So I like English history..

And I gotta tell you, Elizabeth Chadwick, does such a marvelous job! This time she caught me with this one:

The Time of Singing is 16 hours of wonderful story telling with the voice of Peter Wickham. This is what the publisher had to say:

When Roger Bigod, heir to the powerful earldom of Norfolk, arrives at court in 1177 to settle a bitter inheritance dispute with his half-brothers, he encounters Ida de Tosney, young mistress to King Henry II.

A victim of Henry's seduction and the mother of his son, Ida is attracted to Roger and sees in him a chance of lasting security; but in deciding to marry Roger, she is forced to make a choice. As Roger's importance as a mainstay of the Angevin government grows, it puts an increasing strain on his marriage.

Against a volatile political background the gulf between them threatens to widen beyond crossing, especially when so many bridges have already been burned.

©2008 Elizabeth Chadwick; (P)2009 Soundings

You won't believe where I first really became of Roger Bigod (our primary character)!  Yes, Ancestry.com!  Turns out he was involved in my ancestors' lives! So naturally I had to use one of monthly credits on it!
If you have read (or listened to) The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion, you will find this book dove tails nicely with them (like I did) as all the characters were ones you became familiar with in those books.  I periodically had to stop listening to go online to understand a bit more of the history or I had to go a bit deeper into the history.
Roger's father is verbally abusive. His step mother is out for her sons only. Things don't get a lot better after his father's death. Ida's lot, in it's way, is not much better. Life is not easy for the upper crusters who have to watch what they say and do so they do not fall into the pits dug by others or those tinder toes of THE KING.
If you have not read any of her novels, and you like historical fiction, what rock have you been hiding under? The people are real, the language seems realistic to me, and the fiction just carries me right along as I learn!
Even if you don't care a fig about the history, it is still a good story! So scoot on out to your bookstore or library and pick up the book in it's written or spoken version and see how fast you become a follower!