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HALLINGTON HALL, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. (22 MILES.)
TELEPHONE: WHITTINGTON 15. STATION: CORBRIDGE, 8 MILES.
July 23. 1931.
Dear John
I have just finished The Blanket of the Dark, reading it very carefully and with very great enjoyment. I have liked it best of any of your books since the Path of the King, though I have read and liked them all. Your historical imagination is a real delight to me, and you know the history too. I think your picture of England at that time is excellent - the colours are supplied by your vivid imagination, but the social, religious and political outlines are correctly and subtly true to the facts. It is quite
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true that the anti-clerical revolution in England preceded the Protestant revolution, but had then to take refuge in it. How different was Scotland - I am reading Knox's history again. The attitude of the old nobility is excellently done by you. And I found King Henry done to the life - a fine climax for the book indeed, and rightly kept as a bon bouche till the end. It is true that England was then forest and wilderness to that extent still, and the corresponding wildness and closeness to nature of the population is a likelihood justifying much of your picture of the folk. The plot of the hero being Buckingham's son, to be exploited as such, was a fortunate inspiration. It links
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up the various elements in the story and is redolent of the politics of the time. Mistress Sabine and her conduct - think what we will of it - suited the age depicted much better than a model heroine. You feel the age is the end of the Wars of the Roses time as well as the beginning of the Reformation - that is one of the merits of the book.
Well, well, John, it's a great book and thank you for it.
We are much looking forward to seeing you both in Sept. - don't let it be Sep 19 or 20 when we are to stay with Grey at Fallodon. And give as much notice as you can, nearer the time. Yrs ever
GM Trevelyan
Thanks for your valuable help to Janet & her foundlings.
