The Master of Bruges

I love making book lists for challenges, but the funny thing is that I actually seldom follow my lists. More often than not at least some of the books I read for a particular challenge have not been on my list and very often I have just kind of tumbled on them somewhere on the way. One such book is Terence Morgan's debut novel The Master of Bruges. I saw the book at work, loved the cover picture, found the cover text interesting, and decided to borrow it, and it was not until I had started reading the book, I might have even been already half way through it, before I realised that I could use this novel in a challenge. 

The Master of Bruges takes place in the latter half of the 15th-century in mainly Burgundy and in England. The master in question is painter Hans Memling. The novel, which mixes real life events & people and fiction, follows Memling's life from a painter's apprentice to a revered old master. The Duke of Burgundy takes young Memling under his wing and later Memling falls in love with the Duke's daughter Princess Marie. While an ordinary Marie could marry Hans, Burgundy cannot marry a painter and Hans Memling is to be dissapointed in his love of Marie, who marries Maximilian of Austria and rules Burgundy with him after the death of her father. However, the lives of Hans and Marie weave together quite dramatically all the way till the death of Marie.

At one point Hans, now a succesful painter of both religious pictures and portraits, gives shelter to some refugee Englishmen. Only after a while does he realise that the Dick and Ned he has been sheltering in his house are the dethroned King of England and his brother. It is the time of the War of the Roses. When the fortunes of war change King Edward IV returns to power and later Memling travels to England to finish a painting for an English customer, but he also gets invited into the court and becomes involved with what happenes to the sons of Edvard IV, the so called Princes in the Tower.

The Master of Bruges is an easy book to read. It is a thrilling historical novel, where the author has used his imagination and created a plausible story mixing facts and fiction. I enjoyed reading this book a lot. I only wish that I had used either the net or a book of Memling's art as a reference while reading. It would have been fun to take a look at the paintings mentioned in the book.

I read The Master of Bruges for the What's in the Name 3 -Challenge. The book's name has a place in it, thus this is my PLACE-book for the challenge.