Description

‘At least that post-Reformation sovereignty of the word still yields novels as richly imagined and skilfully crafted as this’ The Spectator

Longlisted for the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Longlisted in the 2024 HWA Crown Awards

ANNO DOMINI 1546.

In a manor house in England a young woman feels the walls are closing around her, while her dying husband is obsessed by his vision of a chapel where prayers will be said for his immortal soul. As the days go by and the chapel takes shape, the outside world starts to intrude. But as the old ways are replaced by the new, the people of the village sense a dangerous freedom …

Reader Reviews

‘A must read … Characters that one cares about, beautifully structured, a real page turner’

‘A jewel of a book’

‘Beautifully written’

‘Atmospheric and compelling’

Publisher Review

‘A welcome throwback to the literate, witty style of such novelists as William Golding and Iris Murdoch … Kay again proves herself an able chronicler of frustrated wishes and flaring passions’ – Observer ‘At least that post-Reformation sovereignty of the word still yields novels as richly imagined and skilfully crafted as this’ – The Spectator ‘Beautifully written and precisely observed’ – Sunday Times ‘Absorbing … This is historical fiction that is personal, not panoramic: intimate, hushed and spare’ – Mail on Sunday ‘This is a beautifully written and multi-faceted novel’ – Historical Review ‘This sublime book transports us to Tudor England, and the mind of a gentlewoman – her loves, her losses, her days. To read it is to meditate on an age we have lost. It is a masterpiece’ – Suzannah Lipscomb ‘A beautifully written novel set in the turbulent final months of Henry VIII’s reign’ – Katherine Harvey, Engelsberg Ideas Books of the Year