The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory

As part of my duties to a book group that I'm helping out with but don't actually belong to I recently had to read The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory. I have to admit that the idea at first filled me with dread as everything about it "400+ pages of historical fiction set in Tudor times" screamed "this is not my cup of tea and I'm not going to like it and it's going to take forever to read and I'm not going to be able to talk about it without offending the group (6 elderly ladies that I'd never met before)!" However...

I actually thought it was great. Obviously if you know anything about Tudor England (I don't) you would expect this to be a novel that was full of politics, intrigue, plotting, sexual tension, love, murder, executions etc. It is full of all these things plus it cracks on at a great pace - it has very short chapters as the narrative keeps swapping between the 3 main characters - Mary, Queen of Scotts; Bess of Hardwick and her husband the George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and although even I knew how it was all going to end it still keeps you interested right up to the (bloody) end.

Of course I've no idea whether or not it's particularly historically accurate and I'm sure that probably matters to a lot of people (not me though) but it is fiction and from what the author says in the notes at the back it's pretty well researched and nobody is going to know exactly what happened so she is as likely to be right as anyone else from what I can tell.

All in all a big thumbs up for a book I really thought I'd hate. Just goes to show you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover! Boom Boom...

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