Linda Porter was the winner of the 2004 Biographers Club / Daily Mail Prize, and is the author of three critically acclaimed history books: Mary Tudor: The First Queen, Katherine the Queen: the Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr and Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots. She is a regular contributor to BBC History Magazine and History Today. She lives in Kent.
Charles I was, even his wife and key advisers conceded, lacking in the essential strength that a ruler required, in turbulent times. But even Charles's enemies were moved by his loving devotion as a father. Linda Porter looks with sympathy and fluent scholarship at the lives of the six, beloved, Stuart princes and princesses, illuminating how their father's failure as a king inevitably impacted their lives, before the survivors strived to forge their own destinies. -- Charles Spencer, author of Killers of the King A wonderful story, both poignant and touching, of the family heartbreak that lay behind the public politics of the Civil Wars. -- Janice Hadlow, author of The Strangest Family One of the great untold stories of British history - a prince who knew what it was like to live as a pauper, an exiled princess as estranged from her husband as from England. Linda Porter's pacy and impeccably researched history takes the five surviving children of Charles I and gives full weight to the personal as well as the political stories. -- Sarah Gristwood, author of Arbella and Blood Sisters