She adapted her novel A Respectable Trade, about the slave trade in England, into a four-part series for BBC television.

Katherine by Anya Seton Download - OceanofPDF [PDF] [EPUB] Katherine by Anya Seton Download - OceanofPDF

The book's end may seem like a fairytale when John and Katherine reconcile in middle age, but it is all true to history.

A detailed and rich novel, with the author showing a flair for the English language and a deep understanding of medieval English history. The duchess was today dazzling as the southern May, having dressed to please her husband's taste, in full magnificence of jewels and ermine. The main plot of this novel is supposed to be the relationship between John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, right?

Katherine by Anya Seton, First Edition - AbeBooks Katherine by Anya Seton, First Edition - AbeBooks

I like knowing that these people existed, that these events are part of the human record, that no one can know what these people actually thought or felt, but that this is one possible scenario that fits all the historical information. John saves Katherine from rape in a moment of kindness, but nothing can stop her marriage to the clumsy and sometimes brutal Sir Hugh Swynford. It is not an easy or pretty time that she invites the reader to experience: it is dirty, cold, and dangerous; and life is often brutish and cut short. Repress your snorts of outrage at some of Seton's more moistly written passages, overlook some of her wrong-headed guesses at what filled the spaces in Katherine's historical record, and this could be a decent read. Seton said that her greatest debt of all was to Miss Amy Flagg of Westoe Village in South Shields, her father's birthplace.Notable minor characters weave through the story - Geoffrey Chaucer, who was Katherine's brother-in-law, and the mystic Julian of Norwich. Katherine tells the true story of Katherine de Roet, born the daughter of a minor Flemish herald, later knight. I bought Katherine by Anya Seton a couple of years ago, way back when I first decided to read by way through the BBC Top 100. Marrying twice over the course of her life, Ann Seton was first married at 19 to Hamilton Cottier, himself a Rhodes scholar.