Mary-Anne Garry’s book covering the life of Horatio Townshend is absolutely gripping as she delves into the life of a major Norfolk landowner in the early C17th.
Her style is very readable and we are left with a full picture of a most engaging young man who, with the help of the kindliest of stepfathers, steered his way through a second devastating personal loss – his elder brother at the age of 18 – and the problems of his financially endangered inheritance. His first marriage was happy but childless and it was only later in life that he remarried, his second wife giving him the children he longed for; his eldest son becoming not only a major political figure but also the reforming agriculturalist, Charles 2nd Viscount Townshend.
