Every article on Tales of the Middle Ages is researched, written, and reviewed by Kylie personally. Her approach combines formal historical training with on-the-ground fieldwork and a lifelong passion for the medieval period, and she is best known for pairing careful accuracy with warm, readable storytelling for a general audience.

Areas of Expertise

Kylie writes with particular depth on the following subjects:

• Medieval European history, with a focus on the high and late Middle Ages
• The Tudor period and Tudor England
• Medieval and Tudor queens and queenship, including Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I
• Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Angevin world
• Medieval France and its castles, abbeys, and historic sites
• Medieval social history and everyday life, from health and hygiene to justice and punishment
• Historical accuracy in fiction, and how popular retellings compare with the documented record
• Historic sites, castles, and abbeys of France and the United Kingdom, written from first-hand visits

Education and Professional Credentials

• BA (Honours) in History, University of Kent, completed by distance learning in 2000.
• Member, British Guild of Travel Writers, the professional association for accredited travel journalists and photographers in the UK.
• Working travel journalist with five years of active practice writing about the history and heritage of France and the United Kingdom.

Research Methodology

Kylie’s history writing follows a consistent research process, set out in full in the Tales of the Middle Ages editorial and content policy. In short:

She builds each article on credible, verifiable sources, favoring primary material such as chronicles and charters, alongside peer-reviewed and academically respected secondary works by recognized historians, museums, universities, and archives. Specific dates, figures, and quotations are drawn from a source she has consulted rather than from memory or assumption, and each is checked before publication.

Where the evidence is incomplete or historians disagree, she says so and presents the main competing views rather than flattening them into a single tidy answer. When a familiar story turns out to be a myth, a later invention, or unverified tradition, she labels it as such instead of repeating it as fact. Throughout, she keeps a clear line between documented evidence and her own interpretation or storytelling, and she corrects errors promptly when they are found.

This research is regularly grounded in first-hand visits to the places she writes about, which lets her describe sites, distances, and physical detail from direct observation rather than second-hand summary.

Site Visits and First-Hand Research

Because she travels frequently across France and the UK, much of Kylie’s medieval writing is informed by visiting the locations in person. Historic sites she has researched on the ground include:

• The Tower of London, England
• Hever Castle, Kent, childhood home of Anne Boleyn
• Carcassonne Citadel, France
• Fontevraud Abbey, France, burial place of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II, and Richard the Lionheart
• Chateau de Chenonceau, France
• Poitiers, France, where she visited the great hall associated with Eleanor of Aquitaine on a history tour hosted by the Poitiers Tourist Board

These are a representative selection rather than a complete list, and the roster grows as she continues to travel and report.

Published Works

Kylie’s medieval writing appears across a growing catalog of articles on Tales of the Middle Ages. Representative pieces include features on the Bayeux Tapestry, the fall of Thomas Cromwell, a comparison of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, a study of the ten most powerful medieval queens of England, an examination of historical accuracy in the novels of Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory, and articles on Tudor daily life and medieval justice.

As a travel journalist, she has also written guest contributions published on Life in Rural France. She is actively developing further guest features and contributions for external history and heritage publications, which will be added here as they are published.