The Secret Diaries of Juan Luis Vives by Tim Darcy Ellis,

Tellwell books

The tale of forgotten academic Vives, mentor at the court of Henry VIII, wouldn’t usually make the cast of a Tudor novel. But Ellis reels us in as a modernday electrician moves a bookcase in a medieval college and we enter a new

(old) world. He discovers a box with the Star of David on the front. Inside is the diary of Spanish philosopher Vives. “We were never safe – a family of secret Jews living in Valencia,” he writes. Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon need a tutor for Princess Mary. “In Spanish culture the education of women is very important,” Vives tells Sir Thomas More. Off we gallop in this exquisite velvet-lined tale.