Matthew Plampin

THE HOLY CITY IS NO PLACE FOR MERCY 'Matthew Plampin should rank with the best' Sunday Times 'Plampin is heartbreakingly good' The Times 'Gripping, immersive, at times very funny and beautifully written, this is historical fiction of the highest quality' Elizabeth Fremantle Rome, 1650. The streets are teeming as thousands of pilgrims flood in for the Holy Jubilee, but behind the gilded façade of the Vatican, power is unravelling. Donna Olimpia Maidalchini has long kept Pope Innocent X under her thumb, but as loyalties shift, her enemies close in. And her most dangerous opponents may be those she deems too weak to matter. Two destitute nuns arrive, fleeing the ruined city of Castro and each carrying secrets that could destroy them. Meanwhile, the assistant to the famed Spanish artist Diego Velázquez is drawn into a perilous conspiracy – one that could bring Italy to its knees, and against which his own desperate ambitions seem to count for nothing. As the sweltering summer heat rises, survival, not salvation, becomes the ultimate goal – and in this world of sin, saints almost never survive.

There was another war, some 150 years ago, which was unpopular at home -- the death rate shocking, the military strategy confused -- and the first on which the media had a major influence. The Street Philosopher -- the nineteenth-century term for a s ociety writer, a gossip columnist -- captures this scene brilliantly. Ambitious young journalist Thomas Kitson arrives at the battlefields of the Crimea as the London Courier's man on the ground. It is a dangerous place, full of the worst horrors of war but Kitson is determined to make his mark. Under the tutelage of his hard-bitten Irish boss Cracknell, and assisted by artist Robert Styles, he sets about exposing the incompetence of the army generals. Two years later, as Sebastopol burns, Thoma s returns to England under mysterious circumstances. Desperate to forget the atrocities of the Crimea, he takes a job as a 'street philosopher', a society writer reporting on the gossip of the day. But on the eve of the great Art Treasures Exhibition , as Manchester prepares to welcome Queen Victoria, Thomas's past returns to haunt him in the most horrifying way...

There was another war, some 150 years ago, which was unpopular at home -- the death rate shocking, the military strategy confused -- and the first on which the media had a major influence. The Street Philosopher -- the nineteenth-century term for a s ociety writer, a gossip columnist -- captures this scene brilliantly. Ambitious young journalist Thomas Kitson arrives at the battlefields of the Crimea as the London Courier's man on the ground. It is a dangerous place, full of the worst horrors of war but Kitson is determined to make his mark. Under the tutelage of his hard-bitten Irish boss Cracknell, and assisted by artist Robert Styles, he sets about exposing the incompetence of the army generals. Two years later, as Sebastopol burns, Thoma s returns to England under mysterious circumstances. Desperate to forget the atrocities of the Crimea, he takes a job as a 'street philosopher', a society writer reporting on the gossip of the day. But on the eve of the great Art Treasures Exhibition , as Manchester prepares to welcome Queen Victoria, Thomas's past returns to haunt him in the most horrifying way...

There was another war, some 150 years ago, which was unpopular at home -- the death rate shocking, the military strategy confused -- and the first on which the media had a major influence. The Street Philosopher -- the nineteenth-century term for a s ociety writer, a gossip columnist -- captures this scene brilliantly. Ambitious young journalist Thomas Kitson arrives at the battlefields of the Crimea as the London Courier's man on the ground. It is a dangerous place, full of the worst horrors of war but Kitson is determined to make his mark. Under the tutelage of his hard-bitten Irish boss Cracknell, and assisted by artist Robert Styles, he sets about exposing the incompetence of the army generals. Two years later, as Sebastopol burns, Thoma s returns to England under mysterious circumstances. Desperate to forget the atrocities of the Crimea, he takes a job as a 'street philosopher', a society writer reporting on the gossip of the day. But on the eve of the great Art Treasures Exhibition , as Manchester prepares to welcome Queen Victoria, Thomas's past returns to haunt him in the most horrifying way...