I had given this First Doctor story a try once before, and thoroughly bounced off it, but for the sake of completeness I thought I should give it another go. It’s not quite as bad as I thought first time round – in particular, I retract the accusation that the book itself is anti-Catholic – but the number of historical and linguistic solecisms is still far too great for me to appreciate what I will admit is a reasonably well-constructed plot, with quite a nice twist at the end about Guy Fawkes. (Among other irritations: several characters reminisce about the King’s father, who had in reality been assassinated almost forty years earlier in another country; the Lord chamberlain of the day was actually the naval hero and aristocrat the Earl of Suffolk, not the buffoonish and anonymous bureaucrat here; and the portrayal of priests, monks and nuns is utterly anachronistic.) Readers less burdened with knowledge of the period than I am may well enjoy it more than I did.