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  I nearly didn't read this, as the first few pages seemed heavy, and I didn't feel in the mood for a book about a lonely old man who seems to have had enough of life.  I would certainly have read something else if I had another fiction book to hand, but I didn't, so I was almost forced to give it a go as I don't like to go a day without reading. As it turned out, it was heavy, and as with so many novels set in Ireland, there were plenty of instances of harm caused by the Catholic church that were covered up and ignored until people simply accepted that it was part of their lives.  Sometimes I wonder why the Catholic church was not drummed out of Ireland years ago after all the revelations of abuse that have come to light in recent years.  The institutions such as orphanages and laundries must have affected almost every member of the population in some form or another, and yet no one felt they had the power to stop it. Physical and sexual abuse of vulnerable chi...

  When I started reading the first book in this trilogy, Wolf Hall, I was a little nervous of Hilary Mantel and I wasn't sure that I was up to the task, but now I am a convert and I can't wait to get on to the third and last book. Set in the time of Henry VIII, this book covers the period of Henry's second marriage to Anne Boleyn as seen from the perspective of Oliver Cromwell.  Cromwell is getting older and he has become Master Secretary and the King's go-to man whenever there is anything difficult to be done.  Cromwell played a key role in fulfilling Henry's wish to have his first marriage annulled, and when Anne Boleyn failed to provide the much anticipated male heir, Cromwell is again asked to get Henry free from his marriage.  When the King divorced Katherine, his first wife, she was allowed to go and live out her years in relative obscurity, as she was not accused of any personal wrongdoing, but it is very different for Anne.  She is accused of adultary, i...

  Oh dear, I should never have read this straight off the back of Wolf Hall.  This book is such nonsense in comparison that I may not even have finished it if I had anything else to read. The writing is not so bad but the whole concept of using the  Brontë sisters as amateur detectives is a real stretch of the imagination that I felt exasperated with it right from the start.  In her defence, the author admits there is no evidence to suggest that the sisters did any such thing, but on the other hand, there is no evidence to say that they didn't. The mystery the dear sisters have to solve is the apparent bloody murder of a young bride in a neighbouring village.  Even though they have no right to get involved at all, they dash off to visit the house and insist on having a good snoop around to look for clues.  Over the course of the story, they lie to their father in order to get out of the house for days at a time and then help themselves to whatever private p...

  I have seen this book on numerous occasions when I have been in the library, but I have always passed on by and left it sitting on the shelf.  I was partly put off by the sheer size of it, but I also had a sneaking feeling that I would find it a little too high-brow for me and would struggle to get to the end. Maybe it was because I have recently had a run of historical novels, or maybe all the focus on King Charles' coronation has put me in the right frame of mind, but three weeks ago I finally found the courage to take it home.   It wasn't as difficult to read as I thought it might be, and I was very much helped by the list of characters thoughtfully provided at the start of the book.  There are a lot of people to get to grips with but Mantel is careful to jog the readers memory if someone suddenly crops up again after a gap of several hundred pages.  The book runs to exactly 650 sides of small print, so it is a bit of a project, but the research is so ...

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...

  This is a lovely book, and because of its length, it's the sort of book that becomes a companion for a few days and allows the reader to gently drift away to another world. It's the same trope as the film Titanic, in that it begins with a very old lady who finds herself transported back to her youth after others start taking an interest in a time in her history that still holds some secrets.   It begins as the Queen Victoria dies and young teen, Grace Bradley, is sent by her mother to work in service for the wealthy owners of the Riverton estate.  If you like stories set in the era of the film Gosford Park or the series Downton Abbey, then this will be right up your street.  The writing fully evokes the social structure of the Edwardian era and the key characters span every rung of the ladder from the landed gentry right down to poor Katie the scullery maid. Grace starts her employment as a general maid and has to learn everything from how to set a fire to hel...