![]() Seton, an American writing pre-Betty Friedan, doesn’t give Katherine the anachronistic feminist impulses so beloved of many current novelists – a relief to me. ![]() However, her sister, who is betrothed to Geoffrey Chaucer, is a lady-in-waiting to the queen, and as a result, Katherine marries Sir Hugh Swynford, a Lincolnshire knight only after his death do she and John, whose attention she first attracted at court, take up with one another, by which time her temples are streaked with white (“swan’s wings”, as John puts it). When we first meet her, this daughter of an obscure Flemish herald is straight from the convent, unformed and naive. Katherine, published in 1954 and never since out of print, tells the story of Katherine Swynford, the mistress and later the wife of John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III. Distracted, I began to draw up my own top five, a list which comprised, on that particular morning: The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, Regeneration by Pat Barker, Possession by AS Byatt, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and (would this be top?) Katherine by Anya Seton. ![]() ![]() What were their favourites? Wolf Hall was mentioned, of course, and so were books by Dorothy Dunnett and Mary Renault. O n Twitter recently, people were talking about historical novels, of which we have something of a glut right now. ![]()
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