In 1629, Peter Claire, a young English lutenist, arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. But he finds that the musicians perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, their music conveyed to the King by a system of pipes.
From this central image, the novel develops into a tale of good and evil, light and dark, encompassing the lives and loves of all those involved with the Court and the fortunes of the stricken state of Denmark.
Peter Claire finds himself falling in love with the young woman who is the companion of the King's estranged, adulterous wife, Kirsten, thus dividing his loyalties and leaving his happiness uncertain.
‘She is the best historical novelist of her generation. She evokes the past with … sensuality, wit and superb sleights of hand’ A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard
‘Lyrical, voluptuous … splendid … A sumptuous drama lit by the glamorous torchlight of the courtly past’ Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times
‘Tremain shows great confidence and versatility as she changes voices … and crams her canvas with brilliant details, scents, sounds and colours … Ingenious, amusing and beautifully written’ Anne Chisholm, Observer
‘The best thing from Denmark since Hamlet’ John Julius Norwich
Author
About Rose Tremain
Rose Tremain's bestselling novels have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger (Sacred Country). Restoration was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1989 and made into a film in 1995. The sequel, Merivel, was published to rapturous acclaim in 2012, and the Telegraph described the character of Robert Merivel as 'one of the great imaginative creations in English literature of the past fifty years'. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and was appointed Chancellor of the University of East Anglia in 2013. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.
