DON JORDAN
Don Jordan was born in Northern Ireland, but has lived for many years in London and considers the city his home. His first paid writing job was reporting on a dog show for a local newspaper in Lincolnshire. An allergy to dog hair drove him into a job with the BBC, first in London on the daily current affairs programme Nationwide, and then to the BBC’s Belfast office. He next joined the flagship ITV current affairs programme World in Action, where he worked as a producer and director for twelve years.
Since then he has produced or directed dozens of television drama films and documentaries, many on historical subjects. He co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film Love is the Devil, based on the life of the painter Francis Bacon. He has won several awards, including two Blue Ribbons at the New York Film and Television festival. Don Jordan has written two books in collaboration with Michael Walsh, the first being a biography of the notorious millionaire property tycoon, Nicholas van Hoogstraten and the second being White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America, an historical investigation into slavery in the British colonies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
LATEST BOOK: THE KING'S REVENGE: CHARLES II AND THE GREATEST MANHUNT IN BRITISH HISTORY
'We shall...pursue and bring to their due punishment those bloody traitors who were either actors or contrivers of that unparalleled and inhuman murder.' So vowed the nineteen-year-old Prince of Wales. Within three weeks of the beheading of his father Charles I, he launched the biggest manhunt Britain had ever seen, spreading out across Europe and America and lasting for over thirty years. When he ascended to the throne in 1660 as Charles II, his search for revenge intensified, with show trials in London and assassination squads scouring foreign countries. He not only sought vengeance against the fifty-nine men who signed his father's death warrant but many others who supported them. Dozens of the most senior figures in England were hanged, drawn and quartered; imprisoned for life; or in a self-imposed exile, in constant fear of the assassin's bullet. History has painted the regicides and their supporters as fanatical Puritans, but among them were exceptional men, including John Milton, poetic genius and political propagandist; Oliver Cromwell's steely son-in-law, Henry Ireton; and the errant son of an earl, Algernon Sidney, whose writings helped inspire the founders of the American Revolution. Cromwell himself was subjected to the most bizarre symbolic revenge when - though long-dead - his body was disinterred and beheaded. Set in an age of intrigue and espionage, The King's Revenge vividly brings these remarkable figures and this astonishing story to life in an engrossing, bloody tale of espionage, double agents, fear and ambition.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: The King's Revenge. Little, Brown 2012;
