Page to Jane Seymour ¦ Elizabeth Fry and the Forger's Daughter

Two short (48 pages), clearly written, and well illustrated 'historical storybooks', which attempt to convey the atmosphere of particular periods and places by presenting episodes related by young participants. In the first, Francis Morland, a newly appointed page to Jane Seymour, describes feelings and events at the court of Henry VIII between the execution of Anne Boleyn and Jane's own death in the following year. The second book is set in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Liza Gunn, after witnessing a thief rotting in the dungeons of Newgate before being publicly hanged, fears the worst when her own mother is seized by the Bow Street Runners. Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker prison reformer, comes to the rescue.

Inevitably, in such a condensed format, there is little room to develop complexities of character and social history. Henry's charm is perhaps exaggerated and his tyranny under-emphasised; Apps pulls few punches in his depiction of penal brutality, but maybe presents too rosy a vision of his heroine's achievements. These are cavils. The books are appealing enough to inspire interested readers into conducting their own further investigations.