Her Cadfael books will be recognised by genre historians as pioneering works. Perhaps she pulled her punches when it came to describing the real muck and blood and stench of the Middle Ages...and perhaps too, latterly, her emphasis on the goodness of her characters was overdone. Even so, she redefined the form by avoiding irony in her work...and concentrating on the alien quality of the past...while at the same time pointing up the essential continuity of the human condition. And she always wrote, whatever the genre, with absolute conviction.

# Permanent link to The Heaven Tree Trilogy