Susanna Gregory: The Westminster Poisoner (2008)

Edition: Sphere, 2008
Review number: 1495

This is the fourth of the Thomas Chaloner series, historical mysteries set just after the restoration of the monarchy in Britain following the Civil War and Cromwell's rule. In The Westminster Poisoner, Chaloner investigates a series of murders of government officials, despite interference from his employer, who starts out by telling him who the murderer should be.

As is now standard in this series, Chaloner spends much of the investigation as an outsider to the corrupt world of Restoration London; this provides an interesting perspective, but can become a bit wearing. The Westminster Poisoner is quite lengthy, for a crime novel, and it sometimes feels as though it's spending too much time wallowing in the depravity instead of getting on with the mystery. The depiction of Restoration London is one of the things which first interested me in the series, but I am feeling that by the fourth book it's becoming a little too much always the same.

Still, the characterisation is good, and the mystery is interesting and difficult to solve, and the historical background is meticulously researched. The ending is very good indeed. Generally, I felt that the positive aspects of The Westminster Poisoner outweighed the negative, though it is not as good as earlier books in the series where the background was fresher. My rating: 7/10.

John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678/1684)

Edition: Penguin, 1965 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1221

The recent BBC poll to find the best loved English novel, the Big Read, chose The Lord of the Rings, a winner which is almost inevitable in this kind of listing nowadays. But if the poll could have been run a hundred and fifty years ago or more, then The Pilgrim's Progress would have been the runaway winner (so long as we ignore the fact that it is not really a novel). If a family owned one book, it was the Bible; if two, the second would almost certainly be Bunyan, far more likely than Shakespeare. Its popularity was only challenged when the Victorian mass market in novels began to open up, with the success of Dickens particularly. Today, it didn't even feature in the top 100 list. This suggests two questions: why did this book in particular become so popular? and why has its popularity diminished?

Everyone still knows what The Pilgrim's Progress is about, at least its first part: it has become an almost proverbial title. It is an allegory of the Christian life, as seen from John Bunyan's Puritan evangelical viewpoint, and takes the form of the description of a journey made by Christian from the city of Destruction to the Celestial City. The second part (published six years later) describes the subsequent journey made by his wife Christiana, following in his footsteps. Like most allegories, the point is not the story, but lies in the images used to make the point; some of Bunyan's have entered the language, such as the "Slough of Despond".

The reason for the popularity of Bunyan's work cannot really lie in the allegory itself, for his images in general are not particularly imaginative (some are copied directly from ideas which occur in the Bible). Some, like the images shown the pilgrims in the House of the Interpreter, are hardly made part of the story at all. The story itself is unevenly constructed, with at least one character met on the way disappearing from the text without his departure being recorded (this is the Atheist, though it is at least made clear that he is travelling in the opposite direction to Christian). The second part is even more problematic, as it consists of little more than a description of a tour of the places which have already been mentioned when Christian visited them. Both parts include a lot of direct preaching and theological discussion as well as the allegory, but there is also far more of this the second time around.

The popularity of The Pilgrim's Progress must have come more from the timing of its publication, and from its content rather than its quality. The evangelical revival which gave rise to Methodism was just around the corner, and many non-conformists (people who would not accept the doctrine and hierarchy of the Anglican church) emigrated to America in the next few decades. These were the groups who took up Bunyan's book, and they spread it worldwide. It even proved to have cross-cultural appeal, being widely translated and even published in Catholic countries. (For a Puritan work, it is very restrained about Rome, and its references to Catholicism are veiled, but this is still surprising.)

The value of The Pilgrim's Progress to the Puritans was that it is an extremely effective aid to applying an evangelical view of Protestant Biblical theology to the trials faced in life. Through its images and allegorical characters, it was inspirational. The Bible is a confusing document, even for those who profess to believe it literally, and the sort of theology followed by the Puritans was much easier to pick up and understand from a systematic outline; The Pilgrim's Progress is not totally systematic, but it is certainly easier to apply to real life situations than either an abstract summary (like a catechism) or the Bible itself. It picks up one of the big reasons why the parables have always been more popular reading matter than the Pauline epistles - stories are much more entertaining than the direct exposition of theology. Aids to understanding the Bible have always been popular - such aids have been produced to push just about every possible theological position - and The Pilgrim's Progress is one of the most entertaining and is certainly the best known.

So the reason for the initial success of The Pilgrim's Progress was the right content at the right time; if it hadn't been published, I suspect that a Puritan allegory would have come along sooner rather than later (after all, it had been one of the most characteristic forms of medieval literature), and that this might have become as popular. It massively overshadowed all Bunyan's other writing, only Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, his autobiography, coming anywhere near it in popularity even in his lifetime.

