The gorgeous cover is fitting for such lyrical writing. There were plenty of places where the stories made me smile, they were so well observed.
The author’s knowledge of post-Roman Britain and the superstitious Anglo-Saxon culture that followed shone through and it is little surprise to discover that Watson studied Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon) at university. He says that as far as possible, he excluded all Norman French vocabulary from the Anglo-Saxon parts of Time After Time because the Norman Conquest was still more than four hundred years away. Despite this, the language and imagery are utterly transporting, and I found myself dawdling over many sections.
As well as the Anglo-Saxon storyteller, Watson also beautifully captures the character of the East Anglian boy in Napoleonic times on his first solo walk to Saffron Walden market in a frightening quest to buy Banbury Books. While the delightful mute girl in the contemporary narrative thread makes the heart cry out. Read, and find out how Roman mosaics link all three characters.
A young Anglo-Saxon woman is travelling across an empty East Anglian landscape. She's dressed as a man, for safety. But when her only companion is murdered, she knows she faces discovery, and almost certainly much worse.
In the Napoleonic period, a little boy has to walk several miles to market, on his own, for the first time.
In the present day, a mixed-race teenage girl - along with her best friend Rob - faces the difficulties of extreme shyness and mutism.
There is another presence too. Professor Molly Barnes - an archaeologist in her eighties - unwittingly presides over the…
This is a beautiful, thoughtful treasure of a book that effortlessly taught me so much about life in the first half of 20th-century England.
One unsettling image that stays with me is the fact that when men took leave from the trenches of the First World War, they arrived home unwashed and lousy in the one uniform they had been issued with. I wouldn’t necessarily have picked up an LGBT-labeled book but the sex scenes are few and subtly written: a natural part of the gentle narrative. And how shocking to realise that up until as late as 1967 in Britain, actively gay men were breaking the law and those who were caught faced grave consequences.
Reading this book gave me plenty of pause for thought about prejudice and poverty. This is a tender moving saga, and I shall seek out more from this wonderful author.
'A characteristically tender novel about a young man growing up in the shadow of one war and the whispers of the next' Observer
'A wonderful novel about relationships, particularly between a mother and son. A compelling read, beautifully crafted and sensitively written' Irish Examiner _______
Laura, a laundress, meets her young husband when they are both placed in service in Teignmouth in 1914. They have a baby, Charles, but his father returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that…
This well-researched and atmospheric story is powerful and engrossing. It is set in dangerous times: in 16th century Huntingdonshire.
Dawson cleverly slips in weird medieval vocabulary and snippets about herbal cures but without slowing the reading experience and the flow of the absorbing tale. I love language so this was a special delight, as was imagining a time where life was so very cheap and disease and death were constant neighbours, and one might well be fired up about going on a day out to see a witch burning.
'A literary page-turner . . . compulsive and thought-provoking' Paula Hawkins
A dazzling, shocking novel that speaks to our times, drawing on the 16th-century case of the witches of Warboys.
Alice Samuel might be old and sharp-tongued, but she's no fool. Visiting her new neighbours in her Fenland village, she suspects Squire Throckmorton's household is not as God-fearing as it seems and finds the children troubled. Yet when one of the daughters accuses her of witchcraft, Alice has no inkling of how quickly matters will escalate.
The Throckmortons' maid Martha, uncomfortably aware of strange goings-on in the household herself, is…
From the benignly sanitary perspective of Europe or North America, the rest of the world may look unfit for human habitation. Agreed, as soon as you leave the green and pleasant lands of home, the range and degree of potential health hazards rises. Fortunately, Jane spends her life helping travellers avoid anything from altitude sickness to gastric upsets of Montezumal proportions. This lavishly illustrated and comprehensive guide offers advice on what to do, rather than provide lists of long medical names. Treatment suggestions are given, but only where there is good scientific evidence that they are effective. Alternative remedies that work are mentioned, but untested remedies are not listed. This is not, though, a do-it-yourself doctor kit and it isn’t intended to replace a consultation with a doctor (if you can find one). The first aid guidance is of the kind needed in situations where secondary aid might be poor, distant or absent.
