‘At the age of seven I was a skillful pickpocket. Her ability to handle historical detail, work it effortlessly into a story and endow it with great emotional charge, is certainly second to none. I first came across Norah Lofts at thirteen, when I was making my first forays into historical re-enactment and was advised by the organiser to read Lofts for her incomparable grasp of historical detail, and because many of her books are set in Suffolk, where the Tudor house we were re-creating, was.

The Oxford Book of Historical Storiescalls her ‘one of the undisputed queens of historical romance.’ Over a long and busy career she wrote more than 60 books, mostly historical, but with a good handful of excellent psychological thrillers too (the Hammer horror film The Witcheswas based on one). She came from a farming family, something which had a lasting influence on her writing, as you will see, but worked as a history teacher before she turned to writing full time. Alison Weir has been plugging away at it, and, brilliantly, was instrumental in getting some Lofts books back into print, while the availability of ebooks and the possibility of finding out-of-print books on ABE or Amazon means that there’s never been a better time to discover her. Lofts is a deeply unfashionable writer who people in the know keep saying should be rediscovered. Nora Lofts won an American Booksellers Association award for her first work, I Met a Gypsy(1935), andĪ Georgette Heyer Award for The Day of the Butterfly (1979).I had a massive Norah Lofts binge over Christmas. Lofts also published several thrillers under the pseudonym Peter Curtis and the pseudonym Juliet Astley. Tells the story of the fortunes of a beautiful Elizabethan house in Suffolk in eight episodes, each narratedīy a different character who plays a part in its history.

The House at Old Vine, and The House at Sunset) spans 600 years in the history of a house,įrom its beginnings as the home of a medieval wool-merchant to the present day, and Bless This House Occupants lack, although the occupants may leave impressions. Both landscape and houses have a permanency which their Many of her historical romances are set in Suffolk,Įngland and many of them are set around houses.

Lofts novels have a strong sense of time and place. Her novels are well known not only for their historicalĪccuracy, but for her vigorous style of storytelling and her sense of history and her capacity to transmit In the nineteenth century or had English history as backgrounds, though other nations and eras-includingīiblical times-were represented in her writings. She was best known for her historical novels, many of which were set Norah Lofts Norah Robinson Lofts (1904 - 1983) (aka Juliet Astley and Peter Curtis) Norah Lofts was a prolific British author who wrote not only historical romances for over 50 years,īut also nonfiction and biographies.

The House at Sunset by Norah Lofts