The Smallest Man

Frances Quinn, £14.99, 381 pages, Simon & Schuster, 2021

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One of the most affecting scenes in The Smallest Man dramatises the creation of a portrait by Van Dyck. In reality, Queen Henrietta Maria, the French princess who married Charles I in 1625, posed along with her pet monkey and a courtier, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, a dwarf in her household who received the nickname “Lord Minimus”, as twin commentary on his height and ascent in the Royal Family’s favour. The novel uses the hours it took Van Dyck to complete his sketches as an opportunity for a touching conversation between the young Queen and the dwarf – here re-imagined as Nathaniel Davy, a young lad from the East Midlands who is rejected by his father when he proves too short to help with labour on the family farm.