DEREK WILSON

A haunting in St. Thomass College, Cambridge bitterly divides the college, and the Cambridge branch of the Psychic Investigation Unit is invited to carry out an experiment to settle the unrest. But when the main opponent of the plan, Professor Hawkridge, insists on being present for the nocturnal investigation and suddenly drops dead that very night the press has a field day and the college needs answersSir Joseph Zuylestein, the College Master, asks Dr. Nathaniel Gye if he can make some discreet enquiries with a view to closing the whole sorry business. But when they receive some disturbing anonymous letters that seem to prove the undergraduate, whose unquiet spirit supposedly haunts St.Thomass, did not commit suicide ten years earlier, but was murdered, the case suddenly becomes altogether more serious...

A dazzling chronicle, a bracing challenge to modernitys smug assumptions - Bryce Christensen, BooklistO what a world of profit and delightOf power, of honour and omnipotenceIs promised to the studious artisan.Christopher Marlowe, Dr FaustusBetween the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Europe changed out of all recognition. Particularly transformative was the ardent quest for knowledge and the astounding discoveries and inventions which resulted from it. The movement of blood round the body; the movement of the earth round the sun; the velocity of falling objects (and, indeed, why objects fall) - these and numerous other mysteries had been solved by scholars in earnest pursuit of scientia. This fascinating account of the profound changes undergone by Europe between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment will cover ground including folk religion and its pagan past; Catholicism and its saintly dogma; alchemy, astrology and natural philosophy; Islamic and Jewish traditions; and the discovery of new countries and cultures.By the mid-seventeenth century science mania had set in; the quest for knowledge had become a pursuit of cultured gentlemen. In 1663 The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge received its charter. Three years later the French Academy of Sciences was founded. Most other European capitals were not slow to follow suit. In 1725 we encounter the first use of the word science meaning a branch of study concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified. Yet, it was only nine years since the last witch had been executed in Britain - a reminder that, although the relationship of people to their environment was changing profoundly, deep-rooted fears and attitudes remained strong.

Watson begrudgingly visits relatives in Oxford only to find a case he did not know existed. He learns his dear friend was never at liberty to share the tale. Years have passed since the affair and with Holmess passing Watson feels obliged to know the story. Watson is taken back to 1873 when Holmes was an undergraduate studying terrestrial science at Grenville College. The Dutch Nativity, a painting donated to the university has been missing for three weeks, along with an assortment of other Oxfordiana. William Spooner, a young lecturer in Ancient History recognises Holmess astute nature and calls on him to investigate.

At a meeting in East London, art dealer Catherine Lacy is shown six paintings from a previously undiscovered artist, Aristide Bertrand, who moved in the same circles as Van Gogh. She is enormously excited, but her husband, security expert Tim Lacy, is less than thrilled when the agent concerned is fished out of the Thames.Despite the danger, and swayed by the potential importance of this discovery, Lacy finally agrees that their new associate, Emma Kerr, should go to Provence - with veteran George Martin to keep an eye on her. Within days, Emma is abducted, and Lacy himself must go looking for her. But each time he gets a step closer to finding Emma, a new mystery comes to light, and finally he is faced with a terrifying new foe: the Camargue Brotherhood, who are prepared to protect Bertrands work at any cost...

They say that history is written by the winners. Not according to Derek Wilson. In this fascinating, revelatory book, Derek Wilson tells the story from the point of view of the losers - collating a catalogue of calamities and catastrophes which have shaped our world more than historians tend to let on.

Lanner Castle is a forbidding gothic building on an island in tiny Loch Huich. The locals know little about its present owner, the reclusive Mr Robertson, except that he is wealthy, writes antiquarian books and owns most of the comprehensive accumulation of torture instruments in private hands. But there are those who know more about Robertson and his past - and of those people he is terrified.When a sudden series of dark omens strikes at the very heart of Lanner Castle, Robertson calls in security expert Tim Lacy to install a state-of-the-art intruder-proof system and goes into hiding. But Lacy cannot prevent the pride of the gruesome collection, Cumberlands Cradle, from being stolen. Two days later, Robertson is found fatally reunited with his property and Lacy must run head-on towards the greatest danger he has ever faced...

One of the most fabulous treasures of the Renaissance, the Borgia Chalice, carries with it a dark aura - for legend has it that the notorious Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, could use this cup to poison his enemies, yet drink from it himself without harm.Security expert Tim Lacy has no superstitious fear of the chalices supposed powers, and nor do the six people who drink from it after Lacy buys it for a client. But within the hour, four of those people are dead, all of them art critics who had mercilessly attacked the chalices late owner, Gregor Santori, as a fraud. Yet Santoris son and daughter, who also drank from the cup, are unaffected.Is it possible that this is revenge from beyond the grave? Lacy sets out to unearth the truth in Rome, where revelations of sordid Vatican politics have remarkable contemporary echoes. Before long Lacy finds himself racing between the art establishments of two continents in pursuit of a criminal more ruthless than he could ever have known...

