Although she assumes that Josiah Cole wishes to employ a governess, he has no children, and she learns that what attracts him is the thought of a well-connected wife. Gregory brings her unique combination of a vivid sense of history and inimitable storytelling skills to illuminate a complex period of our past. HNS Awards have helped discover and launch the author careers of Michel Faber, Ruth Downie, Hilary Green, Martin Sutton, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Nikki Marmery, Margaret Skea, Warwick Cairns, Katherine Mezzacappa and Elizabeth Macneal.

A Respectable Trade - Where to Watch and Stream - TV Guide A Respectable Trade - Where to Watch and Stream - TV Guide

As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Marriage to a small dockside trader would be a significant step down for the highborn Frances, but she decides that an arranged marriage would provide the security she needs, and it seems like a mutually convenient solution. The dowry transformed marriage into a business proposition and women were bartered like cattle in the pursuit of ambition and status. There is so much I could say about this book and about the Black Slave trade, that I feel defeated before I’ve started.Frances and Mehuru are both, individually, protagonists in their own right, though they have a sort-of romance in common. Frances is confronted for the first time with the realities of slavery in Bristol, and finds that it’s far harder to condone such injustice when you’re witnessing beatings, rapes, and gross dehumanization under one’s own roof (especially when one of the victims happens to be the love of your life). However, it was a fairly slow novel at points, mainly because a lot of the dialogue just focused on trade and business.

A Respectable Trade (BBC Drama, Warren Clarke) - Memorable TV

Amy, his wife, refuses to set her beloved husband free to marry the queen, but she cannot prevent him from becoming the favourite of the plotting, pleasure-seeking court.There was nothing to fear, there was nothing to make him uneasy, yet still he stood wakeful and listening as if the coop-coop-coop of the hunting owls or the little squeaks from the bats which clung around the stone towers of the palace might bring him a warning.