★★½
The Cross and the Crown: Book I
It is 1535 and Henry VIII, bedazzled by a pair of black eyes, has put aside his wife Katherine of Aragon and turned his back on the Catholic Church in favour of Reform. His sentence falls heavily on the kingdom’s monasteries, which are charged with immorality and avarice, and their rich goods and lands seized for the benefit of the king – or more accurately the benefit of the local lord, should he have the courage to take them.
★★★ ½
Moving away from her usual stamping-ground of the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors, Philippa Gregory turns her attention in this novel to a much less familiar aspect of British history: the development of 17th-century botany and horticulture. At its heart is John Tradescant the Elder, the most celebrated gardener of his time, whose life spanned from the twilight of the Elizabethan age to the brink of the Civil War, and who did more than any of his contemporaries to encourage and enrich the love of gardening in England.
★★ ½
The Angevin Series: Book IV
This is the fourth instalment in Sharon Penman’s series about Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their squabbling sons, following on from When Christ And His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil’s Brood. I’ve read all the earlier novels, and I enjoyed them too, but unfortunately Lionheart didn’t quite live up to my expectations. It’s hard to know whether this genuinely is a heavier, more stilted book than the earlier instalments or whether it’s just that I’ve become more demanding about historical novels since I read Devil’s Brood in 2009.
★★★★★
A Novel
This was a rare thing: a book I came to on the strength of its subject, knowing nothing about its author, hoping that it would be a amusing read – only to find myself simply blown away by the quality of the writing. And I’m not easy to impress. All I knew at first was that this covered the same period as the excellent The King in the North, which I enjoyed so much. It has turned out to be just as brilliant, in a rather different way. This is a splendid treat of historical fiction, embracing the experiences of both men and women through the story of one remarkable protagonist.
★★★½
This is Maria McCann’s third novel and it has large shoes to fill: her debut, As Meat Loves Salt, set during the English Civil War, is one of the most compelling pieces of historical fiction I’ve read (with one of the most conflicted, unsettling antiheroes). Her second book, The Wilding, was set at a similar period and, for me, wasn’t nearly as powerful; but Ace, King, Knave is a return to form. Moving away from the male narrators and the 17th-century setting of the first two novels, McCann draws us into the roistering world of 18th-century London, and the experiences of two very different women.
★★★★½
In 1492 the Spaniard Rodrigo Borgia is elevated to the papacy as Pope Alexander VI. It’s an appointment based less on piety than political shrewdness. Generous to his friends and flexible in his scruples, Alexander may not be the pope that Rome wants, but he is the one that it deserves. After all, Renaissance Rome is a seething, ambitious, dangerous city where life is merely a poor shadow of its ancient vanished grandeur. There are as many courtesans as clerics; anything can be had at the right price; and a man can be made to disappear between dusk of one day and dawn of the next. If the Tiber keeps its secrets, he might never be seen again.
★★★½
A Ghost Story
As the clocks go back and the evenings grow colder – and we approach Halloween – it’s definitely time for a spot of Victorian Gothic fiction. I haven’t read Diane Setterfield’s very successful Thirteenth Tale, but I simply couldn’t resist the prospect of her most recent book, Bellman & Black. To my pleasure, it delivered all that it promised and I polished it off in two days. It reminds me, on a smaller scale and in a less ethereal manner, of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It has the same sense of everyday life set awry by something haunting and eerie, hovering at the corner of your eye; and it has the same sensitivity to the language of the time, giving the book an air of 19th-century authenticity without sacrificing its lively readability.
★★½
The Islam Quintet: Book I
It begins with an act of book-burning. In 1499, on the instructions of Archbishop Ximines de Cisneros, a troop of Christian soldiers storms the libraries and houses of Gharnata (Grenada), carrying off armfuls of precious theological, medical and scientific manuscripts. With only a handful of exceptions these are burned in front of the shocked Moorish citizens, who see the conflagration for what it is: a warning.
★★★½
A Man of His Time
The last time we saw Sir Robert Merivel, in the closing pages of Rose Tremain’s Restoration, he had achieved everything he had once desired: a comfortable home of his own; his infant daughter Margaret in his arms; and an assurance of King Charles II’s favour. Twenty five years after the publication of that novel, Tremain invites us to once again join forces with her neurotic, gifted but all-too-easily-distracted physician (for whom only sixteen years have passed) and to take a glimpse at what his life has become in the year 1683.
★★
Although I bought this more than a year ago, I’ve only just got round to reading it, mainly because Helen recently reviewed another of Margaret George’s books, Elizabeth I. Remembering that I had this novel on my shelf, I decided it was time to take the plunge (at 747 pages long, it’s quite a commitment). It’s the first of George’s books that I’ve read, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t quite match up to Helen’s report on Elizabeth. While I could see that a lot of research had gone into it, it never developed the alluring sparkle and epic grandeur that I’d hoped for from the woman whose face launched a thousand ships.
The Idle Woman 