Beautifully written. Every time I pick this book up I am taken up and drawn in...... I wish I had read it in less anxious environmental and political times when I would have loved this historical fiction set during the time of Henry VIII. However I'm having trouble reading fiction at all at the moment. So at the moment I am oversensitive and I keep getting pulled up by John Buchan's nonsensical notions. The book description has the quote 'under the blanket of the dark all men are alike and all are nameless' - but actually they are not alike - the blood of some of them comes from 'noble' lines (of violence, greed and butchery[ed]) and in Buchan's head that matters.

Set in the period of Henry VIII and Cromwell, the hero Peter Pentecost hopes that uprisings in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire will overthrow the ruler, and that he himself will gain the throne.

1939 printing. 1949 printing ( )