HISTORICAL  – Jan 09, 2020

MISS AUSTEN

by Gill Hornby (Century £12.99, 416 pp)

‘Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was?’ asks the steadfast and unfashionably dutiful Cassandra Austen, as she looks back on her life and role as gatekeeper of the literary legacy of younger sister, Jane.

Austen aficionados have looked askance at Cassandra’s wilful destruction of her famous sibling’s letters, but here, in a tender and touching recreation of their relationship, the (imagined) correspondence is the key that unlocks the plot.

This details Cassandra’s long-ago love for her dead fiance, Tom Fowle, and her protection of witty, mercurial, depressive Jane. It also reveals the particular difficulties of being an unmarried woman in Regency England, short of money and options.

Hornby deftly describes the psychological toll that such uncertainty took on Jane, and movingly celebrates the fortitude of Cassandra, whose greatest love was her sister.

HITLER’S SECRETS

by Rory Clements (Zaffre £12.99, 432 pp)

This is the fourth outing for academic adventurer Tom Wilde, who leaves his cosy Cambridge college on a dangerous mission, where hidden agendas and double-crosses make for a twisty, tense thriller.

Tasked by the British Security Service, in cahoots with the U.S., to remove a secret ‘package’ from Berlin, Wilde hastily heads off with an alias and a vague plan. This is swiftly scuppered when he realises that the ‘package’ is a person, whose identity is of crucial importance to the Nazis — Hitler in particular.

Bormann, the Fuhrer’s right-hand man, sends evil Otto Kalt to violently ensure the secret is kept. Torture, murder and mayhem follow the affable Wilde as he encounters stock villains, indulges in some stilted stiff-upper-lip dialogue and attempts to outwit his enemies in this enjoyable slice of espionage.

THE LADY OF THE RAVENS

by Joanna Hickson (HarperCollins £14.99, 466 pp)

Joan Vaux, who is in the service of Queen consort Elizabeth of York, is a capable, self-possessed lady-in-waiting who keeps a watchful eye on the ravens at the Tower of London, whose flighty behaviour is superstitiously linked to the stability of the kingdom. The Wars of the Roses have ended and a tentative peace has been established, but the incipient Tudor world is still turbulent.

Hickson colourfully captures life at court, with vivid descriptions of feasts, festivities and fashion, and adds a dash of amour among the astute matrimonial alliances.

Joan, who is wary of marriage and motherhood, is awarded a rosy romance, but trouble is brewing as Prince Arthur, older brother of the future Henry VIII, marries Catherine of Aragon, in a somewhat abrupt ending to an otherwise engaging novel.