Berwick Museum & Art Gallery will be playing host to a special visitor on the afternoon of Saturday 4th May 2019 at 2.00pm – the historical novelist Patricia Finney will be launching her new book “A Suspicion of Silver” at the venue. The book is the latest in a series of novels based on the adventures of the Elizabethan nobleman Sir Robert Carey.

Free admission. In Berwick Museum & Art Gallery, The Clock Block, Berwick Barracks, TD15 1DG.  Tel: 01289 309 538.

“Anyone who has read any history at all about the reign of Queen Elizabeth I has heard of at least one of Sir Robert Carey’s exploits – he was the man who rode 400 miles in just under three days from London to Edinburgh to tell King James VI of Scotland that Elizabeth was dead and that he was finally King of England. 

“Born in 1560 and brought up in Berwick, Carey was the seventh and youngest son of Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon and Warden of the East March.   He served at Court for ten years as a well-connected but landless sprig of the aristocracy, then in 1592 something made him decide to switch to full-time soldiering. Perhaps he was bored. Perhaps the moneylenders were getting impatient.  At any rate, Carey accepted the offer from his brother-in-law, Lord Scrope, Warden of the English West March, to be his Deputy Warden.

“This was irresistible – here was this fancy-dressing, fancy-talking Court dude turning up in England’s Wild North. The Anglo-Scottish Border at that time made Dodge City look like a health farm. It was the most chaotic part of the kingdom and was full of cattle-rustlers, murderers, arsonists, horse-thieves, kidnappers and general all-purpose outlaws.

“Carey was the Sheriff and Her Majesty’s Marshall rolled into one, expected to enforce the law with a handful of horsemen and very little official co-operation.

“Patricia, who has written ten Carey stories under the pen name P F Chisholm, has been a published author since she was a teenager. Since then she has written around twenty-five other books, including three historical spy novels in a new genre she calls Elizabethan Noir, a contemporary romance novel and three children’s books.  She loves public speaking especially when she’s talking about her books and has been called the first stand-up historian ever.”