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Factual inaccuracy in historical fiction bugs me.
A few days ago I was chatting to a friend, who teaches history, about the social position of women through the ages. We got on the the subject of witch hunts. I remarked that if we were living in the middle ages I'd be burned at the stake because I live alone with lots of cats and have a small burn which looks a little like a nipple. After joking around, she pointed out that I would have been hanged, not burnt, because burning was only used on the continent, not in England. Even the Salem witches in the U.S. were hanged.
After she'd gone, I started reading a book which opened with an execution: burning at the stake. The book was set in Elizabethan england at the time of religious persecution.
I read something else!
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