Fact as fiction is very much in vogue, and, whilst Mark Lawson waspishly dissects the dying days of the Wilson government in his latest novel Enough is Enough, and Channel 4 explores the apparent suicide of David Kelly, it’s refreshing to see the eighteenth century enjoying similar treatment. 

Lucy Jamieson really existed and was buried in a New York churchyard in 1802. She also merited a few pages in Giacomo Casanova’s memoirs for having been one of only two women he ever wronged. Japin’s well-researched novel, friskily translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, offers an intriguing conceit