The Butcher's Daughter

(Hardback)

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We are, all of us, princes and peasants, alone in this world. The Butcher 's Daughter is the richly atmospheric story of a young woman 's struggle to define herself in a world of uncertainty, intrigue and danger in a period of great upheaval during the Tudor era. It is 1535 and Agnes Peppin, daughter of a West Country butcher, leaves her family home in disgrace. Banished and forced to abandon her new-born infant, she is meant to live out her days cloistered behind the walls of the Shaftesbury Abbey. But as Agnes grapples with the complex rules and hierarchies of her new life, King Henry VIII has proclaimed himself the new head of the Church. Religious houses are being formally suppressed and the great Abbey is no exception to the purge. Free at last to be the master of her own fate, Agnes descends into a world she knows little about, using her wits and testing her moral convictions against her need to survive by any means necessary -

Reviews

Glendinning writes with a vivid immediacy about a fascinating, dark moment in our island story... a refreshing and original tale [about] the underside of Henrys religious ReformationThe Times

'Marvellous... heart-breaking and unforgettable...a by times humorous, by times tragic but always compelling picaresque tale'Irish Times

A brave girl, a powerful tale, a world on the brink of change and how the past leaps into life!Fay Weldon

An absolute pleasure... assured, quietly gripping, surprising and educative, with a terrific central character, it pins down the precarious nature of life in 16th-century EnglandDaily Mail

A touching, vivid and sometimes deeply shocking depiction of the lives of ordinary people whose world was shattered by Henry VIIIs policy to dissolve Englands monasteries. A must for anyone interested in the Tudor period'Elizabeth Fremantle, author of Queens Gambit (The Tudor Trilogy)

A powerful and very immediate picture of another age. It is full of violence and loss, and yet it is also a testament to survival, courage, pity, and the eternal beauty to be found in small thingsAnne Perry

An immersive, engrossing, and epic journey of a womans soul, finely researched and beautifully writtenMargaret George, author of The Autobiography of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I

I loved this book from the very first page, for the poised lyricism of the writing and for the fascination of the story. Agnes Peppin, the butchers daughter, is an enchanting witness to turbulent times, and the cataclysmic events that shape her life become newly urgent and thrilling as seen through her eyes. This is a wonderful novel sometimes tragic, sometimes redemptive, always thoughtful and wiseMargaret Leroy, author of The English Girl

Chronicles the human cost of Henrys edict. Well written with wonderfully rendered descriptions of place and period and an evocative mix of fiction and fact... at once immediate and intimate In a world ruled by men cowed before a fickle tyrant, Agness decisions are not only pragmatic but authentic to her time and placeNew York Journal of Books

'As the butchers daughter reflects on all she sees, Glendinning makes this tale exhilarating, lending Agnes a candid, eccentrically lyrical voice'Jean Zimmerman, New York Times

A beguiling, affecting tale of dissolution and redemption set in a changing and beautifully wrought Tudor landscape. Gloriously authentic and refreshingly unromantic, this one got under my skinJessie Child, historian and award-winning author of Henry VIIIs Last Victim and Gods Traitors

Author Bio

VICTORIA GLENDINNING is a British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. Born in Sheffield and educated at Oxford where she studied modern languages, she later worked for The TLS. She is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was appointed a CBE in 1998, is the twice winner of the Whitbread Biography award and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. A regular contributor of articles and reviews to various UK newspapers and magazines, she is also the author of three widely acclaimed novels: The Grown-Ups, Electricity, and Flight.