Well this is very exciting – I’m in the window of Waterstones in Derby! The History Press publication The Little History of Derbyshire is in the window…yes I did a little dance of happiness and have been photographed standing next to it.

Someone asked me how much I enjoyed writing it – and the answer is that I absolutely loved it the research process. I guess one of the things we’re all slightly guilty of is not visiting places on our own doorsteps, so it was a real pleasure to revisit locations I hadn’t been to for years and others that I’d never seen. I also became fascinated by the importance of geology and the development of infrastructure which impact on the prosperity of different locations as well as their evolution as settlements. Derbyshire is quite unusual in that there was no dominant noble family for many centuries after the de Ferrers earls of Derby blotted their copy books and Henry III ordered that Duffield Castle should be demolished, thus removing the county’s largest and most significant keep. Instead, more middling families assumed roles and responsibilities within the county working for the Dukes of Lancaster and, in due course, Lancastrian monarchs. By the fifteenth century Derbyshire’s gentry, of which there were about 30 families, were both prosperous and influential.

And the other thing I really enjoyed was turning my hand to some pen and ink drawings to illustrate the book. This pair didn’t make it into the book. It’s a quick sketch of the Thomas Cokayne and his wife Dorothy in St Oswald’s Church, Ashbourne. The Cokaynes were one of the gentry families who played a significant role in Medieval Derbyshire. Thomas was in the household of the 5th Earl of Shrewsbury, he took part in Henry VIII’s Rough Wooing in 1544 and was knighted by Edward Seymour for his part in it – notably the burning of Edinburgh. In 1587, he was one of the gentleman warders of Mary Queen of Scots on the orders of the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury. The following year, again on the orders of Shrewsbury, he joined other members of the Derbyshire gentry, as justices of the peace, recruiting men and arming them in preparation for the Spanish Armada.