Drawn from a series of sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth-century scenarios involving characters in middle or old age, the best of these stories really seem to capture fragments of past lives. Some of the historical settings — the sea-voyage of a Flemish art dealer to the Danish countryside, the retreat of the Emperor Charles the Fifth from the Spanish Netherlands to the Estremadura monastery where he chooses to end his life — are fascinating and perfectly, economically evoked. The weaknesses here lie in the problem of using an archaic tone and pace to create atmospheres and a basic unimportance at the heart of some stories. Still, it’s 75% a very good book.

‘By that time Frau Kölner and the children must already have reached the cathedral square, illuminated with the brilliance of daylight. The great door of the church was crammed with the throng which traditionally came crowding to that solemn celebration, pausing on the threshold to exchange greetings and to wait, while within there was a more discreet pattering of feet... Once again Herr Kölner thought nostalgically of the warm, mysterious luminosity of the cathedral, and even had a distinct image in his mind of the faces of the three Church Fathers depicted on Pilgram’s famous pulpit emerging from the semi-darkness of the lofty nave.’ p145