Author:Sharon Penman

TIME AND CHANCE, the second part of the trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, opens during the glory years of their reign.
While Henry redefined the role of medieval kingship, Eleanor gave birth to their children, founding a dynasty that would endure for 300 years. But even in these happy times, shadows were lurking. Battles on two borders. The disastrous appointment of Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury. And when Henry took lovely young Rosumund Clifford into his bed, little did he realise that in making an enemy of his proud, passionate queen he was making the gravest mistake of all ...
This is one to gobble up in a single sitting
—— CompanyHugely enjoyable
—— HeatA witty novel about love
—— BThe leading comic romantic novelist of her generation
—— GuardianWilliams has fashioned an always engaging, psychologically convincing work of fiction - a consistent and well-realized portrait
—— New YorkerA highly imaginative account of the life and times of Augustus-a brilliant novel
—— Library JournalA brilliant epistolary novel about Octavius Caesar and ancient Rome...all three [of John Williams'] novels show a similar narrative arc: a young man's initiation, vicious male rivalries, subtler tensions between men and women, fathers and daughters, and finally a bleak sense of disappointment, even futility.
—— New York TimesExquisite...brims with great lines
—— Chicago TribuneA vividly imagined re-creation of classical Rome, but its intuitive grasp of the experience of immense power makes it an unusual, and superior, novel
—— Boston GlobeThere could be no better year than 2014 to rediscover this one
—— Mary Beard , Times Literary Supplement






