Dodie Bishop

English Literature graduate Dodie Bishop's love of history pushed her towards writing historical fiction, starting with a dual time-line novel for an MA in Creative Writing with the Open University.

Dodie first encountered STILL LIFE’S Clara Peeters in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, drawn by a female name amongst so many men from an era when they were not expected to stray beyond the home. Yet here was a woman whose paintings had survived for 400 years.

In THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE – the 1st book in the SILENCE AND SHADOWS series – Susannah and Raphael are inspired by married couple Susan and Michael Rosse, a portrait miniaturist and jeweller to King Charles II’s court who lived and worked in London’s Henrietta Street in the 17th century. While researching this novel, Dodie came across the practice of spiriting. ‘Spirits,’ often illegally employed by legitimate shipping companies, were responsible for ‘spiriting away’ (kidnapping) people into servitude, many of whom were then ‘barbadosed’ or sent to the West Indies prompting the 2nd book OUR LITTLE LIFE. The 3rd novel A SLAVE TO KINGS moves the action to Florence, Rome and back to London.

SON OF THE MORNING is the standalone conclusion to the series. Sent to prevent a royal rebellion, Hal Bartholomew can only watch the catastrophe unfold and witness its bloody aftermath, yet unlooked for it is a path to love.

THE VIOLIN MAKER'S WIFE is inspired by the lives of violin makers Giuseppe and Katarina Guarneri, contemporaries of Antonio Stradivari in the Lombardy city of Cremona. The novel is a reimagining of their lives exploring love, friendship, and life-choices for women in 18th century Italy.

Praise for STILL LIFE from the Historical Novel Society … an absorbing portrait of a time and place and of a talented woman’s struggle against convention.

Praise for the SILENCE AND SHADOW series from the Historical Novel Society … Bishop’s characters are plausible and vulnerably human, her descriptions of time and place vivid without ever becoming unwieldy.

Dodie lives in the Devon Blackdown Hills with husband and cat. She has sons in London and Sydney.