Katherine: The classic historical romance

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An expert at combining both character and narrative, she also had a well trained eye when it came to detail, knowing exactly what to look for in her stories. Katherine bore him many children and their affair caused scandal, hatred and unrest throughout the country. Winning numerous awards for her work, she was a huge success in her own lifetime, and continues to inspire new generations of readers to this day. And also, you just know, even before she admitted to it, that had Blanche not gone missing, Katherine would have carried on her relationship with John and not done penance at all.

Katherine - Anya Seton - Google Books

She quickly won the respect and affection of her employer, with whom she was to remain for eight years, proving herself pious, intelligent, capable and good with children. This is one of the great historical fiction romances of all time, and a wonderfully accurate portrayal of the Middle Ages.She’s beautiful, naïve, men fight over her, and she remains a passive inspiration to others, lacking in agency and interests outside of the romance. The course of their affair is charted to a degree by a series of grants in registers, although the registers are incomplete so they do not provide us with a full picture. My only quibble which is not going to make me lower my rating is having the book finish so soon after John and Katherine's marriage. For women in particular, living in a society dominated by the power of men, survival is itself is a triumph, surviving with a sense of self intact – as Katherine superbly does – is a great adventure, powerfully told.

Katherine by Anya Seton, First Edition - AbeBooks Katherine by Anya Seton, First Edition - AbeBooks

At number 95 in the BBC Top 100 it’s one that I had never previously heard of – indeed even my most bookish of friends reacted with a blank stare when I told them what I was reading. There she meets and falls in love with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of the king, himself also married.But whenever I come back to it, older and supposedly more sophisticated, its castles, knights and wolfhounds still work their magic, for all that I see, now, Seton’s tendency to breathlessness.