dittybox

Philippa Gregory is a knowledgeable historian who also happens to be an accomplished writer of historical fiction.  I don't know how many people have this skill but I'm guessing that not many people (apart from Hilary Mantel) could distill all the research into a really gripping novel. I learnt so much from this book, which is set in the 1600s in the time of Oliver Cromwell, and I must confess that there was a gaping black hole in my knowledge of history around this period.  The storyline covers the arrest and trial of King Charles I, but the main focus is on a little family who live in the tidelands around Sealsea on the South coast of England.  Alinor Reekie is a young mother whose husband has disappeared leaving her to fend for herself and try and take care of her two children in a tiny house perched on the edge of the river. The book is filled with detail of what it was like to live in constant hardship where people have to work themselves to the bone just to stay ali...

  I'm still enjoying my run of historical novels, and this time I have moved forward to the twentieth century and the period covering the Second World War.  The setting for the book is Bletchley Park which is famous for being the home of the code breakers who cracked the codes for the German Enigma machines.  Much has been written about Alan Turing and his team, but this book focuses on the work of the women who took on much of the laborious decryption and contributed so much to the success of the Allied Forces. It's quite a long book at 624 pages, but it's easy to read and it gives a good cross section of all the different social classes of the time.  The three main characters are Osla, a debutant whose Godfather is Louis Mountbatten; Mab, an intelligent young woman from the working classes who had to fight for her education and employment opportunities; and Beth, the landlady's daughter who lives in fear of her manipulating mother and has been convinced she will ne...