In Wolf Hall we first meet Tom when he is being brutally assaulted by his blacksmith father. He runs away and we encounter him twenty-seven years later as the confidant of Cardinal Wolsey. He is a loving family man, a gentle father and a wise politician.

We follow his career and his relationship with the court of Henry VIII through the divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the marriage to Anne Boleyn. We see the break with Rome and the fall of Sir Thomas More.

A different Thomas More appears in Mantel’s pages and a cruel and violent England that is nevertheless vibrant and richly portrayed. This is a superbly researched and recounted stretch of history and a worth prize winner. This one really is a number one best seller (that term that appears on so many books!)

However, Louis was by no means the most productive of the Stevenson family. His father intended him to continue the family tradition of lighthouse construction and was disappointed when he chose his literary path.

Bella Bathurst, in The Lighthouse Stevensons, tells the story of the four generations of this visionary family whose lives were devoted to building lighthouses around the dangerous coasts of Scotland.

Between 1700 and 1940, eight members of the Stevenson family planned, designed and constructed ninety-seven manned lighthouses on remote rocks in the Atlantic ocean and on bleak headlands right around the Scottish coast. They were also responsible for harbours, roads, railways, docks and canals all over Scotland.

These feats of engineering took place when there were no modern transporters, cranes or tools to perform the fearsome engineering feats of building walls nine-feet thick to withstand the ferocious storms that sweep the Scottish coasts.

In The Lighthouse Stevensons, Bella Bathurst’s illustrated and detailed text makes this astonishingly dedicated family live again for us.

De Bernières revisits the village of his childhood, comically renamed Notwithstanding, and, in a series of stories, recounts the capture of the girt pike, the creation of the village musical trio, the sad demise of the Colonel’s cat, Troodos (with all the unforeseen consequences) and a host of other delightful, quirky village incidents.

We meet the same characters over and over again, the spiritualist who lives with the ghost of her dead husband, the lady who shoots squirrels, the nuns who drive along Notwithstanding‘s narrow lanes like maniacs … Each story exploits another aspect of village life that belongs to a time long past. Most of the stories are highly entertaining – a few are sad and moving.

De Bernières explained that he had based his earlier novels on exotic places but recognised that his native country held a wealth of eccentric characters. The stories recall personalities and incidents of his youth.

This is, indeed, a delightful recapturing of English village life of long ago.

His life of climbing has taken him through extreme experiences; an avalanche in Bolivia, the loss of a climbing partner in a paragliding accident in Greece and a series of close encounters with death including the one described in Touchinbg the Void. When he decides that it is time to turn his back on mountains, he undertakes one final climb of the fateful North Face, with his climbin partner Ray Delaney.

The often-told fatal events on the North Face since the 1930s are graphically recounted, with familiar photographs, as the climb is undertaken. When the storm hits the climbing pair, and they are forced to bivouac: other climbers higher up the face are not so fortunate.

This is gripping mountaineering literature that tells of Simpson’s changing feelings about coping with the death of other climbers and coming to terms with fear. It takes a philosophical look into the minds of the stars of the climbing world who risk their lives when they test themselves in gruelling climbs and harsh conditions.

Yes, the food is there in Almost French, and mouth-wateringly evoked on several occasions but Sarah Turnbull is more concerned with sharing with us her cultural struggle to come to terms with the unwelcoming French women at dinner parties, the mindless and time-consuming French bureaucracy and the ingrained French attitudes that an outsider has to live with in Paris.

Six years are recounted for us as Sarah slowly acquires the language and understanding that make her Almost French. Although her shorts and clumpy Doc Martens jar at the start of her account, her beautiful prose, from start to finish, tells us that we are in the hands of an accomplished journalist.

Sometimes moving and frequently very amusing, this is the account to read if you, too, have recently arrived in France and finding some of the attitudes incomprehensible.

She moves into his tiny student flat and falls in love with French markets and French cuisine. She slowly comes to terms with the French character, French bureaucracy and the different way things are done in Europe. She learns from her Breton in-laws and struggles to get her own family to understand that the French way of life is different and that she wishes to live it, not change it.

Elizabeth’s own command of French and understanding of French thinking develops, as does her frustration with her mother and American visitors who lack both.

From Gwendal’s simple pasta which is made with ‘whatever Gwendal finds in the back of the fridge’, to ‘Lamb tagine with prunes and roasted sweet potatoes’, each recipe gives useful hints about how to prepare delicious and imaginative dishes.

A tasty read!

The K2 venture is a failure when Mortenson becomes weakened and exhausted after the rescue of another climber. He drifts into the impoverished and isolated village of Korphe where he is so affected by the kindness of the inhabitants that he makes a promise to provide them with a school. He has seen the village children, sitting in the open in icy conditions writing multiplication tables with sticks in the mud.

The title Three Cups of Tea refers to the words, “Here, we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything – even die.”

The story recounts Greg’s struggles to acquire the funds to build that first school and to overcome the problems. No school can be built until a bridge is built over the Braldu river so that the materials can reach the area. The donation of a benefactor, fellow climber Jean Hoerni, creates the Central Asia Institute and, over the next decade Mortenson builds not just one but fifty-five schools so that even girls can be educated.

The story is an amazing testament to what one determined man can achieve.

We accompany him through his disastrous medical to the training camp and through two years of slow progress through the ranks towards a hilarious court-martial where he is the witness. (His colleague, in a drunken stupor, had demolished the cookhouse!)

There is a ‘laugh-out-loud’ moment on almost every page, yet the entire two-year experience is portrayed as a crude, senseless and brutal way to create a standing army. The most moving message that emerges from the text is the lasting friendships that were created during the national service experience.

Philippa Gregory’s novel recreates the atmosphere of the Tudor court, seen through the eyes of Anne Boleyn‘s younger sister, Mary who was Henry VIII’s mistress in her early teen years, and bore him two children, including a son who later became one of Queen Elizabeth’s favoured courtiers.

Any feminist will be shocked at the way these Boleyn girls are pawns in the hands of the men of the powerful Howard family and raised to power or discarded according to the whims of the pampered King who is portrayed as an unendearing figure.

Anne Boleyn is shown to be the scheming girl that history has painted yet, even though we all know her fate, it shocks us when, after 500 pages of history recreated, she reaches the scaffold. The rivalry between the Boleyn girls – the thread that holds this novel together – is finally at an end and we follow Mary into an unexpected conclusion.

This is very readable historical fiction.