Fiction based on the life and times of Lady Arbella Stuart. In the year 1623, an inquiry is conducted into the death of Arbella's maid, said to have witnessed the birth of Arbella's love-child. A manuscript is found and deciphered, giving an account of Arbella's last, desperate love affair. Meanwhile, the disgraced former Lord Chancellor sees a chance to reinstate himself, and his efforts to regain power change the course of the inquiry. Author is an Australian historian.

The woman expected to succeed the Virgin Queen

Based on letters written by England's "Lost Queen," this portrait describes the niece to Mary Queen of Scots and cousin to Elizabeth I who became a pawn in the power struggles of her age and tried unsuccessfully to flee her fate, dying a tragic death in the tower of London.

Bess of Hardwick was one of the most remarkable people who lived in England in the late Tudor period. Born a daughter of a relatively humble Midlands family, she was married and widowed four times, on each occasion raising her social status until she ultimately became the Countess of Shrewsbury. An enthusiast of fine buildings, she left behind Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth House as prime examples of Elizabethan prodigy houses. She also left important genetic legacies in the form of her descendants, and is an ancestress of much of the British aristocracy for the last few hundred years. Whilst she lived at a time when the laws and customs of the land made it difficult for women to exercise any real form of economic or social independence, Bess succeeded in acquiring a personal fortune which not only made her the second wealthiest woman in the kingdom after Queen Elizabeth herself, but for generations after her served as the financial bedrock upon which her descendants would continue to build, in some cases right up to the present day.

William Cavendish, the father of the first Earl, dissolved monasteries for Henry VIII. Bess, his second wife, was gaoler-companion to Mary Queen of Scots during her long imprisonment in England. Arbella Stuart, their granddaughter, was a heartbeat away from the throne of England and their grandson, the Lord General of the North, fought to save the crown for Charles I. With the help of previously unpublished material from the Chatsworth archives, The Devonshires reveals how the dynasty made and lost fortunes, fought and fornicated, built great houses, patronised the arts and pioneered the railways, made great scientific discoveries, and, in the end, came to terms with changing times.