Reviews are always a joy to receive.
22nd April 2026 by | Uncategorized
Reviews are always a joy to receive. They lift you on the days when you are writing, searching for the right words for the next chapter.
Here is a shortened review I received this week — a welcome boost to the spirits:
In this short but powerful piece, you have created the most wonderful ambience and atmosphere. Your prose is beautiful and poetic, and the storytelling remarkable. Once again, the immersion into the time period is immediate and absolute, allowing the reader to become engrossed in the created world. The reader is not so much reading about it as entering into a relationship with you, the author, and your characters, who reach out from the pages to draw them in. Some we have met before (how lovely to encounter the delightful Rafe again!) but most are new and yet engaging from the start. Cromwell’s complexity is evident from just a few lines. His dilemma between his compassion for Katherine and serving his master Henry keenly drawn. Poor Katherine. What a miserable and undeserved fate for such a woman. What cruelty she endured to be denied her child and how sensitively you portrayed her end. Your dialogue shows great insight and is sensitively and intelligently written. It is highly believable and conveys so much more than is explicitly said. It contains so much empathy and character history without labouring. It has a lightness of touch that is very moving in its effectiveness and gripping to read. The reader is able to understand the characters and their motivation and become part of the story.
Your writing style, in some respects, reminds me of oriental art (which I also love), where just a few lines are sketched yet an entire picture is portrayed. It’s an incredible talent to be able to do that.
The Reflection in the Mirror
The Wolf of Whitehall
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GWD8P3VC