Kneale’s aim is immediacy and recognition, and he brings the characters as close as possible with much millennium-spanning humour. There’s a running joke about the disappointments of travel; when they finally make it to Rome, Constance remarks that St Peter’s is “very fine, but Norwich is longer, don’t you think?” (Kneale’s previous book was a history of Rome, and here he shows us the hectic medieval city, loomed over by ruins “like the bones of a huge dead beast”.) The characters all share a down-to-earth, proto-Canterbury Tales worldview; the religious ecstasies of Matilda the mystic are entirely played for laughs, and some episodes, particularly a night in a nunnery (“It’s only a bit of kissing”), veer into the realm of the romp.