THE FOLIO SOCIETY
BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
The Daughter of Time
Josephine Tey
Your price US$44.95
Introduced by Alison Weir. Three-quarter-bound in buckram, printed with a design by Lucy Weller. Set in Bembo with Corvallis display.
'The tyrannous and bloody act is done,
The most arch deed of piteous massacre
That ever yet this land was guilty of' Richard III, IV.4
The murder of the boy princes in the Tower of London in 1483 is the most notorious crime in English royal history; the prime suspect, Richard III. By everyone, from early propagandists writing immediately after Richard's death to Shakespeare, the king was made a monster, 'cheated of feature by dissembling nature'.
Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is recuperating in hospital after an operation when he chances upon a portrait of Richard. Famed for his unerring ability to 'pick a face', Grant's experience has taught him the kind of countenance to expect of a criminal. He is unconvinced that the warm, noble, sensitive face looking back at him is that of the heartless usurper who through the hands of assassins smothered his nephews - 'the gentle babes' - and encased their bodies in the Tower's stone. Intrigued, Grant launches his own investigation, determined to prove Richard's innocence or guilt. Assisted and hindered in turns by his tyrannical nurses, a lovely, but frivolous actress and an American student who resembles a 'woolly lamb', Grant unearths a surprising quantity of evidence ...
Founded upon a tantalising premise - can 20th-century policing methods, not to mention a bedridden detective, solve a 500-year-old mystery? - this is one of Josephine Tey's most enduringly popular novels. It is not only the last Plantagenet King who is on trial. 'I'll never again believe anything I read in a history book', says Inspector Grant by the end. Truth may, according to an ancient Latin proverb, be the Daughter of Time, but the weight of history is hard to overturn.
The most arch deed of piteous massacre
That ever yet this land was guilty of' Richard III, IV.4
The murder of the boy princes in the Tower of London in 1483 is the most notorious crime in English royal history; the prime suspect, Richard III. By everyone, from early propagandists writing immediately after Richard's death to Shakespeare, the king was made a monster, 'cheated of feature by dissembling nature'.
Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is recuperating in hospital after an operation when he chances upon a portrait of Richard. Famed for his unerring ability to 'pick a face', Grant's experience has taught him the kind of countenance to expect of a criminal. He is unconvinced that the warm, noble, sensitive face looking back at him is that of the heartless usurper who through the hands of assassins smothered his nephews - 'the gentle babes' - and encased their bodies in the Tower's stone. Intrigued, Grant launches his own investigation, determined to prove Richard's innocence or guilt. Assisted and hindered in turns by his tyrannical nurses, a lovely, but frivolous actress and an American student who resembles a 'woolly lamb', Grant unearths a surprising quantity of evidence ...
Founded upon a tantalising premise - can 20th-century policing methods, not to mention a bedridden detective, solve a 500-year-old mystery? - this is one of Josephine Tey's most enduringly popular novels. It is not only the last Plantagenet King who is on trial. 'I'll never again believe anything I read in a history book', says Inspector Grant by the end. Truth may, according to an ancient Latin proverb, be the Daughter of Time, but the weight of history is hard to overturn.
Your basket
Your basket is empty
