Category: Historical Fiction

The Royalist by S.J. Deas

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The Royalist As someone who loves both historical fiction and mysteries, it’s not surprising that I also enjoy historical mysteries! If the book has an interesting and unusual setting, as this one has, even better.

The Royalist is the first in a planned series featuring the character of William Falkland. Falkland, as the title suggests, is a Royalist and has been fighting for King Charles in the English Civil War. As the novel begins in 1645, he has been captured by Parliamentarians and is in Newgate Prison awaiting his fate. When after several months of imprisonment a guard comes to take him from his cell, he is convinced that the day of his execution has arrived at last. To his surprise, though, he is taken instead to a meeting with Oliver Cromwell, the man with whom Parliament’s hopes of victory lie.

It seems that Cromwell has learned of a previous occasion on which Falkland stood up to his King to see that a criminal was brought to justice – and he is now hoping that Falkland will be able to solve a second crime, this time within Cromwell’s own New Model Army. Large, well-trained and highly disciplined, the New Model Army has been created with the aim of bringing a rapid end to the war. However, with men being pressed into the army regardless of their religious or political beliefs, discontent, disloyalty, fear and resentment are widespread. At the army’s winter camp in the town of Crediton in Devon, three young soldiers appear to have committed suicide – but why? This is what Falkland must agree to find out, in return for his own life.

I enjoyed The Royalist; it’s a very atmospheric book, taking us from a dark, cramped prison cell right into the heart of an army camp in the middle of a cold, harsh winter. This is the unusual setting I mentioned earlier; I’ve read other novels set during the Civil War, but none that focus specifically on the New Model Army. I knew almost nothing about the army before starting this book, and I found it fascinating, particularly the fact that even former Royalists were recruited, often against their will. It was also interesting to read about the ways in which the people of Crediton were affected by the army moving into their town and forcing them out of their homes.

This is not a book about an army on the move so there are (fortunately, in my opinion) no long battle scenes or discussions of military tactics; this is a book about an army that is stationary, based in one place, biding its time. That doesn’t mean there’s no action, of course! As Falkland continues to investigate and begins to uncover the truth about the young men who have died, he finds that he himself is in danger. There’s a lot of suspense as he explores the camp and its buildings in the dead of night, examines the tree where the three soldiers allegedly took their own lives, and tries to decide who can and cannot be trusted.

As the novel’s narrator, Falkland is the character we get to know best, but I still felt that there was plenty of information about his past that he was withholding from us and could reveal in a future novel. There are other interesting characters too: Thomas Fairfax, for example, the commander of the New Model Army and known as ‘Black Tom’ – one of the few real historical figures to appear in the book. There’s also Kate Cain, a woman who has refused to leave Crediton, and with whom Falkland lodges during his time in the town. And I was particularly intrigued by the character of Henry Warbeck, the man given the job of escorting Falkland to the army camp, as I discovered that there was more to him than met the eye at first.

I’m now looking forward to reading the second William Falkland novel, The Protector, which will be out later this year.

The 2015 Walter Scott Prize longlist

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I was interested to see that the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was announced today. I’ve been following this prize for the last few years and this is the first time the longlist has been made public. The judges have selected fifteen books, with the shortlist to be announced in March and the winner in June.

You can learn more about the prize on the Walter Scott Prize website.

The fifteen books on the longlist are:

The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis
The Temporary Gentleman by Sebastian Barry
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
The Lie by Helen Dunmore
Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre
In the Wolf’s Mouth by Adam Foulds
Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud
Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut
Wake by Anna Hope
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
The Undertaking by Audrey Magee
A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie
The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak
The Ten Thousand Things by John Spurling
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

I have read four of these books – The Temporary Gentleman, The Miniaturist, The Lie and Mr Mac and Me – and have linked to my reviews above so that you can see what I thought of them.

Anna Hope’s Wake is a book I would like to read at some point. I remember hearing a lot about it when it was published last year, but I didn’t read it as I wasn’t in the mood for a First World War novel at that time. I’m sure I’ll read The Paying Guests eventually too as I’ve enjoyed all of Sarah Waters’ previous novels, but I haven’t been in any hurry after seeing some very mixed reviews. The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth first came to my attention when it was longlisted for the Booker Prize last year – having looked at the first few pages I decided the unusual writing style didn’t appeal to me. Maybe I should give it a chance after all?

All of the other titles on the list are new to me, so I’ve had to do some investigating! Viper Wine sounds very intriguing and so does The Architect’s Apprentice.

Have you read any of these books? Are there any that you think I need to try?

The Vanishing Witch by Karen Maitland

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The Vanishing Witch Karen Maitland is an author I’ve been meaning to try for a while. With two of her novels on my tbr pile to choose from, I decided to start with this one, The Vanishing Witch, as it had been waiting the longest.

