First published in 1975, Disgrace and Favour is a novel of life on the Border in the dying years of Elizabeth I's reign and of intrigue and immorality at the court of King James. It is the story of the Queen's cousin, Sir Robert Carey, who was disgraced for marrying without her consent, of his struggle to restore his fortunes under her successor, and his realisation that favour among the hazards of a decadent court was even less appealing than a hard but untrammelled life in exile on the Border.
It is the story, too, of the hanging of Geordie Bourne; of the life and death of Prince Henry, most gifted of the Stuarts; of Robert Carr, the royal favourite who became the only first minister of a British monarch to be convicted of murder; of Frances Howard, the beauty of the age and twice a countess, on the state of whose maidenhead depended the government of the country; of the mysterious poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London, and the meteoric career of George Villiers.
Many of the other rich and bizarre characters of the age make an appearance in these pages. They are headed by the awesome Queen who terrorised her courtiers and the far from majestic king who united Scotland and England and proclaimed himself God's Vice-regent on earth but
displayed a strange variety of human weaknesses.
