Join Emma and critic Lucy Popescu at The Authors’ Club to discuss her new novel The Bruegel Boy, which recreates the artistic riches, intellectual ferment and explosive religious politics of the Low Countries in the age of Philip II.

In the summer of 1566 an inferno of political rebellion and image-smashing, the Beeldenstorm, swept across Flanders and Holland; young Gillis Vervloet, model and muse to artist Pieter Bruegel, almost didn’t survive.

More than sixty years later, in the Saarland forest, Gil wants only to enter the monastery of St Bartolomëus and live out his days in peace, but first he must find their long-lost statue of St Michael. And to prove he is not a heretic, Gil must also account for his life with Bruegel, who painted a tense path through the artistic riches, intellectual ferment and explosive religious politics of the Low Countries. As he writes of his passionate vocation for the priesthood and impossible love for Dorothea, his outlaw brother Roeland and radical priest-mentor Pater Paulus, Gil’s hard-won understanding must show him where to seek St Michael, and how to save himself from the Inquisition.

The Bruegel Boy is a profound exploration of love, brotherhood, vocation and the power of art to transform lives but also divide and even destroy them.

The event is free, but booking is essential: just click through to Eventbrite .

To find out more, click through to the Author’s Club website: