Elizabeth Chadwick’s glorious new adventure is published today by Sphere in hardback, ebook and audiobook, narrated by Jonathan Keeble. TEMPLAR SILKS marks an exciting return to the character of William Marshal, England’s greatest medieval knight, following him across continents, from England to Jerusalem, as from his deathbed he recalls a crucial journey to the Holy City, and the peril and heartbreak he found there.
William Marshal was an Anglo-Norman soldier and statesman who served five English kings, eulogised by Stephen Langton as the ‘best knight that ever lived’. Elizabeth Chadwick’s novels about him are widely praised, and her vivid depiction of this extraordinary man in books like THE GREATEST KNIGHT has made him one of her best-loved characters. Fulfilling a vow he had made while on crusade – the subject of this thrilling new novel – William Marshal was invested into the order of the Knights Templar on his deathbed in1219. He was buried in the Temple Church in London, where his tomb can still be seen.
Elizabeth Chadwick’s bestselling standalones THE GREATEST KNIGHT and THE SCARLET LION also feature this compelling historical figure, while characters around William feature in other novels – among them his father John Marshal in A PLACE BEYOND COURAGE and his daughter Mahelt (also called Maud) in TO DEFY A KING, which won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Novel of the Year Award in 2011.
US rights to TEMPLAR SILKS have been sold to Shana Drehs of Sourcebooks, with German rights going to Blanvalet and Czech rights to Euromedia, with option publishers elsewhere including Portugal, Poland, Russia and Latvia. Her work is published in 24 languages and has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone.
A sacred promise. A perilous journey. A deadly entanglement.
Lying on his deathbed, William Marshal, regent of England, sends a trusted friend on a journey to bring him the silk Templar burial shrouds that he has kept hidden since returning from the Holy Land thirty years ago. It is time to fulfil his Templar vows and become one of their order for eternity.
While he waits, William vividly recalls his long-ago pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his brother Ancel, and their sacred mission to bear the cloak of their dead young lord to Christ's tomb in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Their journey is fraught with uncertainty and danger, but it is in Jerusalem, the holiest and most dangerous of cities, that William becomes entangled with the mercurial Paschia de Riveri, concubine of the highest churchman in the land. He has travelled a long and risky road to save his soul, but now the greatest danger he faces is losing his heart.
Elizabeth Chadwick won a Betty Trask Award for THE WILD HUNT, her first novel, and has been shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Award several times, winning in 2011 for TO DEFY A KING. THE SCARLET LION was selected by Historical Novel Society founder Richard Lee as one of his 'Ten Landmark Historical Novels of the Last Decade'.
Praise for TEMPLAR SILKS:
‘A great example of historical fiction done well… brilliantly written…the whole story sits together with ease with a real feeling of authenticity…This book feels like a fair representation of a man who is remembered as the backbone of early English history.’ — The Bookbag
‘Nobody in my opinion brings the medieval world to life in full colour like Elizabeth Chadwick…a gloriously exciting depiction of some of medieval Europe’s danger spots, where peril lay around almost every corner and in every town…Elizabeth Chadwick has such a gift in the way she surrounds her reader in the past.’ — For Winter Nights
Praise for Elizabeth Chadwick:
‘This is historical fiction at its best.’ — The Bookseller
‘An author who makes historical fiction come gloriously alive.’ —The Times
‘Picking up an Elizabeth Chadwick novel is like having a Bentley draw up at your door: you know you are in for a sumptuous ride.’ — Daily Telegraph
‘I rank Elizabeth Chadwick with such historical novelist stars as Dorothy Dunnett and Anya Seton.’ – Sharon Kay Penman
‘One of Elizabeth Chadwick’s strengths is her stunning grasp of historical detail…Her characters are beguiling and the story is intriguing and very enjoyable.’ — Barbara Erskine