This may not seem like an overly terrible thing, but if you lived your entire life with such a strong insecurity, and then to have that same insecurity picked on by your king, it's like being struck with an iron fist. Fantastic plots and sub plots intermingled with historical accuracies takes the listener on a fascinating and truly gripping adventure. Shardlake is good at standing back and observing which is great for the reader as the narrative is visual, at the same time exploring all the other senses. York was chosen as the end of the adventure because it was the place where a conspiracy against the king was recently discovered and crushed.

I think it would expand the world for the readers and give them a taste of other royal dynasties and what else was going on in the world during the time of the Tudor dynasty in England. Now in Sovereign, Shardlake faces the most terrifying threat in the age of Tudor England: imprisonment int he Tower of London. In the autumn of 1541 Henry VIII had set out on his spectacular royal progress to the north of England. Tamasin becomes a major character in this story, as do the women she works for who report to the Queen.He is the wise old man that heals everyone’s wounds and is a comforting counsel when someone needs his help. Meanwhile, Barak’s attraction to one of Queen Catherine’s servants means he and Shardlake are around the Queen’s retinue quite often, seeing things that Matthew finds deeply worrying. Sansom himself was "Very Highly Commended" in the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library award, for the Shardlake series.

Regardless, this is a superior series and the writing and plotting are top drawer and will make you see 16th century England when you close your eyes. Tras la caída de Thomas Cromwell el ímpetu de partido reformista se ha atenuado y corren las cabezas y las tripas tanto de papistas como de reformistas exaltados, sin embargo al rey se le presenta un problema interno importante y de difícil solución. From the internationally best-selling author Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris is an emotional and powerful journey through friendship and betrayal during the Second World War, inspired by true events. We find Shardlake trying to live a quiet life fighting legal cases with the help of his assistant Jack Barak.He has also written Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in Spain in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and Dominion, an alternate history novel set in a Britain following a fictional Axis victory in World War II. It centres around a conspiracy dating back to the days of Edward IV and Richard III and I found this element of the story interesting as it showed the extent to which information relating to the Plantagenets was suppressed and covered up by the Tudors. Soon Shardlake is sucked into a plot involving politics, the murky past of the Royal line, and the future of the Realm.

That’s the one downside of the audiobooks – they don’t include the explanation Sansom usually gives as an end note, clarifying what is real and what he’s invented. In this case, the King’s progress takes centre stage and we learn all about the massive organisation that went into it – not as an info dump, but naturally, as Shardlake himself learns about it. In this text the historical event the mystery is integrated into is Henry VIII’s Great Progress to York in 1541 and the subsequent downfall of Queen Catherine Howard.I reckon each one gets better than the one before – the most recent one was my book of the year last year. Yet the book is over 550 pages and you have to have a desire to be immersed in Tudor life or it isn’t worth the effort. Yes, lest this sound like only misery and torture, I must add that the story has plenty of intrigue, plots, suggested dalliances between the very young queen (18) and her former suitors, and some interesting personal developments between Shardlake, Barak, an elderly lawyer, and Tamasin, who thinks she’s the illegitimate daughter of a gentleman of importance. That is part of Shardlake’s role in York – to see that a noble prisoner is well-cared for and fit to be brought back to London for Henry’s inquisitors. With Barak busy being in love, under pressure from Maleverer and Rich, with several attempts on his life and humiliated by King Henry himself, this really makes you face the reality of the Tudor world.

I was in York for a few nights last year and recognise many of the landmarks encountered which is particularly engaging but they are all described so well that anyone will be able to visualise what Shardlake and Barak experience.The first revised edition of the Token Publishing Ltd imprint of Michael Marsh’s The Gold Sovereign was published in 2017 to coincide with the 200th anniversary year of the famous coin. With such a remarkable cast of characters, Sansom had to put them through extremely difficult obstacles to test their limits and to give his readers a breathtaking look into the Tudor world.