Sarah Hawkswood

Sarah Hawkswood is the pen name of British historian and novelist Sophia Holloway. She studied Modern History at the University of Oxford, specialising in military history and the theory of war, and later worked with regimental and military museums, cataloguing weapons and undertaking research for the Royal Marines Museum. Under the name S. M. Holloway, she co-authored From Trench and Turret: Royal Marines Diaries and Letters 1914–1918. She lives in Worcestershire, the county that provides the principal setting for her medieval fiction.

Hawkswood is best known for the Bradecote and Catchpoll historical mystery series, beginning with Servant of Death. Set in twelfth-century Worcestershire during the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda, the novels follow Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote, the experienced Serjeant Catchpoll and his apprentice Walkelin as they investigate murders within monasteries, manor houses, villages and the streets of Worcester. The series combines carefully researched medieval law, social hierarchy and everyday life with conventional detective plots, while acknowledging that its organised investigations are more systematic than contemporary processes such as the hue and cry would usually have been.