Her novels are still very much to be enjoyed ... Any writer who can both educate and thrill a reader of any age deserves to be remembered and find new fans ... One only has to look at the TV/Media to see that the appetite for this kind of writing is still very much there

Madame Serpent is the best kind of historical novel - one into which we sink with pleasure and a feeling of undeserved education

Plaidy excels at blending history with romance and drama

Jean Plaidy, by the skilful blending of superb storytelling and meticulous attention to authenticity of detail and depth of charaterization has become one of the country's most widely read novelists

Full-blooded, dramatic, exciting

One of England's foremost historical novelists

This is at once an exciting and an intelligent novel

A colourful story colourfully told

Fondly and delicately pieces back together what the deconstructors put asunder

Displaying a playful exuberance wonderfully at odds with the dry, jargon-strewn tradition of academic criticism, this deft, slender volume analyses how novelists pull rabbits out of hats