M J Trow

Taliesin Trow

Kit Marlowe was the bad boy of Elizabethan drama. His 'mighty line' of iambic pentameter transformed the miracle plays of the Middle Ages into modern drama and he paved the way for Shakespeare and a dozen other greats who stole his metre and his ideas. When he died, stabbed through the eye in what appeared to be a tavern brawl in Deptford in May 1593, he was only 29 and many people believed that he had met his just deserts. But Marlowe's death was not the result of a brawl. And it did not take place in a tavern. The facts tell a different story, one involving intrigue, espionage, alchemy and the highest in the land. Born the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury, Marlowe read Theology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and was destined for a career in Elizabeth I's new Church of England. But in 1583, he moved to London and wrote dazzling new plays like Dido, Queen of Carthage, Tamburlaine, the Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus. He was the 'Muse's darling', 'all fire and air' and the crowds flocked to his dramas at the Curtain, the Theatre and the Rose. But even before he left Cambridge, Kit Marlowe was recruited into the dangerous and murky world of espionage, perhaps by Nicholas Faunt, secretary to the queen's spymaster, Francis Walsingham. The religious world was split between Catholic and Protestant and there was a price on the queen's head - the pope himself had ordered the assassination of the English whore, the Jezebel, who had betrayed Catholicism. Walsingham's efforts and those of 'intelligencers' like Marlowe, were all designed to keep the queen and her country safe. Marlowe was a maverick, a whistle-blower, with outspoken views on religion, the government for which he worked and he was critical of the norms of behaviour. Almost certainly homosexual, at a time when that meant execution, he claimed that Christ had a homosexual relationship with John the Baptist. Or did he? Was all that merely propaganda, invented by the ever-growing list of enemies building up by 1593? This book offers a different interpretation to the death in Deptford. Marlowe knew too much about the Privy Council, the gang of four who effectively ran England under the queen. He openly defied them in his last plays - the Massacre at Paris and Edward II. And they, in turn, were keen to destroy him - 'His mouth must be stopped' - and stopped it was by a trio of agents operating at the highest level. The brutal murder of a young playwright at the peak of his powers has intrigued and captivated for over 400 years. This compelling journey through the evidence allows us to know, for the first time, who killed him.

A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England

Who Killed Kit Marlowe?

Book nine in the Inspector Lestrade series. Sholto Lestrade had never smelt the tangle o' the Isles before Arthur, Duke of Connaught put him on the trail to the Highlands. Murder is afoot among the footmen on the Royal Household; a servant girl, Amy Macpherson, has been brutally murdered. Ineptly disguised as a schoolmaster in his bowler and Donegal, with his battered old Gladstone, the intrepid Superintendent is impelled by a villainous web of conspiracy northwards to the Isle of Skye by way of Balmoral. With the skirl of the pipes in his ears and more than a dram of a certain medicinal compound inside him, Lestrade, following the most baffling clues he has yet unravelled, takes the low road alone, save for the trusty yet mysterious Alistair Sphagnum in his twin-engined, bright red boneshaker. Narrowly escaping the inferno of Room 13 in the North British Hotel, Lestrade falls foul of The McNab of That Ilk and The Mackinnon of That Ilk and plays a very odd game of 'Find the Lady' in Glamis Castle. Coming from Scotland Yard is no help at all to a Sassenach in trews and everyone is convinced it's a job for the Leith Police. Threatened by ghoulies, ghosties and wee, sleekit beasties, Lestrade hears things go bump in the night before solving the case of Drambuie.

