Photo by Wade Hampton IV
About Ellen Hampton
Historian + Author
History tells us where we’re going and literature tells us where we’ve been. In between lies the journey, the transitory space between experience and hope, the stories I love most. I am a PhD historian, author, editor, former professor and occasional journalist. I began writing for newspapers and wire services, first in Miami and then in Central America and the Caribbean, and then moved to France in 1989 with my French husband. After our two sons were born, I went to graduate school at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and earned a doctorate in history. I taught at Sciences Po and the Université de Paris II-Panthéon, and worked as resident director in Paris for the City University of New York exchange program. After publishing two non-fiction books on World War II, both born of absolute awe for those who found their way through that dark night, I am reaching back in time to the drama and romance of a historical fiction series based in medieval France, Castle and the Cross.
castle and the cross
A Historical Fiction Book Series
a series in PROGRESS
Behind the trappings of royal majesty and Renaissance glory, the stock of French historical tales, are the men and women of medieval power who brought France into being: landed barons with castles and militias and never-ending trouble on their hands; bishops balancing the interests of church and flock against their personal wealth; families whose losses in battle could mean the end of their noble line; peasants surviving only by wit and by stealth. No need to invent the stories, they were written by monks nearly a thousand years ago. In this series, historical figures follow the facts as we know them, with fictional motivations, conversations and deep romantic entanglements added to the mix.