Elizabeth Keysian

One of the inspirations behind Mundlingham Castle in Lyon on the Loose was Stokesay Castle in Shropshire: not quite a castle in the military sense, but something perhaps even more intriguing—a fortified medieval house.

Set in a peaceful valley near the Welsh border, Stokesay is one of the best-preserved fortified manor houses in England. Most of what visitors see today was built in the late thirteenth century by Laurence of Ludlow, a wealthy wool merchant who bought the manor in 1281. His...

No figure is more closely associated with the romance—and the reality—of the English highwayman than Jerry Abershawe. Although he died in 1795, twenty years before the Battle of Waterloo, his reputation lingered well into the Regency. Long after his execution, travellers passing Putney Vale could still remember the place where his body had hung in chains, and novelists continued to invoke his name as a byword for danger on the road.

Born Louis Jeremiah Abershawe around 1773, Jerry was no...

Every good hero needs a foil, right? Someone with whom to argue, someone who understands them, someone who shows them in a good light. Well, that's what Roland Chetwynd has been in both THE LYON AND THE LAMB and THE LYON RAMPANT. He's the younger brother of the hero of the former book and keeps getting into scrapes, and becomes a frenemy of Piers Darvill, hero of the latter book, both foiling his plans but also helping resolve his problems.

I liked Roland, relentlessly cheerful in the face of...