Audiobooks by Lisa Hilton

The Scandal of the Century

Coming soon

Lisa Hilton (Author), Emma Gregory, TBD (Narrator)

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Sex and the City of Ladies: Rewriting history with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Grea

The bestselling author and historian Lisa Hilton picks up the mythical ‘City of Ladies’ where the medieval writer Christine de Pisan left off, continuing a conversation about gender and greatness that began more than six hundred years ago. In 1405 Christine de Pisan took up the pen to defend her maligned sex. Her book, The City of Ladies, was built around preserving women's reputations from the slights and misunderstandings of history. In it the author is visited by three spirits – Justice, Rectitude and Reason – who guide her in sifting through countless lives, in search of worthy citizens.   Over 600 years later, the historian and novelist Lisa Hilton picks up the book and promptly falls asleep, only to be visited by three great women from history: Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great. And they aren’t happy. Having found themselves barred from the original ‘City of Ladies’, they want to know why. And isn’t it time, they ask, for a new author to take up the pen?   What follows is a reassessment of the past, in which deeds and reputations, rumours and reality are held up to the light, and history is wrested back from the distortions of misogyny.

Lisa Hilton (Author), Karen Cass (Narrator)

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The Stolen Queen

1199: King Richard the Lionheart is dead, leaving his brother John to inherit his lands. Young Isabelle of Angouleme is told that she is to be married to King John of England in a complex plot to gain the English succession, oust Christianity and restore the Old Religion to Europe. But when Isabelle takes matters into her own hands, passions will rage and dynastic fortunes will rise and fall.

Lisa Hilton (Author), Ruth Urquhart (Narrator)

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Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince

A new biographical portrait that casts the queen as she saw herself-not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional ruler Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her "weak and feeble woman's body" to do so for political gain. But in Elizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence of why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton's fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince and used Machiavellian statecraft to secure that position. A decade since the last major biography, this Elizabeth breaks new ground and depicts a queen who was much less constrained by her femininity than most treatments claim. For readers of David Starkey and Alison Weir, it will provide a new, complex perspective on Elizabeth's emotional and sexual life. It's a fascinating journey that shows how a marginalized, newly crowned queen, whose European contemporaries considered her to be the illegitimate ruler of a pariah nation, ultimately adapted to become England's first recognizably modern head of state. "There is no shortage of biographies of Britain's Elizabeth I, but readers should pay attention to this thoughtful, often ingenious account...Hilton delivers an enthralling account of a life and reign during which Elizabeth dealt with murderous rival claimants and fended off superpower Spain, a fiercely hostile papacy, and an increasingly intolerant, stingy Parliament. She was lucky and charismatic, chose competent advisers, never forgot the limitations of her power, and left England far more united and self-confident. Despite this, it took twenty years of experience of her successor, James I, before Britons wistfully realized that Elizabeth had presided over a golden age...Mildly revisionist, well argued, and thoroughly satisfying."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Lisa Hilton (Author), Kelly Birch (Narrator)

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