Castile for Isabella

Dec 27, 2025 6:46 PM

Author:Jean Plaidy

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The first book in the captivating Spanish Trilogy, focusing on the remarkable lives of Spain's most famous monarchs.

In the 15th Century, Spain is full of intrigue and threatened by civil war. The independent young princess Isabella has become the pawn of her ambitious, half-crazed mother, kept as a virtual prisoner at the sordid court of her half-brother, France's Henry IV.

Just sixteen years old, all seems lost: is Isabella fated to be the victim of the Queen's revenge, the Archbishop's ambition and the lust of Don Pedro Giron, one of the most notorious womanisers in Castile?

Numbed with grief and fear, Isabella holds onto one cherished hope: that one day, she will escape her tormentors and marry Ferdinand, the handsome young Prince of Aragon - her only true betrothed. But the forces of Europe are ranged against them, and love's triumphs are rare...

Reviews

It's hard to better Jean Plaidy

—— Daily Mirror

Superb storytelling and meticulous attention to authenticity of detail and depth of characterisation ... one of the country's most widely read novelists

—— Sunday Times

A real laugh-out-loud tale

—— OK! Magazine

The pace is fast and furious ... a real page-turner

—— Irish Tatler

Honest and funny

—— U Magazine

Lots of tears and even more laughs ... a confident debut

—— Irish Times

Funny - side-splittingly so, which is a difficult balance to strike considering the weight of the subject matter

—— Ireland on Sunday

Mix Bridget Jones with Charlotte from Sex and the City and you've got Emma, the charming heroine of The Baby Trail, and a funny, feisty guide through the realities and hilarities of twenty-first century baby-making. A terrific read ...

—— Jennifer Weiner

Morrison writes about endless sex without missing a beat, partly because his warm, witty, poignant novel is as much about 21st-century consumption as its is consummation

—— Metro

Seedy and undeniably erotic, this is the best book on sex since John Updike's Couples

—— Arena

As dirty a debut as Adam Thirlwell's brilliant Politics.... And just as funny and thought-provoking

—— Daily Sport

A daring, poetic, provocative, cleansing novel

—— De Volkskrant

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

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