Helpful Score: 1
A historical set at the height of Queen Elizabeth I's reign, this is a novel that manages to be both intelligent and romantic. The behavior, speech and setting are right on target---no anachronisms here! The main characters are both appealing and flawed, so there is a real feeling that you are reading about real people. Even though this book forty three years old (!!!) there's no sense of being dated. Sheila Bishop is a particularly lucid and sensitive writer who obviously did a lot of research on the period in which she sets her book, but she doesn't bog things down with too much detail and her characters always are front and foremost. (And I know I am not supposed to mention condition of the book, but I will comment that I boast far more aches and pains and wrinkles than this book, which is five years younger!)