Lestrade and the Gift of the Prince

‘Glory to each and to all, and the charge that they made! Glory to all three hundred, and all the Brigade!’ Everyone has heard of the charge of the Light Brigade, a suicidal cavalry attack caused by confused orders which somehow sums up the Crimean War (1854-6). Far less well known is what happened an hour earlier, when General Scarlett’s Heavy Brigade charged a Russian army at least three times its size. That ‘fight of heroes’, to use the phrase of William Russell, the world’s first war correspondent, was a brilliant success, whereas the Light Brigade’s action resulted in huge casualties and achieved nothing. This is the first book by a military historian to study the men of the Heavy Brigade, from James Scarlett, who led it, to the enlisted men who had joined for the ‘queen’s shilling’ and a new life away from the hard grind of Victorian poverty. It charts the perils of travelling by sea, in cramped conditions with horses panicking in rough seas. It tells the story, through the men who were there, of the charge itself, where it was every man for himself and survival was down to the random luck of shot and shell. It looks, too, at the women of the Crimea, the wives who accompanied their menfolk. Best known were Florence Nightingale, the ‘lady with the lamp’ and Mary Seacole, the Creole woman who was ‘doctress and mother’ to the men. But there were others, like Fanny Duberly who wrote a graphic journal and Mrs Rogers, who dutifully cooked and cleaned for the men of her husband’s regiment, the 4th Dragoon Guards.

Scarlett’s 300 in the Crimea

The Charge of the Heavy Brigade

Glory to each and to all, and the charge that they made! Glory to all three hundred, and all the Brigade! Everyone has heard of the charge of the Light Brigade, a suicidal cavalry attack caused by confused orders which somehow sums up the Crimean War (1854-6). Far less well known is what happened an hour earlier, when General Scarletts Heavy Brigade charged a Russian army at least three times its size. That fight of heroes, to use the phrase of William Russell, the worlds first war correspondent, was a brilliant success, whereas the Light Brigades action resulted in huge casualties and achieved nothing. This is the first book by a military historian to study the men of the Heavy Brigade, from James Scarlett, who led it, to the enlisted men who had joined for the queens shilling and a new life away from the hard grind of Victorian poverty. It charts the perils of travelling by sea, in cramped conditions with horses panicking in rough seas. It tells the story, through the men who were there, of the charge itself, where it was every man for himself and survival was down to the random luck of shot and shell. It looks, too, at the women of the Crimea, the wives who accompanied their menfolk. Best known were Florence Nightingale, the lady with the lamp and Mary Seacole, the Creole woman who was doctress and mother to the men. But there were others, like Fanny Duberly who wrote a graphic journal and Mrs Rogers, who dutifully cooked and cleaned for the men of her husbands regiment, the 4th Dragoon Guards.

Scarletts 300 in the Crimea

The disappearance of two boys during the summer of 1483 has never been satisfactorily explained. They were Edward, Prince of Wales, nearly thirteen at the time, and his brother, Richard of York, nearly ten. With their father, Edward IV, dying suddenly at forty, both boys had been catapulted into the spotlight of fifteenth-century politics, which was at once bloody and unpredictable. Thanks to the work of the hack ‘historians’ who wrote for Henry VII, the first Tudor, generations grew up believing that the boys were murdered and that the guilty party was their wicked uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Richard crowned himself King of England in July 1483, at which time the boys were effectively prisoners in the Tower of London. After that, there was no further sign of them. Over the past 500 years, three men in particular have been accused of the boys’ murders – Richard of Gloucester; Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond; and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. The evidence against them would not stand up in a court of law today, but the court of history is much less demanding and most fingers remain pointed squarely at Richard of Gloucester. This book takes a different approach, the first to follow this particular line of enquiry. It is written as a police procedural, weighing up the historical evidence without being shackled to a particular ‘camp’. The supposition has always been made that the boys were murdered for political reasons. But what if that is incorrect? What if they died for other reasons entirely? What if their killer had nothing to gain politically from their deaths at all? And, even more fascinatingly, what if the princes in the Tower were not the only victims?

A New Suspect Revealed

The Killer of the Princes in the Tower

Maryanne Coleman

First-century Rome. Senator Gaius Lucius Nerva is taken ill at a dinner party and dies a few days later. His heartbroken wife is told it was a natural death. Calidus, Nerva's recently freed slave, suspects otherwise. Calidus sets out on a quest to find the murderer, encountering the darkest and most dangerous people in Rome... even Emperor Nero.

M J Trow

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