrete pleasures at Blackstairs, the Covent Garden brothel presided over by the mysterious Madam Moineau, her beauty concealed beneath masks and veils.

Few know that the enigmatic French madam was once Georgina Radcliffe, teenage bride of the mercurial Viscount Edmund Polmear who left her for dead in a Parisian townhouse, her face slashed beyond recognition and an inferno raging.

Now Polmear’s unpunished crimes come back to haunt him in the ragged shape of orphan streetgirl Molly Peel and charming gambler Anthony Lake, hellbent on revenge against the viscount.

After nearly a decade behind masks, Georgie will learn that she must face the demons of her past in order to be free.

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