The first case for Tim Lacy, ex-SAS officer, security expert and well-respected figure in the art world, a circle made up of dubious dealers, unscrupulous collectors, fraudsters, crime bosses and bona fide connoisseurs, all in pursuit of the rare, the beautiful and the valuable.Aspiring artist Venetia Granville has just inherited an historic mansion in Wiltshire. Before long she has also acquired a brutally murdered corpse. She turns to Lacy for help and he soon finds out that the victim - an art dealer who was evaluating the houses contents - had discovered a long-lost masterpiece by Raphael called The Triarchs, now worth millions and now nowhere to be found.On his mission to recover the priceless canvas, Lacy finds himself attracting the terrifying attentions of criminal gangs who will stop at nothing to protect their interests...

On a sultry summer night in the Cotswolds, Nathaniel and Katherine Gye are guests at a Civil War fancy-dress party. The theme of the occasion is apt because Tripletree, the Jacobean manor house where the event is being held, is steeped in history and enjoys a colourful past. But at the end of a glittering evening tragedy strikes when the body of a woman is dragged from the lake.As he tries to unravel the truth about the womans death, Nathaniel Gye, paranormal investigator, finds himself drawn back to the 17th century and the time when the hill above Tripletree manor was the place where the gallows once stood...

When the Dresden Text - a treasured fragment of medieval illuminated manuscript - is stolen from a prestigious New York gallery, its loss hits Tim Lacy hard. His firm was responsible for the safety of the exhibits but even more devastatingly, a colleague was killed during the break-in.Within days the police, acting on an anonymous tip-off, have traced the armed robber. There is a shoot-out and the criminal is killed. But the suspiciously swift wrapping-up of the case leaves too many questions unanswered for Tim Lacy. Why was the Dresden Text stolen when other rarer, more valuable exhibits were on display nearby? Why have the police been ordered to close the file? And where is the Dresden Text now? Convinced that only the answers to these questions will lead to those responsible for his colleagues murder, Tim sets out to unravel a dark and complex mystery...

When paranormal investigator and Cambridge lecturer Dr. Nathaniel Gye is commissioned at a séance to find a dead mans killer, he dismisses the incident as a clumsy fraud by a fake medium. But when Nathaniels own wife disappears in Italy, an eventuality foretold by the same unquiet spirit, he is forced to look for connections between her predicament and the violent death of a man she never knew.In this dark and fast-paced mystery, the urgent search for answers takes Nathaniel far from his quiet university existence and into a labyrinth of hazardous twists and turns involving a stolen Renaissance painting and the love life of poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning.

When the Master of St Marys House, Cambridge, hires Tim Lacy to retrieve a collection of eighteenth-century documents willed to it by a wealthy past member of the college, he omits to mention that these manuscripts have a possible connection with the suicide of the late Dean and that there are those who remain determined to ensure that the documents never reach the College library.Supposedly penned by a scandal-mongering member of the notorious Hellfire Club, these papers, if genuine, could be of enormous historical significance and monetary value. And their significance is not lost on Lacy when an academic friend who has been helping him on the case is murdered. When it emerges that the Hellfire Club has repercussions into the highest circles of the current day, Lacy must fight to reveal a dark, long-kept secret before anyone else pays with their life...

Henry VIII changed the course of English life more completely than any monarch since the Conquest. In the portraits of Holbein, Henry Tudor stands proud as one of the most powerful figures in renaissance Europe. But is the portrait just a bluff?In his brilliant new history of the life of Henry VIII, Derek Wilson explores the myths behind the image of the Tudor Lion. He was the monarch that delivered the Reformation to England yet Luther called him A fool, a liar and a damnable rotten worm. As a young man he gained a reputation as an intellectual and fair prince yet he ruled the nation like a tyrant. He treated his subjects as cruelly as he treated his wives. Based on a wealth of new material and a lifetimes knowledge of the subject Derek Wilson exposes a new portrait of a much misunderstood King.PRAISE FOR DEREK WILSONS PREVIOUS WORKS:The Uncrowned Kings of England:Stimulating and authorative - John GuyMasterly. [Wilson] has a deep understanding of . . . characters, reaching out accross the centuries - Sunday TimesHans Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man:Fascinating Sarah Bradford, Daily TelegraphHighly readable . . . The most accurate and vivid portrayal to date Alison Weir

