Topic: Tudors

Set in 1601 at the end of the Tudor period, this story is written from two points of view to cover both Honesty’s and Alice’s perspectives, which gives the reader the added advantage of knowing what the other character does not.  The tension of the court and the danger for girls in that day and age is ever-present and the reader is completely immersed in Elizabethan life and can imagine it all, complete with smells and severed heads. In fact, it is that very detail that makes this book such an immersive read. You feel Honesty’s revulsion at the washing process, the biting cold, the contrast between rich and poor.

Whilst Queen Elizabeth I makes a brief appearance, this is not about royalty, but rather those nameless individuals who lived and died without recognition to keep the Court going and the ordinary people, who lived in grinding poverty which we cannot begin to imagine, right in the same building as the richest and most powerful people in the land.