The Assassin

Ronald Blythe

За особеностите на екземпляра

Състояние:: Много добро
Забележка:: Почти отлично състояние - леко захабена обложка, неизползвана книга. Голям формат.
Език:: Английски
Наличност:: 1 бр.

За изданието

Издателство:: Black Dog Books
Град на издаване:: Norwich, Norfolk, England
Година:: 2004 г.
Език:: Английски
Страници:: 275
Корици:: Твърди
Категория:: Исторически романи
Тегло (гр.):: 592
Ширина (мм):: 160
Височина (мм):: 235
Дебелина (мм):: 28
ISBN:: 9780952883999

Three young men, one a star, one a star-seeker, one a bookworm, collide in the darkening years before the Civil War. At first they seem to shed a new light on one another, then in their mid-thirties they black-out. Who were they? Diamond-studded paintings identify the star George Villiers as the Duke of Buckingham but the old label 'fanatic' fails to illuminate his killer, though we have his soiled name, John Felton. As for Felton's friend Angus Wemyss, he was one of those people who rocket away from earth-bound politics and religious dogma into limitless space, shedding shibboleths as he goes. He begged Felton to accompany him but instead of taking the Milky Way Felton walked to Portsmouth with a knife. The course of history is as much altered by the single blow of the assassin as by the multiple strikes of an army. During that hot and fateful summer of 1628 a penniless lieutenant tramped to the Greyhound Inn near Portsmouth harbour to destroy a leader who had begun his career as the old king's cupbearer and who now threatened to continue it as the new king's 'brother'. This was Villier's real crime, his blasphemy. He and Charles and Wemyss and Felton were all of an age and their paths unlikely to cross. But Blythe hooks these apparently random lives together and shows how kings and scholars and stars and astronomers can get caught in a single fatal net. His novel has a visionary quality. It catches the spirituality and the sexuality of its time with startling freshness. It is as though he himself was walking England then. * In a long and distinguished career Ronald Blythe's work includes Akenfield, his classic study of English village life, poetry, essays, short stories, history and literary criticism. Their greatest achievement has been to make what is local universal as his books move outwards from his rural Suffolk to embrace the world at large. Among them is The Age of Illusion, Divine Landscapes, The View in Winter and Word from Wormingford, the latter placed by Susan Hill among the foremost English diaries. Blythe's work has been filmed, widely translated, awarded literary prizes and his 'voice' recognised as one of special originality. Blythe is President of the John Clare Society and has always taken part in the cultural life of his native countryside. He lives in the Stour Valley in the farmhouse which was once the home of his friend John Nash. Fike much of what he has written, The Assassin grew out of a tale told to him as a young boy.