Public Speaker

Books
by
Dianne Mannering

From this web-site you can obtain a signed copy of my books with a dedication worded as you want. Just complete the details of your dedication in the space provided in the 'buy now' box, or email the information to me by clicking on the link below, or phone me and we can discuss your exact requirements

A Crown for Staffordshire

It seems to me that whenever the Crown was under threat in medieval times, the Staffordshire barons were there in the thick of it. So, after the huge success of my book Sylvia M Everitt's Staffordshire Millennium Embroideries, my agent asked me if I'd like to write something else for him. I immediately suggested a book about the scheming and disloyal Staffordshire barons and when I put the phone down twenty minutes later, I'd won myself another commission.
This book covers the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries when royalty, the aristocracy and the nobility were so incredibly colourful. I've tried to bring out events in Staffordshire that aren't particularly well known, such as the fact that Henry IV the Usurper King spent part of his childhood being reared by his step-mother and his father's mistress at the then, splendid Tutbury Castle.

Few people who have visited Dudley Castle realise that John Dudley, the man who built the fine Tudor mansion within the curtain walls (now a ruin, but still spectacular), was the same fellow who put Lady Jane Grey on the throne for nine days. An ill fated ploy that lost both of the star players their heads.

And talking of the Dudley clan, it was another John Dudley, owner of Dudley Castle who was Constable of the Tower of London when the two young sons of King Edward IV disappeared within its walls, never to be seen again. Their uncle, Richard III has always carried the can for that particularly nasty bit of English history - but what about Henry Stafford, owner of Stafford Castle? He started out as Richard's kingmaker, but did he have a hidden agenda..... could it have been Henry Stafford who had those boys murdered?

What would a personable, career conscious, handsome, young courtier do if he suddenly realised that the Queen of England had taken a fancy to him in a seriously big way? That's the situation that John Dudley's son Robert found himself in within a few years of being released from the Tower following his part in the Lady Jane Grey debacle. And what about his quiet, unsophisticated wife Amy? What a nightmare to learn that the Queen wanted her husband! Well, Amy, still in her twenties, ended up dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs with no witnesses............ hmmmm.

Whilst I was writing this book, Sylvia Everitt was replicating some of the embroideries worked by Mary Queen of Scots during her long years as Elizabeth I's prisoner. As Mary had spent tediously uncomfortable months in the dank confines of the by this time decaying Tutbury Castle, I suggested to Sylvia that I could adopt her as an honoury aunt of Staffordshire and add a small chapter about her as a vehicle to include the replica embroideries. So - that's what happened - hence A Crown for Staffordshire also includes the Replica Embroideries of Mary Queen of Scots.