The Lady in the Castle by William Gaunt

Publisher's Blurb: The author of  The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy and The Aesthetic Adventure became so intrigued with a fifteenth-century family history uncovered by his researches that he decided to make it the basis of his first novel. It is a book that will surely appeal both to his present readers and to a large new public. Readers of  The Paston Letters will be delighted to know that the lady of the title is the famous Margaret Mauteby, who married the son of Judge Paston, and the castle is Caister, which the Pastons inherited from Sir John Fastolf, the ruins of which still satnd on the Norfolk coast.
    In the absence of her husband, and while coping with an extraordinarily difficult series of domestic problems, Margaret valiantly fought the the Pastons' many enemies, notably Lord Moleyns, who evicted her forcibly from her home, and the Duke of Norfolk, who took advantage of Edward IV's struggle against Warwick to lay seige to her castle.
    Mr Gaunt presents a magnicent and detailed panorama of England during the War of the Roses. There are unexpected but welcome pictures of a prisoner's life in the Fleet and a wastrel's in London, for example. And standing alwaysin the forefront of the picture, symbolising as it were the gallant fight against the lawessness of feudalism in its last convulsion, is the figure of Margaret Mauteby, a remarkable heroine of a remarkable  novel.

First Published 1956, W.H.Allen London

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