Tudor London

Beyond the house, Bankside offers other entertainments.

The Baiting Ring nearby is one of the great attractions of Tudor London.

In it, a bear is chained to a post, and dogs, often band dogs like Hector, are set upon it.

Crowds gather to watch, cheering and betting on the outcome.

The most common target, as always, is the purse.

Tudor men and women carried their money in purses hung from their belts or tucked inside their clothing.

Cut purses, thieves who sliced the strings with a small sharp knife and vanished into the crowd, were a notorious menace in Tudor London, working in markets, churches, theatres, fairs and, above all, in crowded alehouses and stews.

A drunk customer with a heavy purse was an obvious target.

What they don't realize is the bathtub is a time machine.

It takes them over 400 years into the past and dumps them on the very dangerous and smelly streets of Tudor London.

And they crash into Jane Blackman, who was the daughter of Reasonable Blackman, and he was a real Black British historical figure.

He was of African descent.

How did you get that mix of what's actually happened to them now, and then in their current school home life, and then the adventure? How did you get to there?

Wanted to introduce and give readers an idea of what Zula and Milo were like as people, and also 'cause it helps, like you need to care about them.

You need to understand why they've ended up in Tudor London, what they're trying to solve.

And I wanted two quite different characters.

But her books about...

I think my favourite one was one called The Armorer's House that's set in Tudor London and involves two children with very vivid imaginations.

There's one about Boudicca, Song for a Dark Queen, which is also amazing.

And she wrote The Eagle of the Ninth, which has been filmed a couple of times.