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The Secret Christmas

December, 1653, England. The Puritan parliament has outlawed the celebration of Christmas and while shops must stay open every day, the theatres have been forced to close their doors.

The Hawthorne family have been allowed to return to their ancestral home, Measham Hall, just in time for Christmas. This is only after Sir Nicholas Hawthorne has reluctantly agreed to take an oath of loyalty to the Commonwealth. When a theatre troupe begging alms turn up on their doorstep, the family’s Catholic traditions of hospitality and charity dictate they must welcome the strangers in, despite the risks involved. These magical and exuberant guests transform Christmas at Measham Hall into a secret celebration, filled with theatrical performances, music and bountiful banquets, much to the delight of the children, William and Alethea.

This festive prequel to The Master of Measham Hall is a delightful tale of a small rebellion and sows the seed for decisions William and Alethea will make in years to come.

Black Victorians

Beyond the patrician vision of Victorian Britain traditionally advanced in our textbooks, there always existed another, more diverse Britain, populated by people of colour marking achievements both ordinary and extraordinary.

In this deeply researched and dynamic history, Woolf and Abraham reach into the archives to recentre our attention on marginalised Black Victorians, from leading medic George Rice to political agitator William Cuffay to abolitionists Henry ‘Box’ Brown and Sarah Parker Remond; from pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Eaton to renowned composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. While acknowledging the paradoxes of Victorian views of race, Black Victorians demonstrates, with storytelling verve and a liberatory impulse, how Black people were visible and influential, firmly rooted in British life.

The Master of Measham Hall

1665, London. The scars of the English Civil Wars are yet to heal and now the Black Death engulfs the land. Alethea Hawthorne is a lady’s companion to the Calverton household, but when she suddenly finds herself cast out on the plague-ridden streets of London, a long road to her family home of Measham Hall lies ahead.

How will this determined country girl navigate a perilous new world of religious dissenters, charlatans and a pestilence that afflicts peasants and lords alike?

The Master of Measham Hall is the first book in a page-turning historical series. In lyrical prose, Anna Abney portrays the divides at the heart of Restoration England in a timeless novel about survival, love, and family loyalty.

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