Chichester-based number-one best-selling novelist Kate Mosse is offering a special one-off event in Chichester Cathedral as part of the Festival of Chichester.
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Open Book
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The City of Tears review – Kate Mosse s compelling 16th-century French epic Stephanie Merritt
Exile and emigration are perennial themes in literature, especially historical fiction, but it’s noticeable, reading the second volume of Kate Mosse’s
Burning Chambers trilogy about the Huguenot diaspora, how timely a story of refugees seems at this moment in Europe’s history and how sharply the parallels stand out.
The City of Tears opens, as did its predecessor,
The Burning Chambers, with a prologue set in 19th-century South Africa, a foreshadowing of where this epic story of war and displacement will end up, before the narrative returns to 16th-century France, 10 years after the end of the previous book. Minou Joubert and Piet Reydon are living in relative peace in their castle in south-west France, their own family and estates an example of how Catholics and Protestants can amicably coexist. It’s an experiment soon to be imposed on the whole country, as
By Francis Quinn (S&S £14.99, 384 pp)
‘You’re small on the outside. But, inside, you’re as big as everyone else. You show people that and you won’t go far wrong in life.’
It’s a maternal mantra which 18in high Nat Davy takes to heart as he attempts to survive in the tumultuous court of Charles I, where a dithering King and a homesick Queen (Henrietta Maria of France) are unable to prevent civil war.
As religious factions plunge the country into routs and regicide, Nat’s life plots an equally turbulent course. Sold by his father to the manipulative Duke of Buckingham, baked into a decorative pie as a gift to Henrietta Maria, the brave young man is bullied, falls in love and gallantly faces up to his own short-comings while becoming the most loyal of friends to the despondent, deposed Queen. Full of vim and vigour, this is winningly warm-hearted.