The eleventh-century countess of Barcelona, Almodis de La Marche, was accused by the monk historian, William of Malmesbury, of being driven by ‘a furious and godless female itch’, which immediately struck me as a good reason to write her biography. 

I’m working on that biography now and have expanded it to incorporate the lives of her two sisters: Raingarde, who was countess of Carcassonne, and Lucia, who was countess of Pallars Sobira. Lucia is pictured below in a fresco she commissioned for a mountain chapel in the Pyrenees. I was lucky enough to be a writer in residence at the nearby Centre d’Art i Natura in Farrera and to visit the chapel, which now has a (very good) replica of Lucia’s frescos in situ, while the originals are on display in MNAC in Barcelona.