Tag: historical fiction

The paper is stiff and brittle with age as Kate unfolds it with trembling hands. She gasps at the pencil sketch of a rippling waterway, lined by tall buildings, curving towards the dome of a cathedral. She feels a connection deep in her heart. Venice.

England, 1941. When Kate Arden discovers a secret stash of drawings hidden in the pages of an old volume of poetry given to her as a baby, her breath catches. All her life, she has felt like an outsider in her aristocratic adoptive family, who refuse to answer any questions about her past. But the drawings spark a forgotten memory: a long journey by boat… warm arms that held her tight, and then let go.
Could these pictures unlock the secret of who she is? Why her mother left her?

With war raging around the continent, she will brave everything to find out…

A gripping, emotional historical novel of love and art that will captivate fans of The Venice Sketchbook, The Woman on the Bridge and The Nightingale.

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Juliet Greenwood is a historical novelist published by Storm Publishing. Her previous novel, The Last Train from Paris, was published to rave reviews and reached the top 100 kindle chart in the USA. She has long been inspired by the histories of the women in her family, and in particular with how strong-minded and independent women have overcome the limitations imposed on them by the
constraints of their time, and the way generations of women hold families and communities together in times of crisis, including during WW2.

After graduating in English from Lancaster University and Kings College, London, Juliet worked on a variety of jobs to support her ambition to be a full-time writer. These ranged from running a craft
stall at Covent Garden to running a small charity working with disadvantaged children, and collecting oral histories of traditional villages before they are lost forever. She finally achieved her dream of
becoming a published author following a debilitating viral illness, with her first novel being a finalist for The People’s Book Prize and her first two novels reaching #4 and #5 in the UK Kindle store.

Juliet now lives in a traditional quarryman’s cottage in Snowdonia, North Wales, set between the mountains and the sea, with an overgrown garden (good for insects!) and a surprisingly successful
grapevine. She can be found dog walking in all weathers working on the plot for her next novel, camera to hand.

Storm (publisher)

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Giveaway to Win 3 x Signed copies of The Secret Daughter of Venice (Open to UK Only)

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My thoughts: I’m not a huge fan of WW2 set fiction but this is more about Kate Arden’s family secrets and her attempts to pair her memories and the images she finds hidden in a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets with her reality. She’s always felt like a bit of an outsider in her family – the people she calls Mama and Papa aren’t actually her biological parents.

As war rages across Europe, Kate is sent to Cornwall with a group of refugees. They’re housed in a big house outside of St Ives, formerly an artists retreat. It’s there she finds another link to her own past. The path will lead her to Italy, to Sorrento and Venice, and to the truth about her parents.

In Venice, Sofia is regretting returning to her home city, Italy is under the sway of Il Duce – Mussolini, and then the Nazis, but it is her personal history that’s taking a toll on her. In amongst her mother’s papers she finds documents that cast a new light on what happened to her and to her daughter years before.

As the two women’s stories weave together, a terrible wrong is about to be righted, a family will be reunited and old wounds will be healed. Moving and fascinating, this was a good and interesting read. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

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A DESTINY REWRITTEN. A ROYAL HEART DIVIDED.

Adored only child of Henry VIII and his Queen, Katherine of Aragon, Princess Mary is raised in the golden splendour of her father’s court. But the King wants a son and heir.

With her parents’ marriage, and England, in crisis, Mary’s perfect world begins to fall apart. Exiled from the court and her beloved mother, she seeks solace in her faith, praying for her father to bring her home. But when the King does promise to restore her to favour, his love comes with a condition.

The choice Mary faces will haunt her for years to come – in her allegiances, her marriage and her own fight for the crown. Can she become the queen she was born to be?

MARY I. HER STORY.

Alison Weir’s new Tudor novel is the tale, full of drama and tragedy, of how a princess with such promise, loved by all who knew her, became the infamous Bloody Mary.

Alison Weir is a bestselling historical novelist of Tudor fiction, and the leading female historian in the United Kingdom. She has published more than thirty books, including many leading works of non-fiction, and has sold over three million copies worldwide.

