Alison Weir does not just put farthingales on modern characters; she understands the minds of people living in the past and her writing transcends mere dates to reflect their hopes and fears.
Here she intertwines two stories of girls growing up in times when childhood was over too quickly: Kate, the bastard daughter of Richard III, and Katherine Grey, sister of ill-fated queen Jane Grey and cousin to Elizabeth I. The girls are linked by name, by a house, by thwarted love and by their interest in one of the greatest of all whodunits: the story of the princes in the tower. Both girls are too close to the throne for safety but too distant to wield real power and are treated as pawns in the power games of influential men. Kate, desperately trying to believe the best of her father, fights against her growing realisation that his motives are not pure, while heedless Katherine plays with love and ambition without realising the consequences.
Alison Weir combines the arts of novelist and historian, providing an absorbing story with engaging characters. One of the delights of reading Weir is her historical accuracy. Although this is a novel and there is much that is imagined, the detail is meticulous and you can immerse yourself in the story without being distracted by glaring anachronisms. For those for whom history is people this is a glorious read.
Historical fiction stuck in time
The problem is all the historical fiction writers have forgotten that Georgian and Victorian history is far more relevant to modern man and quite frankly far more interesting than the Tudors - Elizabethan.
I know! My 4th book, The Ebb & Flow by me, David Edwards, has just been nominated Welsh Book of The Year and it is set 1770 - 1820. So what is the fascination, is it the publishers who have forgotten how to think or the authors indulging in day dreams about how simple a life they crave?
David Edwards, Anglesey, N.Wales.