I have given it my best shot, but it is just too long. I’m talking about Sharon Penman’s book ‘The Sunne in Splendour’. I don’t know whether it is the subject matter ie ‘The War of the Roses’, or whether it’s that I just don’t like the narrative. I have read two of her other books, which were really good. ‘When Jesus and all His Saints Slept’, which was about the titanic struggle for power between Stephen and Maud/Mildred, I thought was superb. Then read ‘The Queens Man’. That was about a spy in the pay of the old queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, which was just as good.

So what to read now ? I have a couple of Cadfael  books, a whole fantasy trilogy by Robin Hobb, a Ken Follett novel about the plague and a biography by someone I’ve never heard of. I’ve also still to finish Gone With The Wind and The Name of The Rose (again). There is also a Hugh Cornwell about Stonehenge. I don’t know, I may give the biog a crack. Change and rest kind of thing.