The drop in the popularity of The Pilgrim's Progress seems, as far as I know, to have been well under way before the decline in churchgoing which marked the twentieth century West. It may have kept its pre-eminent place in rural areas, but novels like The Pickwick Papers, or alternatively the works of Shakespeare, took over in the urban middle class home.

It seems to me that the change is likely to be connected to the big publishing explosion at the beginning of the nineteenth century. (This is really just a guess; I don't have any facts and figures to back it up.) Apparently, up until then it was just about possible, given a fair amount of luxurious free time, to read every book published in English. Then, when the novel took off, this changed. Even if this isn't actually true, there was suddenly a lot more available to read, and it was also more entertaining. (As journeys go, the Pickwick Club's progress around England may be less edifying, but it's definitely more fun.) Instead of being one of two books in the average literate home, The Pilgrim's Progress became one of dozens.

There are cleverer, subtler and more completely worked out allegories, but none which have had as big a cultural impact as this one. I wonder if today's equivalents in popularity - The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter novels - will prove as long lasting. It is of course noticeable that the criticism that there are cleverer novels of their type around applies just as much to these current contenders; and just as behind The Pilgrim's Progress lies one of the most popular medieval genres, they both build on many precedents.

Tom Holland: Deliver Us From Evil (1997)

Edition: Warner, 1998
Review number: 1150

Deliver Us From Evil, a historical horror novel, starts at the end of the Cromwellian Commonwealth in England, just before the restoration of the monarchy and the reign of Charles II. Captain Foxe, an officer in the militia based at Salisbury, begins an investigation into a series of ritual murders at ancient monuments (the cathedral and Stonehenge are the best known), and becomes convinced that they are connected to strange events in his home village of Woodton. There, the manor house has been abandoned, as many are, by exiled supporters of the king; but in Woodton the gentry were rumoured to have been involved in black magic.

When Captain Foxe and his wife are killed by the evil he has been seeking out, his teenage son Robert begins a quest to gain revenge, to be able to face and destroy the evil power which has taken over the manor and possessed the villagers of Woodton. To this end, he spends the remainder of the book travelling through a Europe beginning to recover from the Thirty Years' War and to the American colonies, and spends much of his time in the company of 'blooddrinkers' (vampires).

Though Deliver Us From Evil could never be described as a conventional historical novel, it quite naturally needs to excel in many of the same ways that a member of that genre does - notably in terms of its background. It must feel accurate once the horror elements are removed (and it is helpful if even the supernatural side respects seventeenth century ideas on the subject). Deliver Us From Evil succeeds admirably in this respect, particularly in the way it uses well known people of the time (the Earl of Rochester and John Aubrey are particularly prominent).

As a horror novel, it lies squarely within the traditions of the vampire story, particular debts being owed to Bram Stoker and Anne Rice. Holland rings enough changes to make Deliver Us From Evil original within the tradition, and he is also occasionally much nastier than eithe Stoker or Rice (for example in the description of the anal rape of Robert Foxe by a demon wrhich ends part one). If you can cope with the nastiness, Deliver Us From Evil is a fascinating novel, well worth reading.

Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher: The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607)

Edition: Robert Holden, 1926 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1056

To a modern reader or theatre audience member, The Knight of the Burning Pestle irresistibly suggests another seventeenth century story, the far better known Don Quixote. When it was reprinted and revived in 1633, it was given a preface refuting the idea that it was derivative, by pointing out that its original performance occurred before the first appearance of Cervantes' novel in England. (This denial is a measure of just how popular Don Quixote was already by the 1630s.)

The structure of The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a double play within the play. A group of players is about to perform The London Merchant, a romantic comedy satirising that class, when two members of the audience object. A grocer and his wife are not used to play-going, but they fear that their trade isn't going to be taken seriously; and they insist that the grocer's apprentice, Ralph, be permitted to take a part which shows grocers in a better light. This is done, Ralph taking the part of a modern knight errant, an apprentice fired by tales of chivalry to take up a device appropriate to his origins, a shield showing a burning pestle (as in pestle and mortar). His adventures, and the constant interference of his not too bright master and mistress, play havoc with the drama that is meant to be on stage.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle is very funny, and ends up (of course) satirising the aspirations of the merchant class a great deal more strongly than would have been the case with The London Merchant alone. That's probably the reason that it failed when first produced, before an audience a little too similar to that which it parodies, but success on revival (and its bizarre title) has left it one of the best known Jacobean comedies.

Ben Jonson: The Alchemist (1610)

Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1996
Review number: 778

Like several others of Jonson's plays, The Alchemist is very long; in this case the length is used to build up from a slowish start, gradually increasing in pace until the farcical denoument.

A group of three tricksters, Face, Subtle and Dol Common, are using a borrowed house to get money through the pretended practise of alchemy, persuading people to pay to see wonders or to finance the supposed creation of gold from other metals. The major problem that they have is that this works too well, with new customers arriving before they have finished with earlier ones.

