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Portrait of an Unknown Woman
In the UK, Portrait of an Unknown Woman was one of the Sunday Times’ 100 top summer reads fpr 2007. It was shortlisted for the 2007 Authors’ Club Best First Novel, long listed for the Romantic Novelists’ Association prize and was Radio Five Live's Book of the Month in October 2006.
In the US, Portrait of an Unknown Woman, selected as one of Book Sense's ten recommended Picks for April 2007, was also recognized by Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program as a Spring Selection and was promoted in their stores nationwide until August 2007.
Read the HarperCollins book description and watch a short
video:
www.harpercollins.com/book
Listen to audio
clips of Portrait of an Unknown Woman
It is 1527. The English Renaissance is in full swing under
the young King Henry VIII. The young German painter Hans Holbein,
who has come to London to seek his fortune, is delighted when
he gets a commission to paint the family of Thomas More, one
of England’s leading statesman and men of learning,
at his country home in Chelsea.
The story is seen through the eyes of More’s young
ward Meg, and shows her growing feelings for her tutor, a
man of mysterious background called John Clement, whom she
will marry, and for Holbein himself, whom she will love. This
complex of emotions is played out against a backdrop of worsening
religious intolerance in England and across Europe. More,
a devout Catholic, abandons his old friendships with the humanists
who have brought the Renaissance to England, and – to
Meg’s growing horror – devote himself to hunting
down Protestant heretics.
The story is framed by the two portraits Holbein will paint
of the family – the first when Thomas More is about
to become Lord Chancellor and is at the peak of his powers,
and the second, seven years later, after More has resigned
his job in protest at the King’s decision to divorce
his first wife, the Spanish Catholic Catherine of Aragon,
and marry the Protestant Anne Boleyn. With disaster looming
for the More family, Holbein’s genius for truth-telling
through his painting brings out all the family secrets in
the second portrait he paints of the Mores – including
the one that even hardly anyone in the family knows, that
of John Clement’s true identity.
"Portrait of an Unknown Woman is available as an audio
book on both sides of the Atlantic. See
it here.
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