While I have done reasonable well this year, managing to read fifty books, I haven't yet achieved my goal of a book a week. Once again, the fiction is mainly historical with a few classic works as well as a handful of books of poetry and of non-fiction. My top reads for the year are … Continue reading 2017 – A Year of Reading
Historical fiction
Book Review – Sumerford’s Autumn by Barbara Gaskell Denvil
Sumerford’s Autumn begins in 1497, twelve years after Henry VII won the crown of England by defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. The Earl of Sumerford, who fought on the wrong side, has been doing his best ever since to rehabilitate the family name and keep his family below notice of the king. … Continue reading Book Review – Sumerford’s Autumn by Barbara Gaskell Denvil
Forsaking All Other Love is no game for women; the price is far too high. England 1585. Bess Stoughton, waiting woman to the well-connected Lady Allingbourne, has discovered that her father is arranging for her to marry an elderly neighbour. Normally obedient Bess rebels and wrests from her father a year’s grace to find a … Continue reading
Assume Nothing
Recently I have read several books where historical implausibilities have just leapt off the page at me - female cooks in the Manor house of a substantial gentry family in the 1530s, characters attending a play several years before the playwright was even born, a twelve year old girl reading a banned book that was … Continue reading Assume Nothing
Book Review – Crimson and Bone by Marina Fiorato
Near the beginning of Crimson and Bone Annie Stride, the main character of the novel, describes a room in the house of pre-Raphaelite painter Francis Maybrick Gill as 'a jewel box of a place'. Much the same could be said of this novel with its vibrant descriptions of the physical surroundings, of the characters and … Continue reading Book Review – Crimson and Bone by Marina Fiorato
Hilary Mantel’s Reith Lectures 2017
In the Reith Lectures this year Hilary Mantel discusses what is at the heart of good historical fiction, our relationship with the past, and the central elements in a historical novelist's attempt to bring the past alive for us today. As Mantel herself says 'The reason you must stick by the truth is that it … Continue reading Hilary Mantel’s Reith Lectures 2017
Book Review – Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge
This delightful novel covers a year in the life of the Leigh family, from the arrival on May Day 1565 of Faithful Crocker, a 14 year old orphaned vagabond, carrying his meagre possessions, a copy of Virgil and of Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and a burning desire to become a scholar, to the visit of … Continue reading Book Review – Towers in the Mist by Elizabeth Goudge
Book Review – The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
The Swan Thieves is an intriguing story of art and obsession. Its starting point is the attack on a 19th century painting hanging in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The attacker, Robert Oliver, is a brilliant painter suffering from a psychosis. He is hospitalized under the care of psychiatrist Andrew Marlow who is … Continue reading Book Review – The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
Book Review: The Spy by Paul Coelho
This short novel by Paul Coelho begins with British reporter Henry Wales’ eyewitness account of the execution by firing squad on 15 October 1917 of Margaretha Zelle otherwise known as Mata Hari. Of a middle-class Dutch family, Margaretha was brought up by an uncle after her parents died. At school she was raped by her … Continue reading Book Review: The Spy by Paul Coelho
Book Review – La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de Lafayette
This edition of La Princesse de Clèves also includes two earlier works written by Madame de Lafayette – La Princesse de Montpensier published in 1662, and La Comtesse de Tende published posthumously in 1718 although this is probably the earliest of Madame de Lafayette’s works. Both are short, no more than thirty pages and deal … Continue reading Book Review – La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de Lafayette
Catherine Meyrick 