The story is set in Lincoln and covers the period between September 1380 and September 1381. As you may know, 1381 was the year of the Peasants’ Revolt when large sections of the English population rebelled in protest against excessive taxes. I actually read a non-fiction book about the Revolt just before Christmas – England, Arise by Juliet Barker – and this provided me with a lot of background knowledge. However, even if you know nothing about this period of history, you should still find The Vanishing Witch easy enough to follow. The Revolt does play an important part in the plot, but this is first and foremost the story of fictional Lincoln wool merchant, Robert of Bassingham, and his family.

When an attractive widow called Catlin asks Robert for advice regarding an investment, the merchant is only too pleased to help. Despite his reassurances to his wife, Edith, that his relationship with Catlin is purely business-related, he soon finds himself falling in love and it’s not long before the widow, her young daughter Leonia and adult son Edward have become part of Robert’s household. With Edith seriously ill, Robert’s two sons, Jan and Adam, become suspicious of Catlin’s motives – a suspicion shared by the family servants.

A few miles away, in the village of Greetwell, another man is also facing difficult times. His name is Gunter and he is a boatman, responsible for collecting and delivering cargoes of cloth. Work has been sparse lately and when the King’s commissioners arrive in the village, Gunter knows he will struggle to pay his taxes…

I found The Vanishing Witch a very entertaining and enjoyable novel and am quite happy with my first introduction to Karen Maitland’s work. There were plenty of things to like – the time period (not a very popular choice for historical fiction, which made it all the more interesting), the dark atmosphere, the touches of the supernatural, and the plot, which twists and turns as secrets are uncovered and revelations are made. I particularly loved the way Maitland altered my perceptions of the characters as the focus moved from one to another; she made me wary of some of them from the beginning, but I was never quite sure whether or not that wariness was justified!

By telling the stories of both Robert of Bassingham – a wealthy merchant – and Gunter, one of his workers, Maitland is able to explore what life was like in the 14th century for people at different levels of society. However, while the mystery revolving around Robert and Catlin was compelling, the storyline surrounding Gunter’s family and the Peasants’ Revolt felt less developed. This subplot had the potential to be as interesting as the other one and I was disappointed that it wasn’t explored in as much depth.

I’ve mentioned that the author has added some supernatural touches to the novel: each chapter begins with a superstition, a piece of folklore or a description of a spell. These don’t have a lot of direct significance to the story but they are fun to read and are part of the overall atmosphere of the book. There are also some sections of the novel narrated by a ghost, whose identity and role in the story we don’t learn until the end of the book. I didn’t guess who the ghost was and I was surprised when I discovered the truth!

So will I be reading more Karen Maitland? Yes, of course! I’ll start with her new one, The Raven’s Head, then go back to explore her earlier novels.

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

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The Birth of Venus I love books set in Renaissance Italy but although Sarah Dunant has written three or four of them, this is the first one I’ve read. I had started to read her novel on the Borgias, Blood and Beauty, a year or two ago and struggled to get into it, so that put me off trying any of her other books for a while. Something keeps drawing me to Dunant’s books on the library shelf, though, so a few weeks ago I decided it was time to give her another try.

The Birth of Venus is not, as I’d originally expected, a novel based on the story behind the Botticelli painting of the same name. What the title does actually refer to could be debated, but it seems to me that it alludes to the ‘birth’ or awakening of the novel’s narrator as she falls in love for the first time. The name of the narrator is Alessandra Cecchi and she is the daughter of a prosperous Florentine cloth merchant.

At the beginning of the novel, Alessandra is not quite fifteen years old. Despite her quick brain and artistic talent, she has had to resign herself to the fact that, due to the conventions of 15th century society, she will have no option but to marry the man her parents have chosen for her. When her father returns from a business trip, bringing with him a young artist whom he has commissioned to paint the walls of the family chapel, Alessandra is fascinated. She is curious to see the painter’s work and to learn more about his methods, but she is even more intrigued by the painter himself. Who is this young man, this ‘orphan brought up in a monastery on the edge of the northern sea’?

As the story of Alessandra and the painter unfolds, so does the story of Florence. Beginning with the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the novel takes us through the subsequent disastrous reign of Piero de’ Medici, the rise to power of the Dominican friar Savonarola, and the growing threat of a French invasion. This is always a fascinating time and place to read about and I think Dunant does a particularly good job of bringing the setting to life, not just in describing the sights and sounds, but also in showing us how the mood of Florence changes as the city is gripped by Savonarola’s religious extremism.

For a thick book, this was quite a quick read, the sort where you become so swept along with the story you don’t realise how fast the pages are turning. My only problem was that I found Dunant’s decision to refer to the painter as ‘the painter’ throughout the entire book slightly annoying. I’m not quite sure why there really needed to be a mystery surrounding his identity. I felt that the lack of a name created a distance between the character and the reader – I expect this was probably intentional (maybe it wasn’t supposed to matter who he was; all that mattered was what he represented to Alessandra), but if so, it didn’t work for me.

