Tindall's voice is richly her own: tender but unsentimental and lit by intimate knowledge of her chosen world. Colin Thubron Culminating a distinguished career spanning more than 60 years, historian Gillian Tindall has written a novel as her final statement. In an astonishing feat of literary imagination, she projects herself back onto one of her forebears to conjure a compelling vision of 17th century England. By trade, the main character is a metal founder, an occupation that leads him from the villages of Sussex to the bell foundry in Spitalfields. This is a hymn to those who pass through life not leaving a trace, except in the hearts of those into whose lives they have been cast. AUTHOR: Gillian Tindall is the virtuoso of history in microcosm, celebrated for the quality of her writing and scrupulousness of her research. She employs a single location, a dramatic event, a collection of objects or a handful of characters and reveals how they stand for the larger picture, as in her seminal books The Fields Beneath on the history of Kentish Town and The House by the Thames on the history of the South Bank. Living in the same London house for over 50 years, she has written social history, biography and prizewinning novels. SELLING POINTS: . Gillian Tindall's Journal of a Man Unknown is a novel of rare distinction