Historical
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Oh hai Uhtred. The Burning Land is the fifth in the Bernard Cornwall’s Saxon Chronicles. Regular readers will know I’m a fan and I enjoyed this one just as much as the others. Wessex is once again plagued by Danes and Alfred still relies on Uhtred to fight his battles for him. The leader of…
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The Fort is a rare standalone novel from Bernard Cornwell. It tells the story of an early engagement in the American War of Independence. On paper the battle should easily have been won by the Americans but it turned out to be a victory for the British. It is very closely based on fact and…
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The Shelters of Stone is the fifth in the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. I read the first book, The Clan of the Cave Bear, when I was eleven and I loved it. I read it many times and it remains one of my favourite books. I’d also read the other three, with…
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I love a big book – it’s very satisfying. There is a depth of immersion that just can’t be achieved in anything less than 500 pages. The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George is a big book at 960 pages and it is well worth the effort. The memoirs tell the story of the whole life of Cleopatra;…
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Book 4 in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories is Sword Song. Cornwell is one of my favourite authors and I am really enjoying the Saxon Stories. Uhtred is nowhere nearer Bebbanburg. He’s busy building forts to protect Wessex from the Danes and raising a family. Then some Danes invade London, try to convince Uhtred to join…
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This one raises an interesting question: is it ok to not like a book on this subject? The Auschwitz Violin by Maria Àngels Anglada, trans. Martha Tennent, is the story of a violin maker interned in Auschwitz who is ordered to make a violin for the camp Commander. He does this amid the starvation and…
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I was so looking forward to The Captive Queen by Alison Weir. Although I haven’t read any of her novels before, I have read several of her historical biographies. I think Alison Weir writes non-fiction really well and I especially enjoyed her biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. That book was one I found particularly influential…
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I try to read as widely as possible and sometimes that means reading things I don’t think I’m going to like. Things I don’t think I’m going to like include romance novels, especially Mills & Boon. However, there is something to be learnt from reading these books, namely ‘how to create emotional intensity through internal…
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There are some books that have been on Book Mountain for a very long time and Boudica, Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott is one of them. I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to get around to reading this, other than the fact that the copy I have is in hardback. Dreaming…
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Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser is the second in a series of books following Flashman, the bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays (which I never read). Naturally, I haven’t read the first in the series. Well, this is a pretty entertaining romp that doesn’t take itself seriously at any point. Actual history is tweaked to…
Boudica Marginalia 