While I can’t really say that I loved this book, I did enjoy it and am now happy to try Sarah Dunant’s other Renaissance Italy novels, In the Company of the Courtesan and Sacred Hearts (maybe I should even give Blood and Beauty another chance). When I finished The Birth of Venus I didn’t want to leave Medici Florence behind, so the next book I picked up was Romola by George Eliot, which is set in the same period and which I’m thoroughly enjoying.

The Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor

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The Silent Boy “Say nothing. Not a word to anyone. Whatever you see. Whatever you hear. Do you understand? Say nothing. Ever.” These words are spoken to ten-year-old Charles on the night of 10th August 1792. This is the night the Tuileries Palace is stormed and the French monarchy falls – one of the defining moments of the French Revolution. It seems that poor Charles has witnessed the brutal murder of his mother and has fled the scene in panic vowing to do as he has been told and never say a word to anyone ever again.

The boy’s silence causes a lot of frustration for a lot of people, including Edward Savill. Savill is the estranged husband of Charles’ mother, Augusta, and is legally, though not biologically, his father. Augusta’s uncle, the wealthy and powerful Mr Rampton, is interested in making Charles his heir and has ordered Savill to bring the boy to him. This proves to be more difficult than expected, however, as Charles has already been claimed by Augusta’s lover, the Count de Quillon, who has come to England to escape the Revolution. The Count insists that Charles is his son…and he has no intention of letting him go.

The Silent Boy follows Edward Savill on his mission to rescue Charles from the clutches of others who have reasons of their own for wanting the boy. Along the way we learn more about Augusta and what happened to her on that fateful night in Paris. There are also some sections of the novel told from the perspective of Charles himself, describing his traumatic experiences in France and his adventures after he is brought to England.

I found Charles’ story both fascinating and frustrating. He’s clearly an intelligent and resourceful boy, but one who has been so badly frightened by what he has seen and heard that he is no longer able to trust anyone at all. His refusal to speak gives him power over the adults who are desperate to hear what he has to say, but it also makes him vulnerable and it’s sad to watch a child cutting himself off so completely from everyone around him. But Charles is not the only one in danger – Edward Savill is also in a difficult position, being used as a pawn by his in-law and patron, Mr Rampton, whose motives are always in doubt.

The Silent Boy is a sequel to The Scent of Death, which was the first of Andrew Taylor’s historical mysteries/thrillers to feature Edward Savill. I enjoyed The Scent of Death but had somehow missed the fact that a sequel had been published last year, so it was a nice surprise for me to see this one in the library. It’s not necessary to have read the first book before this one – the two are very different stories and set during two different Revolutions (American and French) – but The Scent of Death does provide some useful background information on the characters, so I’d recommend reading them in order if you possibly can.

I enjoyed this book but not as much as the other Andrew Taylor novels I’ve read. After the dramatic opening chapter in Paris, I thought the story became very slow and didn’t really pick up again until halfway through. The end was worth waiting for, though, as the tension increases and some surprising revelations are made. I do like Edward Savill as a character and it was nice to meet his daughter, Lizzie, whom he had missed so much while he was away in America in the previous novel. I never quite managed to connect with Charles, but I can appreciate that we probably weren’t really supposed to – the whole point was that Charles had built up a protective wall of silence around himself and wouldn’t let anybody break through it.

Now I’m wondering if there will be a third Edward Savill novel. I do prefer Andrew Taylor’s standalones, such as The American Boy and The Anatomy of Ghosts, but I would be happy to read another book in this series if and when he writes one.

The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer

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The Quiet Gentleman When Gervase Frant, 7th Earl of St Erth, returns to his family estate of Stanyon Castle after fighting in the Peninsular War, he doesn’t receive quite the welcome he’d hoped for. His cousin Theo seems pleased to see him but his stepmother and younger half-brother, Martin, give the impression that they would have been happier if he’d never come home at all. Soon after his arrival, a series of accidents start to befall the Earl – but are they really just accidents or are they attempts on his life?

I still have a lot of Georgette Heyer’s books left to read (I haven’t even read half of them yet) but this is one of my favourites so far. It’s probably not what most people would consider a typical Heyer novel, being more of a mystery than a romance, but I think that’s one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much. I didn’t find the mystery particularly difficult to solve (there were really only two or three people who could have had a motive for wanting St Erth dead) and I guessed the culprit quite early in the book, but this didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story as there was still a chance that I could have been wrong! I think this would be a good book to re-read as I’m sure there must have been lots of little clues that I missed.

