A riveting study, employing extensive use of archival sources to passionately paint a vivid and sympathetic account of everyday life in medieval England, as shown through one woman's eyes. An evocative triumph. * Nathen Amin, author of The House of Beaufort *
A movingly personal exploration of the life lived by a quietly remarkable woman during turbulent times more than five hundred years ago. With nuance, deep learning and insight, Diane Watt leads us through the landscapes of Norfolk past and present, bringing the medieval world into shimmering view. * Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth *
Watt brings to beautifully-written life the story not only of Margaret Paston and her family - extracted from Margaret's own letters - but an entire richly-textured time and place that, until someone invents a time machine, could not be visited more vividly. * Nicola Griffith, author of Hild *
A fascinating and deeply moving encounter with medieval life as experienced by an intelligent, resourceful and extraordinarily canny woman. Using the letters that Margaret Paston wrote to her husband and wider family as stepping stones through the fifteenth century, Watt gives a powerful sense of what life was like for a middle-class woman, navigating her way through a time of political and social upheaval. Watt situates Margaret's life in the wider context of England's warring political factions, decimation by the Black Death and recurrent social unrest, and shows us how Margaret skillfully secured and defended her family's good name, material wealth and social status. Watt braids this story with her own pilgrimage to places of importance to Margaret, from churches to prisons, manor houses to shrines, and shows how much we have in common with Margaret, who aspired and struggled, loved and grieved more than five hundred years ago, yet whose story still moves us today. * Victoria McKenzie, author of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain *
In God's Own Gentlewoman, Watt takes us by the hand and leads us across the flat marshy landscapes of East Anglia into the past. Focusing on apparently tiny details from the Paston letters - dresses, jewellery, favourite poems - she illuminates not just one family's loves and losses, but a society convulsed by plague and war as the Middle Ages die away and a new world struggles to emerge. * Helena Kelly, author of The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens *
