Martyr

A colourful history lesson…leavened by exciting narrative twists - The Sunday Telegraph

The joy of this book is the way it interweaves commonly known history with the story. The atmosphere and attention to detail will commend this book to devotees of the period - Crimesquad

An engrossing thriller - Washington Post

Beautifully done … alive and tremendously engrossing - Daily Telegraph

Enjoyable, bloody and brutish - Guardian

An excellent debut - Publishers Weekly

Captivates and carries one along through the strength of its plot and its intelligent main character - Dallas Morning News

Sharp and challenging, this book is missed at one’s peril - Oxford Times

Author Rory Clements has had a long and successful newspaper career including being Features Editor and Associate Editor of Today, Editor of the Daily Mail’s Good Health Pages and, most recently, Editor of the health section at the Evening Standard. He is now writing full-time in an idyllic corner of Norfolk.

‘I have a healthy obsession with the 16th century,’ says Clements. ‘I love the world as it then was, the characters, the conspiracies and the extraordinary resolve of people who were willing to cast themselves adrift into uncharted oceans with no way of knowing whether they would ever return. I wanted to explore, too, the contrast between the barbarity of men like the licensed sadist Richard Topcliffe and the humanity of William Shakespeare, the glitter and glamour of Elizabeth’s court and the squalor of the streets. So different and yet so similar to the world we now inhabit with its religious tensions and great movements of people.’