Natural Causes

Improbable as it may seem, I received a generous mention in The Daily Telegraph’s royal blog yesterday. This is not, sad to say, because of any blue blood coursing through my veins. The explanation, as you can see from his post, is that the blog is authored by that estimable writer Tim Heald, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person last year, after a long period of correspondence.

Tim mentions my contribution to Mike Ashley’s anthology of Royal Whodunnits. My story, ‘Natural Causes’, featured King George IV and that interesting character Henry Bolingbroke. Once the idea came to me, it was a story I enjoyed writing, and researching. If memory serves, it was a biography by Flora Fraser featuring Caroline of Brunswick which provided much of the raw material. And Flora Fraser’s mother is Antonia Fraser, herself a detective writer of repute and, like Tim Heald, a member of the Detection Club.

Mike Ashley, incidentally, has compiled a good many anthologies of note. I’ve been privileged to contribute to quite a number of them, very often with stories on historical themes.