The romantic element may not be as strong in this book as in some of Heyer’s others but it is still there and I actually thought it was all the more convincing for being slow, subtle and understated. In fact, it’s so slow, subtle and understated that even the hero and heroine don’t acknowledge their love for each other until near the end of the book, although it was obvious to me that they were perfectly suited. She is my favourite type of heroine – intelligent, sensible and practical – and the only problem is that we don’t see enough of her as she tends to stay in the background throughout most of the novel. This is in contrast to the other main female character, a lively, pretty girl who has every man from miles around fighting over her (sometimes literally).

While I’m on the subject of female characters, I should also mention St Erth’s stepmother, the Dowager Countess, who could almost have come straight from the pages of a Jane Austen novel! As for the men, the Earl himself is another great character: with his calm, softly-spoken manner and slim build, fair hair and love of fashion he may at first appear to be ‘nothing but a curst dandy’ as Martin describes him, but his family soon discover that appearances can be deceptive and that there is much more to Gervase than meets the eye.

I loved the setting too. Most of the action takes place within Stanyon Castle (a mansion complete with ‘Great Halls, Minstrels’ Galleries, Armouries, Towers and Moats’) and in the surrounding Lincolnshire countryside – which proves to be a very dangerous place for the Earl! The setting, together with the air of mystery, is what made this book feel slightly different from most of the other Heyers I’ve read (I thought there were some similarities with Cousin Kate, though that one is more gothic). However, there are still all the other elements you would expect to find in one of her Regency novels: balls, horses and carriages, fencing, men with snuff boxes and quizzing glasses, women dressed in satin and lace – as well as the usual humour and witty dialogue.

Now I’m wondering which of Heyer’s novels I should read next. I still have so many to choose from it can sometimes feel overwhelming!

Mary of Carisbrooke by Margaret Campbell Barnes

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Mary of Carisbrooke Margaret Campbell Barnes is an author I’ve been curious about for a while, since some of her historical fiction novels started appearing in my recommendations on Goodreads. Not really knowing anything about the author or her books, I chose Mary of Carisbrooke (originally published in 1956) because most of her others are set in the Tudor period and I wanted something a bit different, having read a lot of Tudor novels recently. This book is set in the 1640s at the end of the English Civil War, which is a period I’ve read about less often.

The ‘Mary’ of the title is seventeen-year-old Mary Floyd, whose father is a sergeant in the military garrison stationed at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. Over on the mainland, the Civil War is coming to an end, having resulted in victory for Oliver Cromwell and his Parliamentarians; for the islanders, separated from the rest of England by several miles of water, the drama is just beginning. The defeated King Charles I has fled to the island to take refuge in Carisbrooke Castle, hoping that the Governor, Robert Hammond, will be sympathetic. Unfortunately, Hammond feels it is his duty to inform Parliament and so the King finds himself a prisoner in the castle.

Many of the people in and around the castle, including Mary Floyd, still have Royalist sympathies and the rest of the novel follows their numerous attempts to help the King escape from Carisbrooke. If you know your English history you will know whether or not he does escape and what his eventual fate will be, but even if you do think you know how the story ends Barnes still manages to create some suspense and has us hoping that the islanders’ latest scheme will be a success!

I watched a BBC documentary, Castles, a while ago and remember a mention of Carisbrooke and one particular escape attempt involving a barred window; I kept waiting for this incident to appear in the book, which it does, but it is only one small episode. The King and his supporters have lots of other plans in store, and through the character of Mary, conveniently placed within the castle walls, we are right at the heart of the action as preparations are made, secret messages are sent and letters are smuggled in and out.

And yet, despite all the secrecy and intrigue, I found Mary of Carisbrooke quite a boring book. Mary is a likeable enough character, but a bit too good to be true – too nice, too generous, too kind, too courageous, and lacking the flaws and complexity I prefer my heroines to have. There’s a romantic subplot for Mary, as she becomes involved with two of the King’s men who have joined him on the island, but again, there was a lack of passion here. I did love the sections of the novel told from the King’s perspective and wished there had been more of these! His character is written very well, making him not just a King but also a father and a husband wanting to be reunited with his family, a human being we can identify with and understand.

It’s rare to find a book set on the Isle of Wight so I enjoyed that aspect of the story. It was interesting to see how the islanders felt about being suddenly thrust into the middle of the action after being used to feeling distant and removed from what was going on over in mainland England. However, I did wish that the author had spent more time setting up the story and explaining the background. I felt that we were introduced to a lot of characters all at once and I struggled to keep track of who they all were and which side they were on – which wasn’t helped by the fact that some of them seemed to have divided or ambiguous loyalties.

I would be happy to try another of Margaret Campbell Barnes’ books, but I’m not desperate to do so. I’m curious to know whether all of her books would leave me feeling the same way or if I’ve just picked the wrong one to start with.