McMahon's After Mary is a historical novel about the great seventeenth century Catholic educationist Mary Ward, who fought a series of Popes to set up a female Jesuit Order, and who was eventually imprisioned by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. Waller's 1700: Scenes from London Life is a non-fiction account of the same period. A booming London appears modern in its overt materialism. It was the most magnificent city in Europe yet the streets were open sewers and life there was so precarious that it might be described as 'a mere prelude to death'