The Daughter of Time: voted Best Crime Novel of All-Time

by Josephine Tey

Grant took a sideways look at the portrait and decided that the Historical Reader was off the beam. Whatever had hardened Richard's heart to the point of murder had not been greed.

the Princes in the Tower?'

missionee.

Do you know the lovely Kipling story about his knighting the craftsman not for having done beautiful work but for having saved him the cost of some scroll-work?' 'With a rusty sword from behind the arras. You must be one of the few women who know their Kipling.'

"Hal o' the Draft", in /Puck of Pook's Hill/, I believe

It was an age when a bend sinister was accepted without grief.

The "bend sinister" signifies bastardy.

No one can say that a man is incapable of murder—after long years on the Embankment Grant knew that only too well—but one can be sure to within one degree of the absolute when a man is incapable of silliness.

Yes, one can. No man (or woman) who has ever lived or ever will live is incapable of silliness.

'I'm going to borrow a phrase from Henry Ford, and call it History is the Bunk.'

Ford said, "History is more of less bunk", without the definite article.

Grant took the fat respectable-looking volume from his locker. 'Historians should be compelled to take a course in psychology before they are allowed to write.' 'Huh. That wouldn't do anything for them. A man who is interested in what makes people tick doesn't write history. He writes novels, or becomes an alienist, or a magistrate—' 'Or a confidence man.' 'Or a confidence man. Or a fortune-teller. A man who understands about people hasn't any yen to write history. History is toy soldiers.'