he world in which Meg Roper grew up was not merely a world of adults; it was a world of the greatest personages of Renaissance England in the early 16th century. For Meg's father was not just anybody: He was Sir Thomas More, the very center of the intellectual and political elite, scholar, lawyer, diplomat, politician, the King's chancellor, defender of his own faith, ascetic and worldly wise, compassionate, yet unwilling to compromise his own beliefs. The whole history of an age passed through the More household -- imagine a house guest such as Erasmus or Holbein -- or a dinner guest like Henry VIII! Imagine being a firsthand observer of the King's divorce, his subsequent break with the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Reformation and the merciless punishments for heresy, More's own fight with the King and subsequent imprisonment and execution.

In a large and lively household marked by the warmth and humanism or the More's family central figure, Meg was her father's favorite daughter, closer to him than all the other children, like her father a scholar, a firm advocate of mercy, justice and love of living, as well as a perceptive noter of what went on round her.