Story Gold: Thomas Mogford’s The Saffron Thief
WRITTEN BY SARAH BOWER
Thomas Mogford, who writes historical fiction as T. L. Mogford, is a prolific author of crime novels. The Saffron Thief (HarperFiction, 2026) is his second historical novel, and he brings to it the gifts of fast-paced action and serpentine plotting developed through writing crime. The Saffron Thief is a page-turner but also a solidly researched narrative which sheds light on the English saffron industry in the mid-17th century, a corner of English history with which I was unfamiliar until I read the book. It is one of the many joys of reading historical fiction that it can widen the horizons of the reader’s knowledge and entertain at the same time.
In our interview, Mogford expressed some surprise at my ignorance of the history of saffron. When I asked him what drew him to it as a subject for his book, he replied: ‘How could anyone not be drawn to saffron. The world’s most valuable spice, worth almost as much as gold, a stunning colour, an exquisite flavour…’ The clincher, however, was his discovery that it used to be grown in England ‘in vast quantities’. Although crocus sativus, the crocus whose golden yellow stamens give us the spice, was first cultivated in Europe some 3,500 years ago, it almost disappeared after the fall of the Roman Empire and cultivation did not recommence until the 13th century, when the spice became popular as a food colouring which could also display ostentatious wealth. In the following century it was much in demand for its medicinal properties, believed to protect against the Black Death.
Saffron has always been expensive and has, like all valuable commodities from oil to diamonds, or gold to cobalt, a history of causing wars and other economic and social upheavals. In Mogford’s novel, fortunes are made and lost and the values of land and labour contested. There are mystery, romance and adventure aplenty, but at the root of all is an economy in flux. The novel is set in 1666, in London in the aftermath of the Great Fire, and in Saffron Walden (formerly Chipping Walden until the ubiquity and richness of its saffron fields changed its name). The once-comfortable Smith family, poulterers to the Inns of Court, have lost their business and the head of the family. The younger son, Fabian, sets out to restore their fortunes in the wake of a catastrophic gamble made by his feckless older brother, Justin, seduced by the prospect of easy money.
Fabian is an attractive protagonist: thoughtful, intelligent, but also, at times, endearingly naïve. He is good company throughout this novel and bound to be the same in the planned second book in the series. Mogford declined to say too much about this, except that ‘it features a very different type of saffron – Meadow Saffron – but things become similarly perilous as the story progresses.’ Fabian encounters all kinds of perils during the course of The Saffron Thief, from dubious alchemists to outlawed heretics, erratic employers and even more erratic drunks, a jealous mistress and a very nasty mastiff called Dagmar. He is aided in his adventures by his own level-headedness and moral determination to rebuild his life and his family’s fortunes, as well as by Amye Bloxham, a woman with a short fuse and a mysterious background whom Mogford describes as ‘outspoken and strong’.
I asked Mogford about Fabian’s sensibility, which feels quite modern. Literate himself, he embraces learning for women (as well as Amye, Fabian has an articulate and intellectually able little sister) and is also reluctant to see animals ill-treated. ‘The only complaint readers seemed to have had about The Plant Hunter [his first historical novel],’ he told me, ‘was that the main character’s pet dog, Wilberforce, sadly died near the end of the book… To compensate for that, I made sure… Fabian Smith was very much on the side of our furry friends, even though… there wasn’t a tremendously enlightened approach to animal welfare at that time.’ As for the education of women, Amye, he feels, leaves Fabian little option other than to accept women’s right to learn. Mogford is aware that anachronism in historical fiction is a calculated risk, but ‘too full an embrace of the mores of the period might be off-putting.’ As a writer who works in the contemporary as well as the historical realm, he has a tightrope to walk in order to please his loyal readership.
The Plant Hunter has a 19th-century setting. Although he can immerse himself deeply in the period about which he is writing, and undertakes detailed research, Mogford finds his inspiration primarily in the story rather than focusing on a single period. ‘The story comes first, then I try and choose whichever setting will allow me most effectively to tell it… With The Saffron Thief, I came across a list of English saffron prices going back centuries, and the mid-1660s was the time when it was at its most expensive (a whopping £4,1d per lb), so 1666 seemed the ideal year in which to set the book.’ He was aided in his choice of date by ‘an abundance of historical accounts and books focusing on 1666’ because of the Great Fire.
Mogford’s crime series features a lawyer from Gibraltar called Spike Sanguinetti. ‘I’m not from Gibraltar myself,’ he told me, ‘so had to create Spike’s life as a local through a combination of research and imagination. The process of writing a historical novel is not so different … Another similarity is that however well realised one might make the setting, or period, if the plot mechanics and character development aren’t done properly, then the book won’t work. So there are definitely comparisons to be made between the two genres.’ Mogford’s skill at mining the fictional gold of saffron has resulted in a thoroughly enjoyable read.
The Saffron Thief was published by HarperFiction on July 30th with a second book in the series to follow.
About the contributor: Sarah Bower’s most recent book is Lines and Shadows, a novella of the Cold War set in the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Published in Historical Novels Review | Issue 117 (August 2026)