"Going round the world" is an idea that has excited people ever since it was realized that the earth was a sphere. The appeal has something to do with encompassing all the known environment and exploring the unknown, not only on the surface of the planet but within the spirit of the explorer. The story of circumnavigation is thus a long saga of human adventure, travel and discovery. Beginning with the fateful day in 1521 when Ferdinand Magellan was speared to death on Mactan and Juan de Elcano took up the challenge of bringing his surviving companions home, the story continues through four centuries crammed with astonishing exploits by men and women of many nations. Some of the names that feature are well-known, others less so.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) marked a golden age in English history. There was a musical and literary renaissance, most famously and enduringly in the form of the plays of Shakespeare (2016 marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares death), and it was a period of international expansion and naval triumph over the Spanish. It was also a period of internal peace following the violent upheaval of the Protestant reformation. Wilson skilfully interweaves the personal histories of a representative selection of twenty or so figures - including Nicholas Bacon, the Statesman; Bess of Hardwick, the Landowner; Thomas Gresham, the Financier; John Caius, the Doctor; John Norreys, the Soldier; and Nicholas Jennings, the Professional Criminal - with the major themes of the period to create a vivid and compelling account of life in England in the late sixteenth century. This is emphatically not yet another book about what everyday life was like during the Elizabethan Age. There are already plenty of studies about what the Elizabethans wore, what they ate, what houses they lived in, and so on. This is a book about Elizabethan society - people, rather than things. How did the subjects of Queen Elizabeth I cope with the world in which they had been placed? What did they believe? What did they think? What did they feel? How did they react towards one another? What, indeed, did they understand by the word society? What did they expect from it? What were they prepared to contribute towards it? Some were intent on preserving it as it was; others were eager to change it. For the majority, life was a daily struggle for survival against poverty, hunger, disease and injustice. Patronage was the glue that held a strictly hierarchical society together. Parliament represented only the interests of the landed class and the urban rich, which was why the governments greatest fear was a popular rebellion. Laws were harsh, largely to deter people getting together to discuss their grievances. Laws kept people in one place, and enforced attendance in parish churches. In getting to grips with this strange world - simultaneously drab and colourful, static and expansive, traditionalist and modern - Wilson explores the lives of individual men and women from all levels of sixteenth-century life to give us a vivid feel for what Elizabethan society really was.Praise for the author:Masterly. [Wilson] has a deep understanding of characters reaching out across the centuries. Sunday Times Scores highly in thoroughness, clarity and human sympathy. Sunday TelegraphThis masterly biography breaks new ground. Choice MagazineHis book is stimulating and authoritative. Sunday TimesBrilliant, endlessly readable ... vivid, immediate history, accurate, complex and tinged with personality. Sunday Herald

In the political ferment of the Tudor century one family above all others was always at the troubled centre of court and council. During those years the Dudleys were never far from controversy. Three of them were executed for treason. They were universally condemned as scheming, ruthless, over-ambitious charmers, and one was defamed as a wife murderer. Yet Edmund Dudley was instrumental in establishing the financial basis of the Tudor dynasty, and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, led victorious armies, laid the foundations of the Royal Navy, ruled as uncrowned king and almost succeeded in placing Lady Jane Grey on the throne. The most famous of them all, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, came the closest to marrying Elizabeth I, was her foremost favourite for 30 years and governed the Netherlands in her name, while his successor, Sir Robert Dudley, was one of the Queens most audacious seadogs in the closing years of her reign, but fell foul of James I. Thus the fortunes of this astonishing family rose and fell with those of the royal line they served faithfully through a tumultuous century.see www.derekwilson.com

During the brief reign of the Queen Mary, Walsingham was a Protestant exile in Italy. Returning home when Elizabeth assumed the throne, from 1570 he became a diplomat to the arch-pragmatist Queen. He was often troubled by her inconsistent policy decisions and for allowing the exile in England of Mary Queen of Scots. His triumph came in 1587 when Mary was at last beheaded after the cunning defeat of the Babington plot. A powerful, if enigmatic figure, loathed by his adversaries and deeply admired by friends and allies, Walsingham became the master co-ordinator of a feared pan-European spy network. His spies underpinned his organisation of national resistance to the Spanish Armada, but devotion and duty to Elizabeth was costly and Walsingham died two years later in penury.Historian and storyteller Derek Wilson delves deeply into the life of a fascinating and highly influential figure, bringing us tales of deceit, betrayal and loyalty along the way; popular history of the highest calibre.see www.derekwilson.com

The greatest of medieval monarchs, Charles the Great (742-814) towers over every notion we have of national heroes and semi-mythical champions. His military conquests exceeded those of Julius Caesar. He had the sagacity and dedication to public service of a Marcus Aurelius. In ruthlessness, as in dedication to personal culture, he was reminiscent of Augustus. But that is only the beginning. Charlemagne was a phenomenon and phenomena do not die. Later European leaders from Frederick Barbarossa and Charles V to Louis XIV, Napoleon I and Hitler took Charlemagne as their model. His growing mythology inspired the Crusades, fed the concept of chivalry, bolstered absolutist regimes, excited nineteenth-century liberals and emerges today among those who claim Charles the Great as the founder of European unity. Charlemagne is one of the most remarkable figures in European history: only by understanding him in all his complexity can we begin to understand Europe today. Derek Wilsons biography provides such an opportunity.