By the mid-17 century we have several journals and diaries written by

gentlewoman about the tumults of the time But for the mid-16th century such voices of women are harder to find.

Yet they lived through their own upheaval, as the old ways were effaced in preference for the new.

Today's guest has, in her sparkling new novel, imagined herself into the story of a gentlewoman

living in the 1540s, writing her book of of a

story of a gentlewoman living in the 1540s, writing her book of days. It is a spell-binding evocation of Tudor England,

a meditation on a lost time.

My guest is Francesca Kay. She has written three previous books. Her first,

an equal stillness, won the Orange Award for New Writers. Her second, the translation of of the Bones was long listed for the

2012 Women's Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel is called The Book of Days. Francesca, welcome to not just the Tudors.

Thank you, thank you.

It's really lovely to be with you, Shazena.

I want to start by saying that I loved your book. I found it such a beautiful meditative read and it made me really feel that I was back in the mind of this Tudor gentlewoman.

And I wanted to ask you first how you found your way into her voice and how you would describe her.

What a beautiful question. her voice and how you would describe her?

What a beautiful question.

With any character in the novel,

I think it takes very long time

to feel oneself into their voices,

to become sufficiently within the skin of the character for the

character themselves to have their own internal logic as it were to do what

only she would do not that I would think that she would do. I often think that the process is a little

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