Bibliography

 

 

I have read so many books over the last couple of years as background to this novel.

My standby favourites were:

 

The Lives of the Lord Chancellors by Lord Campbell, volume VI. This volume was published in 1847 and has been so well thumbed over the generations that alas it has now fallen to pieces.

 

Erskine by JA Lovat-Fraser, published in 1932

 

The Dictionary of National Biography and Encyclopaedia Britannica both of which have useful summaries of his life

 

The Lancashire Hollands by Bernard Holland, 1917 (the chapter on the Hollands of Wales)

 

The honourable Henry Erskine, Lord Advocate for Scotland, with notices of certain of his kinsfolk and of his time by Alex Fergusson, 1882

 

Thomas Erskine and Trial by Jury, by John Hostettler, 1996

 

Annals and Antiquities of Dryburgh and Other Places on the Tweed by Sir David Erskine 1828

 

The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell, first published in 1791. My version comes from the Everyman Library and is dated 1906

 

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of mentions on line and almost every historical person in the story can be followed there.

 

 

 

 

I also ransacked my own shelves for books on the Georgian and Regency period. Some of my favourites are:

 

Georgian London by Lucy Inglis

 

Georgian Edinburgh by Ian Lindsay

 

The Wooden World, an anatomy of the Georgian Navy by NAM Rodger

 

Blake, and Revolution, volume 1V of The History of England both by Peter Ackroyd

 

Selina, Countess of Huntingdon by Alan Harding

 

For information about the Longitude trials: Longitude by Dava Sobel

 

The Reign of George 111 by J Steven Watson (part of the Oxford History of England)

 

In Bed with the Georgians by Mike Rendell

 

Courtiers by Lucy Worsley

 

Behind Closed Doors by Amanda Vickery

 

Cant, A Gentleman’s Guide to the Language of Rogues in Georgian London by Stephen Hart

 

And of course so many guide books and maps and local histories

 

 

And by Dion Fortune there is of course my old stand-by favourite Psychic Self Defence, and also Practical Occultism by Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight.  She wrote many books on the Occult and also several novels.  Her style is very dated, convoluted and sometimes hard to assimilate, but it is good stuff. ‘Lord E’ was one of Fortune’s Inner Planes Masters and assisted in channelling her book The Cosmic Doctrine. I came across this story while researching Time’s Legacy in Glastonbury and discovered Lord E was – possibly – none other than ‘my’ Thomas Erskine. This fitted with his interest in the occult and his own suspicion that he was a reincarnation of Sir Thomas More. Another seed for this novel was sewn.