Linda Porter (historian)

Linda Porter was born in Exeter, Devon in 1947. Her family have long-standing connections to the West Country, but moved to the London area when she was a small child. She was educated at Walthamstow Hall School in Sevenoaks and at the University of York, from which she has a doctorate in History. On completing her postgraduate work she moved to New York, where she lived for almost a decade, lecturing at Fordham University and the City University of New York. Three of her books have been published and she is currently doing research and writing on a fourth.[1][2][3]

Since returning to England, Porter has had a varied career. She has worked as a journalist and been a senior adviser on international public relations to a major telecommunications company. But she has always stayed close to her roots as an historian. In 2004 she was the winner of the Biographers Club/Daily Mail prize which launched her on a new career as an author.[4] Her first book, Mary Tudor: The First Queen was published in 2007. In 2010 her second book Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr was published. Her third book, Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots, was published by Macmillan in 2013.[5]

Porter's biography of Queen Mary I of England presented a view of Mary as a decisive and clear-headed ruler, and a skilled political and diplomatic operator. This was in line with much current academic opinion but presented to the general public an analysis at odds with images left by The Actes and Monuments and other Elizabethan propaganda.[6]

Linda's second book was a biography of Katherine Parr. Her success as queen and stepmother was very important for the royal children. She helped restore Mary and Elizabeth to the succession and gave direction to the education of Edward. As regent of a country at war in 1544, she was able and energetic. But she also well aware that she was Henry VIII’s wife. Indulging her love of fine clothes, jewels, music and the arts, she also made sure that her bedchamber was an enticing place for her husband and that she stayed close to him. At the same time, the intellectual side of Katherine Parr found its outlet in religious writings – she was the first queen of England to be published – an activity that Henry did not appreciate. Twice-widowed, held hostage in Yorkshire during the Pilgrimage of Grace, her life had been dramatic even before she became queen. It would remain so after the king’s death, when she hastily and secretly married her old flame, the rakish Sir Thomas Seymour.[7]

Dr. Porter’s next book was published in 2013. Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots is the story of a divided family, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, violent deaths, rape and sexual licence on a breath-taking scale. Here are some of the greatest rulers in our history. At its heart is the greatest prize of all - the joint sovereignty of two kingdoms. It also brings alive a neglected aspect of British history - the blood-spattered steps taken by two small countries on the fringes of Europe towards an awkward unity that would ultimately forge a great nation. Beginning with the unlikely and dramatic victories of two usurping kings, one a rank outsider and the other a fifteen-year-old boy who rebelled against his own father, the book will shed new light on Henry VIII, his daughter, Elizabeth, and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than four hundred years after her death.[8]

In 2014 Dr. Porter continued to do some public speaking, publication of articles and book reviews[9][10][11][12][13] as well as doing research for a fourth book.

Linda’s fourth book, Royal Renegades: The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars follows the lives of Charles I’s family. Their calm and loving family life was shattered by war, Elizabeth and Henry were used as pawns in the Parliamentary campaign against their father; Mary, the Princess Royal, was whisked away to the Netherlands as the child bride of the Prince of Orange; Henriette Anne's redoubtable governess escaped with the king's youngest child to France where she grew up under her mother's thumb and eventually married the cruel and flamboyant Philippe d'Orleans.

When their 'dark and ugly' brother Charles eventually succeeded his father to the English throne after fourteen years of wandering, he promptly enacted a vengeful punishment on those who had spurned his family, with his brother James firmly in his shadow. A tale of love and endurance, of battles and flight, of educations disrupted, the lonely death of a young princess and the wearisome experience of exile, Royal Renegades charts the fascinating story of the children of loving parents who could not protect them from the consequences of their own failings as monarchs and the forces of upheaval sweeping England.[14]

The author’s fifth book, Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II, was published in the UK on 16 April 2020.

Porter is married with one daughter. She lives in Kent.