Sir Thomas More by Hals Holbein (Accessed via Wikipedia ) During lockdown, we had Time. Remember that? I was in my probationary year of teaching: almost certainly among the most exhausting years for any profession. All my time had been taken up with school work, and I regularly stayed at school until after 6pm, having arrived there at eight in the morning. Now, children, this is not sustainable and, very soon, I decided I didn’t like working where I was. Then I realised that I didn’t like teaching at all. But, in fact, neither was particularly true: I just needed to be true to myself and to say no, which would give me the ability to manage my work/life balance in a more appropriate way. What does this have to do with historical fiction, I hear you say? Well, during March 2020, we went into lockdown and suddenly I went from working ten-hour-days to ten-hour-weeks. I met up with my class on Google Meet, I put work up for them on a meticulously designed Google Classroom, but I just h...
Review I feel slightly bad writing this review because I googled the author, Reg Gadney, and discovered that he died in 2018. He seems to have been a very interesting person, who created many great things throughout a very creative and fruitful lifetime. Unfortunately, this book isn't one of those things. There are two things I really loved about it. The first is the blurb, which is shared at the end of this review. This is a book which sounds perfect for me, and I'm still looking forward to reading the story that I believed it would be. The second is the personal inscription which is in my copy. You see, someone who knows me really well also read the blurb and immediately thought of me! What could possibly go wrong?! It turns out that a book can look perfect for someone but still not be a good fit. But, honestly, this is just not a good book. There are one or two characters who threaten to be realistic but every single one of them maintains an ai...