publishing machine continues apace with yet another novel in The Other Boleyn Girl vein, except this one is set a century earlier during the even more eccentrically attired early Renaissance (the shoes were pointier and the codpieces larger).
Catherine de Valois is raised in the barking mad French royal family (her father thought himself made of glass) and is married off to the English King Henry V, an enemy of her country and a bit of a boorish hooligan. Alone and scared, she finds comfort in a lowly Welsh house underling caused Owain Tudor. However, rumour spreads and to save her son (the dim-witted future Henry VI) she must sacrifice her love (and Owain’s grandson Henry goes on to defeat Richard III and become Henry VII). An intelligent and escapist novel, and a cut above your standard bodice-buster. Ed West