God’s Traitors

A true story of plots, priest-holes and persecution and one family's battle to save Catholicism in Reformation England.*Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman PrizeLonglisted for The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-FictionA Sunday Times Book of the YearA Daily Telegraph Book of the YearA Times Book of the Year*An Observer Book of the YearA woman awakes in a prison cell.She has been on the run but the authorities have tracked her down and taken her to the Tower of London - where she is interrogated about the Gunpowder Plot.The woman is Anne Vaux - one of the ardent, brave and exasperating members of the aristocratic Vauxes of Harrowden Hall.Through the eyes of this remarkable family, award-winning author Jessie Childs explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England - an age in which their faith was criminalised and almost two hundred Catholics were executed.From dawn raids to daring escapes, stately homes to torture chambers, God's Traitors exposes the tensions masked by the cult of Gloriana - and is a timely reminder of the terrible consequences when religion and politics collide.

Winner of The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2015 (UK)
Short-listed for Longman-History Today Book Prize 2014 (UK)
Long-listed for Samuel Johnson Prize 2014 (UK)

A triumph of story-telling, backed by first-rate research -- Antonia Fraser
Absorbing, exciting and relevant -- Ben MacIntyre The Times Book of the Week
Richly packed, absorbing... A parade of extraordinary characters -- Simon Callow Guardian
Thrilling New Statesman
God’s Traitors, with its crisp prose and punctilious scholarship, brilliantly recreates a world of heroism and holiness in Tudor England... It is little short of a triumph -- Ian Thomson Financial Times
Beautifully written... Hollywood could not have made it up -- Professor JJ Scarisbrick
Brilliant Wall Street Journal
Truly excellent... God's Traitors crosses the divide between popular and academic history. It raises issues of some real historical importance -- Michael Questier Spectator
This vivid, minutely researched and brilliantly original history is a much-needed look at the dark side of the Elizabethan age -- Dan Jones Sunday Times
Excellent... An engaging history of English papists, filled with memorable episodes The Economist
In the quality of her research and sensitive handling of issues that remain raw to this day, Jessie Childs succeeds in evoking ‘the lived experience of anti-Catholicism’ as few have done before... Childs’s language is lively and inventive... By picturing Elizabethan recusants in all their complexity, Jessie Childs has enabled them to speak for themselves at last -- John Cooper Literary Review
Superb and groundbreaking... It isn’t possible in the space of a review to do justice to the breadth and depth of Childs’ research and insight; but they illuminate the entire landscape of English life...a superlative, flawlessly written book... Childs’ description of an exorcism at Lord Vaux’s house in Hackney...is one of the most extraordinary things I have ever read -- Matthew Lyons, author of The Favourite
Plots and priest holes abound -- Caroline Sanderson Bookseller
Childs is a lucid, passionate writer and she gets under the skin of her subject... It's not often that history books get the balance of expert research and storytelling with chutzpah just right but Childs has managed it with this informative and entertaining book -- Doug Johnstone Big Issue
[A] moving historical account... Childs paints a vivid, sometimes even humorous picture of devout Catholics keeping up appearances -- Daisy Dunn Daily Mail

Jessie Childs was born in London in 1976 and read history at Brasenose College, Oxford, where she took a first. Her first book Henry VIII's Last Victim won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. Her second book God's Traitors was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, shortlisted for the Longman-History Today Book Prize, and won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, 2015.Jessie frequently appears on TV and radio, and has written and reviewed for many publications, including the Telegraph, the Guardian, Literary Review, Standpoint and the Times Literary Supplement. She is one of the judges for the 2016 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History.She lives in Hammersmith, London, with her husband and two daughters.

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