Am grateful to James Heald for giving me this, the first of Dunnett’s fifteenth century series of thick dynastic novels, set in Western Europe between Bruges, Geneva and Italy. Twenty-five years ago or more I read Dunnett’s King Hereafter, about Macbeth (who she reckoned was also known as Thorfinn of Orkney) and greatly enjoyed it. Now I’m a bit older, I can appreciate the good points of Dunnett’s writing – she is great at the behind-the-scenes plot threads coming together, and very good, almost theatrical, at setting out a tableau of characters in action and conversation; I didn’t feel quite so confident in her sense of geography, climate or linguistics, but I enjoyed it enough that I will read the next book in due course and perhaps get onto the series as a whole. Slightly irritating that though the characters have many discussions about going to and from Louvain/Leuven, we never actually see them there – the Belgian locations are Bruges, Sluys and a field near Genappe.