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The Book of Days

Author Francesca Kay
Publisher Swift Press £16.99
Format hbk
ISBN 9781800753495

This beautifully written novel serves as a history of the Tudor Reformation spanning the critical years of 1546 and 1547, the death of Henry VIII and the new regime of Edward VI, which introduced stern Protestant legislation to eliminate popish idolatry. The setting is a west country village where the dying squire, symbolising perhaps the demise of Catholic England, has commissioned a chantry chapel and a marble family tomb. The enterprise is doomed, for the villagers, stirred by an itinerant preacher, are beginning to forsake the old ways. The aged priest, Sir Joselin, and the new chantry priest, William, faithful traditional Catholics, yet also pastoral servants exemplifying the love of God, become victims as the Bishop’s commissioners enter the village, intent on destruction of idols, glass and relics. Francesca Kay’s novel provides a superb, erudite portrait of Tudor religious life, especially from the Catholic perspective. It is an absorbing and truly helpful historical picture – an entertaining alternative to the academic descriptions we find in the textbooks of Eamon Duffy (e.g. The Stripping of the Altars). Highly recommended.

Reviewed by KATE BURTON

Novel

 

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