In a way. Magic is the act of making a wish come about. Like praying, like plotting, like herbs, like exerting your will on the world, making something happen.

Good Evening , Sir John. I hope that you will accept a little gift from me.' I should be honored, Your Majesty.' I want to give you a little carved stool from my privy chambers. A pretty little piece from France. I hope you will like it.' I should be grateful.' It is for your daughter. For Jane. To sit on. She seems not to have a seat of her own but she must borrow mine.

And – I think you know, don’t you? – that I love you, Anne.’ I feel as if I have been living in a loveless world for too long. The last tender face I saw was my father’s when he sailed for England. ‘You do? Truly?’ ‘I do.’ He rises to his feet and pulls me up to stand beside him. My chin comes to his shoulder, we are both dainty, long-limbed, coltish: well-matched. I turn my face into his jacket. ‘Will you marry me?’ he whispers. ‘Yes,’ I say.

I had never seen a woman in such despair before. It was worse than death, it was a constant longing for death and a constant rejection of life. She lived like darkness in her own day.

Good god what men can do to their brains when their cocks are hard.

It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What’d you choose to do with yours?

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.