A Column of Fire. Part 3

England. The middle of the 16th century. The time of the accession of the great Queen Elizabeth I—who found England poor and torn apart by endless dynastic disputes, and turned it into the first power in Europe. But the glorious Elizabethan “golden age” is still far away, and almost all European countries stand against the young Protestant monarch—especially France, which wants to place its own candidate, the Catholic Mary Stuart, on the English throne. Such is the difficult era in which a young man and a girl from the northern city of Kingsbridge—famous for its legendary cathedral, a city now divided and torn apart by ruthless hatred between Protestants and Catholics—have to live. And this feud may forever separate Marjorie Fitzgérald, whose family supports Mary Stuart in word and deed, from Ned Willard, who is drawn into “the secret service of her Majesty”—into the ranks of the legendary spies of Queen Elizabeth… Ken Follett’s sweeping historical saga continues!