'Some novelists are attracted to historical fiction for the opportunity to write about queens and dukes and lords and ladies sashaying around grand
castles. But it’s the ordinary people of history and an empathy for their crushingly difficult lives that attracted Barbara Gaskell Denvil to the genre. She talks to Tim Graham about turning historic sites into theme parks, how Shakespeare was her portal into history and her deep appreciation for how difficult life was for the average English person half a millennium ago.' (26)