'Historical fiction at its finest' @MargaretAtwood (Twitter)

It is 1535 and Agnes Peppin, daughter of a West-country butcher, has been banished, leaving her family home in disgrace to live out the rest of her life cloistered behind the walls of Shaftesbury Abbey.

While Agnes grapples with the complex rules and hierarchies of the sisterhood, King Henry VIII has proclaimed himself Head of the Church of England. Religious houses are being formally subjugated, monasteries dissolved, and the great Abbey is no exception to the purge.

Cast out with her sisters, Agnes is at last free to be the master of her own fate. But freedom comes at a price as she descends into a world she knows little about, using her wits and testing her moral convictions against her need to survive - by any means necessary...

The dark and beautifully crafted historical novel by an award-winning author

About the Author

Victoria Glendinning is a British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. Born in Sheffield and educated at Oxford where she studied modern languages, she later worked for The TLS. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was appointed a CBE in 1998, is the twice winner of the Whitbread Biography award and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. A regular contributor of articles and reviews to various UK newspapers and magazines, she is also the author of three widely acclaimed novels: The Grown-Ups, Electricity, and Flight.

Reviews

'Glendinning writes with a vivid immediacy about a fascinating, dark moment in our island story... a refreshing and original tale [about] the underside of Henry's religious Reformation' The Times

'Marvellous... heart-breaking and unforgettable... a by times humorous, by times tragic but always compelling picaresque tale' Irish Times

'A brave girl, a powerful tale, a world on the brink of change - and how the past leaps into life!' Fay Weldon

'An absolute pleasure... assured, quietly gripping, surprising and educative, with a terrific central character, it pins down the precarious nature of life in 16th-century England' Daily Mail

'A touching, vivid and sometimes deeply shocking depiction of the lives of ordinary people whose world was shattered by Henry VIII's policy to dissolve England's monasteries. A must for anyone interested in the Tudor period' Elizabeth Fremantle, author of Queen's Gambit (The Tudor Trilogy)

'A powerful and very immediate picture of another age. It is full of violence and loss, and yet it is also a testament to survival, courage, pity, and the eternal beauty to be found in small things' Anne Perry

'An immersive, engrossing, and epic journey of a woman's soul, finely researched and beautifully written' Margaret George, author of The Autobiography of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I

'I loved this book from the very first page, for the poised lyricism of the writing and for the fascination of the story. Agnes Peppin, the butcher's daughter, is an enchanting witness to turbulent times, and the cataclysmic events that shape her life become newly urgent and thrilling as seen through her eyes. This is a wonderful novel - sometimes tragic, sometimes redemptive, always thoughtful and wise' Margaret Leroy, author of The English Girl

'Chronicles the human cost of Henry's edict. Well written with wonderfully rendered descriptions of place and period and an evocative mix of fiction and fact... at once immediate and intimate... In a world ruled by men cowed before a fickle tyrant, Agnes's decisions are not only pragmatic but authentic to her time and place' New York Journal of Books

'As the butcher's daughter reflects on all she sees, Glendinning makes this tale exhilarating, lending Agnes a candid, eccentrically lyrical voice' Jean Zimmerman, New York Times

'A beguiling, affecting tale of dissolution and redemption set in a changing - and beautifully wrought - Tudor landscape. Gloriously authentic and refreshingly unromantic, this one got under my skin' Jessie Child, historian and award-winning author of Henry VIII's Last Victim and God's Traitors

Awards
Short-listed for Winston Graham Historical Fiction Prize 2018 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9780715652923
Author Victoria Glendinning
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Duckworth
Publisher Duckworth Books