Shirley Whiteside

Latest articles from Shirley Whiteside

Jane Harris's new novel is a gripping tale of colonial cruelty and slavery

FOR her third novel, Jane Harris takes an obscure true story and turns it into a gripping tale of colonial cruelty set in the Western Antilles in the late 18th century. Enthrallingly narrated by Lucien, a teenage slave, the story begins in Martinique and travels to Grenada where the British have instituted a particularly brutal regime for the enslaved. Harris has said she that visited Grenada during her research and the evidence of this is abundantly plain in the sense of place and time she evokes.

Ethyl Smith's Dark Times continues the engaging story of courageous Covenanter John Steel

DARK Times, the sequel to Ethyl Smith’s lively debut Changed Times, follows the fortunes of rebel John Steel after the Battle of Bothwell Brig, where the Covenanters were roundly defeated by government troops. The war between King Charles II, who wanted to impose a new liturgy throughout his kingdoms, and the Presbyterian Covenanters who resisted, is a bloody period in Scottish history.

Book review: Ken Follett plots a masterly tale of Tudor intrigue in A Column of Fire

IN 1989, The Pillars of the Earth, the first novel in Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge series, was a world-wide publishing sensation, selling some 26 million copies. World Without End, the sequel, was also a major best-seller. Twenty-eight years after the Kingsbridge story began, Follett has written the epic, third instalment, set during the Tudor era. Opening at Christmas 1558, A Column of Fire covers some fifty years of tumultuous history that changed the face of Europe. It includes crucial events, such as the accession of Elizabeth Tudor, the Spanish Armada, the St. Bartholomew Massacre, and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In particular, Follett examines the rise of Protestantism and the reaction of the dominant Roman Catholic church, determined not to lose its previously undisputed power over kings and commoners.