Despite years of cool-headed scholarship over several decades, the idea still persists in the popular imagination that during the period known as the 'witch craze' millions of women were rounded up and burned at the stake often for nothing more than their skill with herbal remedies. While thousands of women, and men, believed to be … Continue reading Book Review – Crimen Exceptum: The English Witch Prosecution in Context by Gregory J Durston
Book reviews
My Reading – October 2019
Fallen Skies by Philippa GregoryStephen's mouth was filling with mud, wet slurry pressed on his eyelids, slid into his nostrils like earthworms. The Sisters of Arden on the Pilgrimage of Grace by Judith ArnoppWe run, heads down through the darkness, away from the cries of our dying friends and the sickening thud of their falling … Continue reading My Reading – October 2019
Book Review – Fallen Skies by Philippa Gregory
It is 1920 and the Great War ended two years ago. Seventeen-year-old Lily Pears had done her best to ignore it. She is a chorus girl with a beautiful voice, who performs under the stage name Lily Valance. Her widowed mother has poured all her dreams into her daughter. Helen Pears runs a shop on … Continue reading Book Review – Fallen Skies by Philippa Gregory
My Reading – September 2019
The Second Sleep by Robert HarrisLate on the afternoon of Tuesday the ninth of April in the Year of Our Risen Lord 1468, a solitary traveller was to be observed picking his way on horseback across the wild moorland of that ancient region of south-western England known since Saxon times as Wessex. Tidelands by Philippa … Continue reading My Reading – September 2019
My Reading – August 2019
The Almanack by Martine Bailey'An unlucky day for travel.' The phrase tolled like a doom bell in Tabitha's skull as she woke. The Postmistress by Alison StuartTock, tock, tock...The muffled tick of the marble and gilt clock on the mantelpiece beat out the minutes of Adelaide's life.
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
Between August and November 1888, five women were killed in Whitechapel, all believed to be the victim of a single killer. The identity and the behaviour of the killer has fascinated multitudes since to the point where the killer has achieved almost mythic status, the women he killed dismissed as prostitutes, mere footnotes to the … Continue reading The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
My Reading – July 2019
Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson Call me Isobel. (It's my name.) God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England by Jessie ChildsFour months after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Anne Vaux awoke in a prison cell. The Daughters of Ironbridge by Mollie WaltonFire and smoke, suffocating and infernal, reached up into the sky, staining … Continue reading My Reading – July 2019
My Reading – June 2019
Murder at Westminster Abbey by Amanda Carmack'Out of my way, you foul hedge-pig! Ain't you ever been told to give way to ladies before?' The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson They came for him at midnight. There was no warning, no time to reach for the dagger beneath his pillow. The Five: The … Continue reading My Reading – June 2019
Book Review – Murder at Westminster Abbey by Amanda Carmack
Londoners are crowding into the streets, celebrating, watching the river procession as Elizabeth Tudor makes her way by barge to the Tower of London in preparation for her coronation. Meanwhile, in the backstreets of Southwark, a kindhearted prostitute with pale skin and red hair is brutally murdered. Nineteen-year-old Kate Haywood is the daughter of a … Continue reading Book Review – Murder at Westminster Abbey by Amanda Carmack
My Reading – May 2019
Song of the Sea Maid by Rebecca Mascull I think I had a brother once. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles At half past six on the twenty-first of June 1922, when Count Alexander Illyich Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool. Painting in … Continue reading My Reading – May 2019
