The Girl in the Locket
Forthcoming with Ravenna Press in June 2027
About this novel
With themes of identity, ambition and freedom, and echoes of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, The Girl in the Locket is an art history mystery novel and a love story that will keep you turning the pages to its dramatic conclusion.
1581: Abducted from her home by English sailors, a young West African girl is brought to Queen Elizabeth I as a gift. Johana Blackmore’s life at the Tudor court is bitterly lonely – until she forms a secret and perilous friendship with a famous artist.
2008: Hapless museum intern Finn Daley thinks his luck has finally changed when he discovers Johana’s lost portrait in a locket. Determined to carve out a space for himself in the elitist art world, and keen to learn more about the mysterious girl, he turns detective. But is the painting all it seems? And what is he prepared to sacrifice to find out?
As Finn races for the truth, crossing five centuries and two continents, and exposing the painful legacies of Britain’s colonial past, he starts to realise that everything he loves is at stake.
Images by
William Davy
Documentary Film: Imagining Lost Histories
A new collaborative way of bringing lost histories to life
Funded by Arts Council England, I’ve had the huge pleasure of collaborating with Curtis Holder (winner of Portrait Artist of the Year UK, 2020) and Alan Derbyshire (former Chief Conservator of Paintings at the V&A) to make the Tudor miniature at the heart of The Girl in the Locket.
Working alongside filmmaker William Davy, I co-directed and produced Imagining Lost Histories: a documentary that traces our journey through the fascinating Tudor world of squirrel-hair brushes, pigments mixed in seashells and tiny rubies made of hot red resin - and asks what it means to paint one of the many faces missing from British gallery walls.
Images by William Davy