The Tangled Knot: A Novel of the English Civil War

John Radcliffe's life is changed drastically by his encounter with the Royalist Catholic Heskeths on their landed estate. Ensuing events are caused partly by the fluctuating fortunes of both sides in the Civil War but also by the young Roundhead's misguided involvement with a family alien to his class, religion and politics. The threads linking together John, the Hesketh sisters, their Puritan maid, their Cavalier brother William and the rakish Kit Verney twist and turn as love, deceit, sacrifice and death tie them all in a knot from which there is no escape but by a re-assessment of motives, prejudices and beliefs.
 
John Radcliffe's life is changed drastically by his encounter with the Royalist Catholic Heskeths on their landed estate. Ensuing events are caused partly by the fluctuating fortunes of both sides in the Civil War but also by the young Roundhead's misguided involvement with a family alien to his class, religion and politics. The threads linking together John, the Hesketh sisters, their Puritan maid, their Cavalier brother William and the rakish Kit Verney twist and turn as love, deceit, sacrifice and death tie them all in a knot from which there is no escape but by a re-assessment of motives, prejudices and beliefs.