Banishment
To Roam,
Giddily and be everywhere but at home,
Such freedom doth a banishment become.
JOHN DONNE
Banishment by Dinah Lampitt was the first time
travel romance I read and has remained my favourite despite some very tough
competition from other authors.
Banishment is the story of Nichola Hall, a talented actress and collector of men. She has had many lovers but no friends.
Currently having a passionate affair with her leading man, Lewis Devine, she attends to after show party at his house gloating over their secret.
When the conversation turns to past lives and regression hypnosis Nichola volunteers for an experiment and under the influence of her lover travels back in time to the body of Arabella Loxley a 17th century beauty giving birth to an illegitimate child.
As Arabella she finds that she is unable to wake from her living nightmare and has to adjust to life as a supporter of the losing Royalists in the English Civil War, bringing up alone her child, the daughter of a Parliamentarian soldier.
She slips into the life of Arabella with the help of her acting skills but finds there is no one to turn to who can help her return to the 20th century. Everyone believes she is either unhinged from the strains of child birth or under the influence of witchcraft.
Isolated in the country home of her lecherous stepfather, Sir Denzil Loxley, she leaps at the chance to travel to Nottingham as a supporter of King Charles I. But her life takes a sinister turn as her stepfather tries to enter her bed and she runs for her life into the arms of the gallant Lord Joscelin Attwood.
She marries Joscelin to avoid returning to Sir Denzil and finds herself enjoying the role of wife to Joscelin, so much so she becomes frightened at the thought that she could return as suddenly as she arrived.
This book is excellent as it takes us through the Civil War and introduces us to famous characters from the pages of history (Charles I, the future Charles II, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, and many others), and an assortment of other characters such as the all-seeing Emerald Ditch, the dangerous Sabrina Attwood and the loyal Emmet.
RATING : 
(if you need an explanation of the hearts ratings see my homepage)
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Also by Dinah Lampitt : As Shadows Haunting, To
Sleep No More and the Sutton Place trilogy.