Her novels include the Tudor Rose trilogy, which spans three generations of history’s most iconic family – the Tudors, and the highly acclaimed Six Tudor Queens series about the wives of Henry VIII, all of which were Sunday Times bestsellers.

Alison is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an honorary life patron of Historic Royal Palaces.

alisonweir.org.uk – @AlisonWeirBooks

BLOODY MARY?

Alison Weir’s personal take on Mary I.

When Headline commissioned my Tudor Rose trilogy of novels, I was gripped by the prospect of writing  the final book in the trilogy, Mary I: Queen of Sorrows. I had already covered her reign in my non-fiction  work Children of England: The Heirs of Henry VIII, which was published in 1996 and focused on Henry’s  three successors, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, and his niece, Lady Jane Grey. Having undertaken extensive research, I was very familiar with Mary’s story and her later notoriety as ‘Bloody Mary’.
But there was a personal reason for my enthusiasm too. I have enormous sympathy for Mary as the child of a broken marriage and, later, a woman fighting for the right to practise her religion. She was eleven when her parents’ marriage started to fall apart; I was eleven when mine split up. In each case, there was another woman involved, whom I loathed as much as Mary loathed Anne Boleyn. In each case, the break-up was  complicated and painfully drawn out. My father did not spare me the emotional traumas from which he should have protected me, and the same could be said of Henry VIII’s treatment of Mary. My mother was as staunchly loving and supportive of me as Katherine of Aragon was of Mary. Like Katherine, she was threatened with prison if she defied my father. I understand Mary’s nervous reactions, for I reacted in a
similar way, having suffered life-long anxiety as a consequence of what my father did, and I too frequently hark back to the safe, happy world of my childhood, which seems like a golden age in retrospect, as Mary’s must have done to her.
My own experiences therefore inform this book. I am well placed to understand how the ‘Great Matter’  of the ‘Divorce’ impacted on Mary. I would not now define myself as a victim, but that was nevertheless what I was – and what Mary was. And both of us, I feel, eventually rose above it.
Since I published Children of England, much new research has been done on Mary, and new biographies  have been published, focusing on her achievements. In recent years, I have become aware that there has been a concerted attempt to rehabilitate her reputation. Yet when I came to write this novel, and revisited
my own research, I found that I could not entirely support this new view. Yes, it is important to credit Mary for her achievements, the greatest of which was her successful taking of the throne that was rightfully hers. No one could doubt her courage or her presence of mind. Against tremendous odds, she overcame
an attempt to replace her with her cousin, Lady Jane Grey, and emerged triumphant, to a roar of popular acclaim.
But there, with her accession, my sympathy for Mary begins to evaporate. As a novelist, it was a challenge to make her a wholly sympathetic heroine, because I find it impossible to see her that way. I have tried to look at things from her point of view, but I cannot go against what the historical evidence is telling me – and
this book is based closely on the historical record. And so this novel offers what I hope is a balanced – if controversial – portrayal.

My thoughts: I found this to be quite a balanced view of Mary I, from her turbulent childhood and all it’s worries, over succession and legitimacy, being shunted from Royal residence to Royal residence, having the people she cared for removed and given new servants depending on the whim of the King and whichever Queen he had at the time. Being separated from her mother for long periods of time, her complicated relationships with her siblings and stepmothers.

Then when she does take the throne, the repressive nature of her reign. The terrible religious persecution of those years, the political upheaval and throughout, her terrible health problems. She married late in life and her inability to produce an heir weighed heavily on her. Her insistence that England should return to Rome caused endless problems that she refused to allow her council to temper.

Alison Weir is a writer I really like, her novels are always well researched and written, she makes even the most unpleasant members of the court interesting, I think Henry VIII was a monster, but she gives us his daughter’ loving but bewildered view of him here, she cannot understand his behaviour towards her mother, Katherine of Aragon, or herself, when he declares her illegitimate.

Mary is not the most likeable monarch and history has not portrayed her well, but I can empathise with her health worries and loneliness, if not her intolerance and rigidity. Her marriage isn’t a good one, and the weight of expectation on her was somewhat cruel, although her life was one of extreme privilege.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.