By Deborah Jay
Historical Non-Fiction
“Nothing gives me more pleasure than to find an individual who has been forgotten or marginalised and yet who had a major impact on history.”
- Deborah Jay
The life of a person who has been forgotten or marginalised by history is rarely fully documented. Inevitably, there are gaps. Deborah likes to piece together the most likely scenario of an individual’s life by using available evidence, filling gaps using her imagination judiciously, having regard to her knowledge of the period.
Napoleon's Other Wife
Until she became enamoured with the city of Parma in Northern Italy, Deborah had not heard of Habsburg Archduchess Marie-Louise. And yet without her marriage to Napoleon, he might have triumphed against England and England might have become a satellite state of France.
Keen to find out more, Deborah set out on a journey to uncover the story of Marie-Louise and how politicians used her to engineer Napoleon’s downfall. Napoleon’s Other Wife tells the story of a woman who was used as a pawn and subsequently blackmailed to keep quiet. Yet who, in many ways, outwitted her detractors and struck out for herself.
Francesca Sandrini, Curator of the Museo Glauco Lombardi, which preserves Marie-Louise’s memory, has said that no other writer has delivered a more thoroughly researched biography or a more faithful a picture of Marie-Louise than Deborah has.
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By Deborah Jay
Elgin's Watercolourist - The Betrayal Of Don Titta
Who was Lord Elgin and did he really steal the Parthenon marbles?
As a historian, Deborah considers it wrong to judge by moral standards today those of yesterday. Therefore, she has long been intrigued by the Elgin Marbles story. Curious about what had motivated Lord Elgin to embark upon the removal and what state of preservation the Parthenon was really in in 1799.
A long line of sympathisers to the Greek claim to the marbles have declared that the removal from the Acropolis and transportation of the marbles to England was illegal. But just what were the legal constraints at the time? How did the removal take place and what was happening on the ground in Athens?
Told through the eyes of Elgin’s watercolourist, Giovanni Battista Lusieri, Deborah's upcoming historical non-fiction book explores the events that led to a controversy that still rages today. Uncovering how it all started and delving deep into all those unanswered questions...
By Deborah Jay
