She was wearing red shoes! With silver heels! Elisabeth Devine causes quite a stir on her arrival in the village. No one can understand why the head of a big inner city school would want to come to sleepy little Barton-in-the-Dale, to a primary with more problems than school dinners. And that’s not even counting the challenges the mysterious Elisabeth herself will face: a bitter former head teacher, a grumpy caretaker and a duplicitous chair of governors, to name but a few. Then there’s the gossip. After all, a woman who would wear red shoes to an interview is obviously capable of anything …Warm, funny and poignant, Gervase Phinn’s first novel for adults creates a fictional world that’s as real as can be. It will delight all his fans, and win him many more.

Gervase Phinn is a teacher, freelance lecturer, author, poet, school inspector, educational consultant, and visiting professor of education. For fourteen years he taught in a range of schools, then acted as General Adviser for Language Development in Rotherham before moving on to North Yorkshire, where he spent ten years as a school inspector – time that has provided much source material for his books.

Mary Boleyn is remembered by posterity as a ‘great and infamous whore’. She was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. She may secretly have borne Henry a child and it was because of his adultery with Mary that his marriage to Anne was annulled. It is not hard to see how this tangled web of relationships has given rise to rumours and misconceptions that have been embroidered over the centuries. In this, the first full-scale biography of Mary Boleyn, Alison Weir explodes much of the mythology that surrounds her subject and uncovers the facts about one of the most misunderstood figures of the Tudor age. Her extensive, forensic research has facilitated a new and detailed portrayal, in which she recounts that, contrary to popular belief, Mary was entirely undeserving of her posthumous notoriety as a great whore or the ‘hackney’ whom the King of France famously boasted of riding. Weir also presents compelling new evidence that almost conclusively determines the paternity of Mary’s two oldest children. In this astonishing and riveting book, Alison Weir shows that Mary’s story had a happy ending and that she was by far the luckiest of the Boleyns.

Alison Weir has written fourteen history books include The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Lancaster and York, Children of England , Elizabeth the Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine , Mary, Queen of Scots, Henry VIII: King and Court, Isabella, Katherine Swynford and, most recently Lady in the Tower. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.