Historical Fiction Author V.E.H. Masters was born and grew up on a farm just outside of St. Andrews, Scotland, a town steeped in history.
The first time she was inside St. Andrews Castle was when her history teacher, Miss Grubb, took the class on a visit, aged 12.
‘I was fascinated, especially when we crept down the siege tunnel, and peered into the bottle dungeon where Cardinal Beaton’s body is said to have been kept, pickled in salt for fourteen months.’
The siege of St Andrews Castle was covered briefly in school but was very much from a Protestant perspective. Cardinal Beaton was described as an evil man and the men who murdered him “did the right thing”. There was only passing mention of Henry VIII of England’s involvement or the complex politics.
‘When I heard that the men who took the castle and held it under siege called themselves the Castilians,’ she says, ‘I remember this shiver of excitement. It seemed the perfect title for a book.’
‘I studied history at Stirling University, which was a radical place in those days,’ she says. ‘It was taught from a Marxist perspective and, again, no Scottish history.’
Her second novel, The Conversos continues the story of Bethia and Will. ‘When I began The Castilians I had no thought of a sequel but my two main characters are very young – I was curious to find out what happened for them next – and we end up in Antwerp as well as Scotland and England.’
The Apostates, the third in series is set in Venice and Geneva and in The Familists the family’s travails continue in Constantinople, Frankfurt and Rouen as the Counter Reformation gets underway while the final book in series The Pittenweemers returns to Fife.
The series is now complete and V.E.H. Masters is currently working on a book set during the pandemic – ‘a jump in time but it almost feels like historical fiction now,’ she says.
V E H Masters… vicki@vehmasters.com