WELCOME TO RACHEL’S FICTION WRITING AND REVIEWS BLOG
This is where Rachel keeps you up to date with her novels and stories and also shares reviews, highlights and extracts from other authors.
Magna Carta Day: The Meadow Where a King Was Made to Yield, and the Woman Who Saved It from Ruin
Magna Carta was not born in a peaceful ceremony, but in a tense meadow surrounded by armed men, suspicion, and civil war. On Magna Carta Day, explore the real drama of Runnymede, King John’s tyranny, and the forgotten role of Nicola de la Haye — the woman who helped save England and Magna Carta itself.
Battle of Lincoln 1217: The Woman Who Held the Castle That Saved England
The Battle That Nearly Erased England
On 20 May 1217, the fate of England came down to one woman holding a battered castle against a French invasion. It's a story that should be far better known — and on its 808th anniversary, it deserves to be told properly. It's also the story at the heart of my novel Lady of England, the third book in my Nicola de la Haye trilogy, which will be published late 2026/ early 2027.
By the spring of 1217, the situation for the nine-year-old King Henry III looked desperate. King John was dead. Prince Louis of France had landed with an army, rebel English barons had welcomed him to London, and much of the south-east had fallen. The Plantagenet dynasty appeared to be finished. Three fortresses still flew Henry's colours: Dover, Windsor – and Lincoln Castle.
Lincoln Castle was held by a woman.
"The Woman Who Saved England": Who Was Nicola de la Haye?
She Didn't Wait for Permission
International Women's Day asks us to celebrate the women who refused to accept the limits placed upon them. Who pushed back. Who led. Who endured. And every year, we tend to look to the recent past — to suffragettes, trailblazers, and glass-ceiling-breakers of the modern era.
But what about the women who did all of that eight hundred years before anyone thought to name it?
Meet Nicola de la Haye. Sheriff of Lincolnshire. Castellan of Lincoln Castle. The woman who, in 1217, successfully defended one of England's most strategically vital fortresses against a French-backed rebel army: at the age of approximately seventy. She didn't wait for permission, and she didn’t expect plaudits: because no one was going to give it.
What the Twelfth Century Said Women Were
The medieval world had very clear ideas about women's place in society, and those ideas were enforced from pulpit, court, and custom alike. Women were considered intellectually weaker than men, legally subordinate to their fathers and husbands, and spiritually suspect - daughters of Eve, prone to temptation and manipulation(!!!). Church fathers and contemporary writers were emphatic on the subject. Women should be silent, obedient, and invisible in public life.
I've explored just how relentless and inventive that misogyny was in my medieval misogyny series, including a look at the men who competed, with some enthusiasm, for the title of Worst Villain to Women of the 12th Century. It's a crowded field.
What Nicola de la Haye Actually Did
Nicola inherited the hereditary castellanship of Lincoln Castle from her father, and she held it through two marriages, through political upheaval, through sieges and civil wars, and with a grip that no one could prise loose. She administered justice, she negotiated with kings, defied a rogue justiciar who threatened the kingdom whilst Richard the Lionheart was on crusade, and she commanded garrisons and organised castle defences - incredibly well.
When King John's reign collapsed into civil war and a French prince threatened to take the English throne, Nicola was the one defending Lincoln.
She was also, at various points, told she was too old, too female, and too inconvenient. She resigned her position as castellan (constable), but was promptly reappointed, because no one else could do it as well as she could.
And one of King John’s last acts was to make her the first female sheriff in England - Sheriff of Lincoln.
This is the woman at the heart of my novel Lady of Lincoln: not a fictional heroine invented to fit a modern template, but a real woman whose story has simply been waiting to be told.
Big News: Lady of the Castle Shortlisted for the HNS First Chapter Competition
Lady of the Castle has been shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society's First Chapter Competition before it’s even been published, and and I'm still doing a happy dance about it! 🥳
This is my second Nicola de la Haye novel, still unpublished, still being polished, but somehow its opening chapter caught the attention of the HNS judges in the competitive 11th–16th Century Category. 😀
The competition honours exactly what makes historical fiction electric: that first page that drops you into another century and refuses to let go. Nicola de la Haye - castellan, survivor, one of medieval England's most remarkable women - has a story worth telling, and it’s wonderful that Lady of Lincoln has already won so many awards, but also that Lady of the Castle is being credited even before the book even exists in final form!
Lady of the Castle continues where Lady of Lincoln left off, following Nicola through the treacherous politics and passions of the late 12th century. I'm deep in final revisions. You can track my writing and publishing progress here.
Stay tuned!
Muriel of Lincoln
Nicola de la Haye held Lincoln Castle against a French siege and saved England, and everyone remembers her name.
Almost no one remembers her grandmother.
Muriel of Lincoln didn't lead armies or defy kings in any spectacular fashion, but without her calculated survival and strategic positioning, there would be no Nicola, no legend, no castle defense that changed the course of English history.
This is the story of the invisible foundation upon which greatness was built.
The Survivor's Daughter
After 1066, most Saxon lords lost everything—their lands, their titles, their entire futures disappeared as William the Conqueror handed England to his Norman knights like spoils of war.
But Muriel's father, Colswein of Lincoln, somehow managed to keep his holdings, and the Domesday Book provides the documentary proof of this remarkable survival.
This wasn't luck or accident—this was cold, hard value in the eyes of the new regime. The Normans needed more than swords and intimidation to actually rule England in any sustainable way; they needed local networks, local loyalty, and men who could make occupation feel less like conquest and more like legitimate governance. Colswein was one of those rare men who proved too useful to destroy, whose cooperation was worth more than his elimination.
And the fastest, most permanent way to lock in that kind of usefulness? Marriage between the old world and the new.