Let These Things Be Written

Fiona Whyte

Eye Books, 384 pages, £9.99

There are shades of the opening scenes of Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy in the first pages of Fiona Whyte’s first novel, Let These Things Be Written – although, while like Bagoas, the young protagonist Wilfrid is taken from his family against his will, it is not by violence and at least – unlike Bagoas – he gets to keep his testicles. Not that it makes much difference, for (as the evidently slightly disappointing) first-born son of a high-ranking Christian family in seventh-century Northumberland, he is destined for the monastery at Lindisfarne.