A novel about a young man in the household of the Earl of Ormond during the 1570s and 1580s, which takes our hero to the major scenes of Anglo-Irish history of the period. It's not a brilliant book – you know where the plot is going, and even major twists are signalled far in advance – but an interesting attempt to convey what life was like in Ireland at the time; a benchmark should my own efforts in that direction ever bear fruit.

However, I think I'm going to be too busy with other things in the next couple of years to work on my ancestor, so I'm putting my Tudor history project aside for a bit.