Helen Castor is a historian of medieval England and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She directed studies in History at Sidney for eight years before deciding to concentrate on writing history for a wider readership.
Her book Blood & Roses (Faber, 2004, published in revised form in the US by HarperCollins, 2006) is a biography of the fifteenth-century Paston family, whose letters are the earliest great collection of private correspondence surviving in the English language. Blood & Roses was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2005 and was awarded the Beatrice White Prize (for outstandingly scholarly work in the field of English Literature before 1590) by the English Association in 2006.
Author website: http://www.helencastor.com
Books in order of publication:
The King, the Crown, and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power, 1399–1461 (2000) Oxford University Press
Blood and Roses (2004) Faber and Faber
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (2010) Faber and Faber
Joan of Arc: A History (2014) Faber and Faber
Elizabeth I (Penguin Monarchs): A Study in Insecurity (2018) Penguin
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