24 Festive Tasks: Door 2 – Guy Fawkes Night, Book:
Read a book set in the UK, a political thriller, a book involving any monarchy or revolution, a book about arson or related to fires and burning, or a book that is self-published.
As my book for Guy Fawkes Night I’m claiming the one I finished this week, Paul Doherty’s “The Nightingale Gallery”.
It matches several of the prompts, in that it is not only set in the UK but also directly touches on the Plantagenet monarchy, its insecure position after the almost simultaneous deaths of Edward III and his eldest son and designated successor, Edward of Woodstock, the “Black Prince”, and the rumors of a power-grabbing coup by Edward III’s second son, John of Gaunt … who ended up contenting himself with the role of Regent for the boy king Richard II (the Black Prince’s son), but whose son Henry Bolingbroke would later actually end up deposing Richard II and rule as Henry IV, thus initiating the factionalism that would end up in the Wars of the Roses. (Doherty’s book is set right after the death of Edward III, but like much of the literature dealing with / set in that period, it’s impossible to read it with the later events in mind as well.)
