Changes

|title=John Saturnall's Feast

|author=Lawrence Norfolk

|reviewer=Madeline Wheatley

|borrow=Yes

|isbn=9781408805961

|pages=416

|publisher=Bloomsbury

|date=September 2012

|summary=An unusual historical novel set in the seventeenth century, following the fortunes of John Saturnall from persecuted orphan to Master Cook in a great manor house.

}}

John Saturnall’s mother is a healer and herbalist. It was all too easy in the 1620’s for women with her skills to come under suspicion of witchcraft. When John and his mother are hounded from their village by religious extremists the Lessoners, they hide in Buccla’s Wood. But as winter takes a grip on the land John’s mother dies. John is taken in to work in the kitchens at Buckland Manor. His progress from scullery boy to cook is graphically recorded alongside his prickly relationship with the daughter of the house, Lucretia. The story takes the couple through the years of the civil war, when life at Buckland comes under threat from the advancing Puritan army.

For further recently published historical fiction with bite try [[Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel]] or [[Merivel: A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain]]

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