Rosanna Pike with Franny Moyle: Writing Historical Fiction

What was life really like in England around 1500 — before the Tudor age became the familiar world of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I? In A Little Trickerie, Rosanna Pike brings to life the extraordinary true story of a woman in early Tudor England who claimed to be an angel and attracted an entire community of believers.

Her protagonist, Tibb Ingleby, sets out to exploit the credulity of Tudor England in a remarkable hoax, taking us far from royal courts and grand houses into the lives of ordinary people. But this is history with a wonderfully unexpected twist: A Little Trickerie won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction — an unusually entertaining way to discover a fascinating and neglected period of our past.

Join Rosanna in conversation with acclaimed cultural non-fiction writer Franny Moyle, as they explore the real history behind the novel, the forgotten women of the period and the art of bringing the past vividly to life.