As Rose Tremain returns to seventeenth-century England with Merivel, she tells the Guardian book club how she was hoping to restore the reputation of historical fiction with the creation of Sir Robert Merviel in 1989's Restoration.
She also explains how the period, with its love of material display, chimed with Britain in the 1980s.
Reading list
Merivel by Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus)
Restoration by Rose Tremain (Vintage Classics)