We’re not quite sure how this novel made it onto our shelves; it won the Whitbread Prize in 1999 and is set largely in the royal court of Denmark in 1629 and 1630, where a young English musician falls in love with one of the king’s estranged wife’s maidservants. There’s a lot of long lingering flashback to the earlier lives of the lovers, their respective bosses, and extended families; from my own interest, there’s a child with an Asperger’s-ish disorder; but I wasn’t quite sure what it all amounted to. Still, it was a picturesque ride.
From the Heart of Europe
Books, politics, languages and life
Joyce was one of my Supervisor’s previous D.Phil. students. Although she has made her academic career Egyptology, her DPhil was actually on the Lower Palaolithic of Britain, specifically the Wolvercote Channel handaxes from north Oxford. I believe when she left Oxford she went off to become an accountant and all the Egyptology stuff was a bit of a hobby which has rather taken off. It’s a funny old world.