A Gentleman is Not Necessarily

Why I Stole Your Life

Strong women have existed throughout history.

Some of them have existed as men.

Infamous 18th-century pirate Mary Read tells how she was a footboy, soldier, and wife before turning to piracy in this powerful serialised novel by the award-winning author of The Marlowe Papers.

Catch up with previous chapters here.

A Gentleman is Not Necessarily

We are walking to London. The shirt money buys food to save on lodgings, with the weather still fine, we sleep by the roadside. Ma says this is not shameful. Many good people fall on hard times and must do the same on their way to a new life. On the road we meet people our mother calls itinerants. An Irish tinker, who won’t stop talking to us, because when Ma pretends she is deaf, he turns to me, saying things that make our mother wince. A man with a travelling puppet show, which he has been wheeling about on a handcart. When we see him there is no show, unless we are meant to give a farthing to watch him sitting under a tree and crying. Many itiner…