Many moons ago, back at the dawn of time when I was 17/18 I spent a lot of time on a train between Cambridge and York. I read a lot of books and having no money I utilised the library. For some reason, of all those books I must have read, only this sticks in my head.

I remember getting it off the library shelf, purely because Reynardine is the name of an old English ballad, as most famously interpreted by Fairport Convention. I also remember loving it so when I came across it on www.readitswapit.co.uk I had to have it!

Typical historical romance, involving revenge, plotting, kidnap and highwaymen in Jacobean England. The author has taken an actual historical event (the murder in the Tower of Thomas Overbury by Frances Howard and Robert Kerr) and turned it into a rather gripping, rather sexy and very well researched novel, set in London, Calais and the Cambridgeshire Fens (as bleak then as they are now).

Enjoyed it as much at 32 as I did at 17. Love it when something you think is probably trash actually lives up the memory you have of it. ( )