Have you read the Niccolo series? If you do, better not look right and left but read (that is what I do right now with these books, because there would be so many rabbit holes, I would be forever lost in them 😂).
I love the approach through food. I'm also fascinated by references to food in times past, whether in fiction or non-fiction. And you're reading the House of Niccolò! Love Dunnett's work. You've read the Lymond Chronicles?
Not yet, but I will read the Lymond saga too - I did not know Dunnett, never heard of her before this year, but I am now a dedicated fan! And I love your Versailles substack, very interesting. I learn so much about the society at court and France. It is also the perfect preparation for me for Simon's read along next year 'A place of greater safety' by Mantel, because you provide a profound at the pre- revolutionary society with the Versailles substack.
Too kind. I have A Place of Greater Safety on my shelf, but I'm only a few pages in. Maybe I'll wait and read along, too. If you're also reading my Saturday publication, A Childhood at Versailles, we're about to get into the author and her family's experience of the Revolution. Hair-raising times!
I'm struggling so much with Cromwell this week .... and I'm afraid it's not going to get any better over the next few weeks {hmmmphhh}.
Samphire (or sea fennel)! How interesting! I looked it up.... And immediately got an appetite for it! It is also found on the shores of the Mediterranean.... Maybe I'm so interested in it because that's where part of me comes from?
Might be because it is where you come from or it is because we have to eat to comfort us and therefore are interested in good food. Cromwell, what I can I say. It is over. We had some good times, Cremuel and I, there are sides I like, but I do not think that I get over these chapters for the rest of the year. This is truly ugly, what he is doing here.
It is ugly stuff indeed, and so painstakingly imagined by Mantel. I remember waiting for the second volume, then supposed to be the last, and being intrigued when word came that she had decided that this period needed a volume of its own: and how right she was! Cromwell is doing so many things here. His public task is carrying out the king’s orders. He seizes the chance to at last avenge Wolsey (is this also a sop to his conscience?). He is making it clear to anyone who somehow had not yet noticed it that he is a dangerous man: do not mess. Perhaps it’s risky to draw attention to himself in this respect so blatantly—after all he is surrounded by dangerous men looking for an excuse for violence. And then there’s what I am inclined to think is his basic motive. It’s her or him…. Anne or Cremuel. He is fighting for his life. If he fails he is as dead as she will be if he succeeds: which was not clear at the start of his enquiries, when we see him hoping that Henry will be content merely to put Anne away somewhere. Anne was probably as hostile to that as Henry, but she probably didn’t think for a moment that he would kill her, not until it was too late. Cromwell, of course, was there before her, and had laid the traps. Poor Mark Smeaton.
Good shout on Tommaso Portinari and Dorothy Dunnett! I love this slight overlap.
I knew you would as you are a fan of the series too. The nerd in me is very happy about this slight overlap 🤓
Yeeees! The Portinari connection, perfect! There’s TWO whole pages about Tommaso and the family in the DD Companion...
And I’ve just read that Dante’s Beatrice was also a Portinari. I didn’t know that.
🥳 It's great, isn't it! Something for us DD fans also in the book, Mantel really delivers! Oh, the DD Companion 😍
The House of Niccoló?? Firenze? Italy??? How interesting! My next rabbithole??? 🙈
Have you read the Niccolo series? If you do, better not look right and left but read (that is what I do right now with these books, because there would be so many rabbit holes, I would be forever lost in them 😂).
Dear Lord, I‘m lost! {disappears into the next rabbithole} Yeeeyyyyyy!!!
Don't complain later, that I did not warn you! 😂
I love the approach through food. I'm also fascinated by references to food in times past, whether in fiction or non-fiction. And you're reading the House of Niccolò! Love Dunnett's work. You've read the Lymond Chronicles?
Not yet, but I will read the Lymond saga too - I did not know Dunnett, never heard of her before this year, but I am now a dedicated fan! And I love your Versailles substack, very interesting. I learn so much about the society at court and France. It is also the perfect preparation for me for Simon's read along next year 'A place of greater safety' by Mantel, because you provide a profound at the pre- revolutionary society with the Versailles substack.
Too kind. I have A Place of Greater Safety on my shelf, but I'm only a few pages in. Maybe I'll wait and read along, too. If you're also reading my Saturday publication, A Childhood at Versailles, we're about to get into the author and her family's experience of the Revolution. Hair-raising times!
I'm struggling so much with Cromwell this week .... and I'm afraid it's not going to get any better over the next few weeks {hmmmphhh}.
Samphire (or sea fennel)! How interesting! I looked it up.... And immediately got an appetite for it! It is also found on the shores of the Mediterranean.... Maybe I'm so interested in it because that's where part of me comes from?
Might be because it is where you come from or it is because we have to eat to comfort us and therefore are interested in good food. Cromwell, what I can I say. It is over. We had some good times, Cremuel and I, there are sides I like, but I do not think that I get over these chapters for the rest of the year. This is truly ugly, what he is doing here.
It is ugly stuff indeed, and so painstakingly imagined by Mantel. I remember waiting for the second volume, then supposed to be the last, and being intrigued when word came that she had decided that this period needed a volume of its own: and how right she was! Cromwell is doing so many things here. His public task is carrying out the king’s orders. He seizes the chance to at last avenge Wolsey (is this also a sop to his conscience?). He is making it clear to anyone who somehow had not yet noticed it that he is a dangerous man: do not mess. Perhaps it’s risky to draw attention to himself in this respect so blatantly—after all he is surrounded by dangerous men looking for an excuse for violence. And then there’s what I am inclined to think is his basic motive. It’s her or him…. Anne or Cremuel. He is fighting for his life. If he fails he is as dead as she will be if he succeeds: which was not clear at the start of his enquiries, when we see him hoping that Henry will be content merely to put Anne away somewhere. Anne was probably as hostile to that as Henry, but she probably didn’t think for a moment that he would kill her, not until it was too late. Cromwell, of course, was there before her, and had laid the traps. Poor Mark Smeaton.