Apart from Volpone, The Alchemist is probably the easiest of Jonson's plays to enjoy today. A modern audience will probably be lost with much of the mystical discussion of Face and Subtle, used to convince their victims. It is however apparently genuine, and even so it doesn't need to be followed in great detail. The subject matter, then, has dated; but the structure and characterisation in the play is very well done.

Cyril Tourneur (?): The Revenger's Tragedy (1607)

Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1996
Review number: 726

Originally published anonymously, The Revenger's Tragedy was attributed to Tourneur later in the seventeenth century - but as part of a list of plays others of which were linked to the wrong authors. It is today apparently considered to be by John Middleton, but nobody can really know. Anonymous publication was not particularly uncommon, and the play has political nuances which may provide a motivation for the author to hide their identity.

The plot of The Revenger's Tragedy is sufficiently convoluted that any summary of it seems to invite the rider "Confused? You will be after this episode" which followed the plot reminders in eighties spoof soap opera Soap. Basically, it is set at a decadent Italian court where the Duke's son has attempted to rape a virtuous woman, Gloriana; her death prompts her betrothed Vindice to swear revenge on the Duke's family. His plots are aided by the lusts and ambition of the various members of the family; most of them die flamboyantly before Vindice is led off to face justice at the end of the play.

The political comment is highlighted by the name of Vindice's dead lover - Gloriana, the poetic nickname of Queen Elizabeth, who died three years before the play was first published. The name makes explicit an idea common to several similar plays of the time, that the court of James I was corrupt and depraved.Elizabeth's ministers were hardly better, but it appears to have hardly taken any time before her reign came to be regarded as a golden age.

In the early seventeenth century, there was a genre of rather gothic revenge tragedies; Hamlet is on the fringes of it. They tended to be set in some foreign - usually Italian - court, and have a lot of baroque murders (here, for example, the Duke is killed when he kisses Gloriana's skull, which has had poison smeared on it) in poetic language; there are frequently hints of incest and other crimes. The Revenger's Tragedy is almost a parody of the genre, it is so fantastical and over the top. For a tragedy, it is great fun.

Molière: The Learned Ladies (1672)

Translation: A.R. Waller (1907); updated by Steven Pimlott & Colin Chambers (1996)
Edition: Nick Hern, 1996
Review number: 493

Molière's last but one play is not among his best known and is perhaps unlikely to become so given its subject (the absurdity of women pretending to philosophical knowledge - though it could easily be present as an attack on those in general who pretend to be learned). As the type of knowledge which is associated with intelligence has also changed (from Greek and Latin to science), it may also seem to a modern audience to attack its target rather obliquely. (Mind you, it would be easy to write a modern version of this play using the kind of rubbish people often talk about science.)

Another reason why this play is less well known is that in many ways it is very similar to the harder hitting Tartuffe: both plays are about hypocrites whom one parent wants to force a daughter to marry rather than the eminently suitable young man that she loves. The hypocrisy is of a different kind, pretending to excellence as a poet rather than religious piety (and the poetry he produces is a parody of some by Molière's enemy Abbé Coth). The Learned Ladies is in parts very funny, and has some interesting characters. (I liked the elder daughter Armande, who rejected her lover for the pure life of philosophy only to become piqued with jealousy when he transfers his attentions to her sister.)

The translation is excellent, written in accordance with a theory that the best way to achieve a similar feel to the original's for a native speaker is to make the translation an imitation of a similar writer in the new language. In this case, Waller chose Sheridan as the model, and has produced an excellent version in his style. The updating has removed any old fashioned phrases (I noticed none); my only quibble is that I don't think that Sheridan is all that like Molière. In particular, I feel that the commedia tradition was far more important to and present in the work of the French author.

William Congreve: The Way of the World (1700)

Edition: Nick Hern, 1995
Review number: 432

Congreve's play has the theme of hypocrisy and deceit in society, as even some of the characters' names indicate (Fainall, for example). Even Mirabell, the hero (his name indicating that he is admirable), uses a deceitful scheme to bring about the happy ending. Only Millamant, the object of his desire, does not pretend to be anything other than what she really is, though her capriciousness towards Mirabell infuriates him.

Millamant is unable to marry who she pleases, since half of her fortune is controlled by her aunt, Lady Wishfort. (Congreve doesn't explain why half her fortune. Perhaps it is to muddle the motives even of Mirabell and Millamant, for the half that would pass to her should provide enough to live on comfortably - why go to so much effort to win the fortune, if love is supposed to be your driving passion?) In order to gain her consent, Mirabell conceives a complicated scheme. His servant, Waitwell is to pretend to be Mirabell's rich uncle, and court Lady Wishfort; when she discovers the truth, she will be forced to allow the marriage, to avoid the shame of public exposure. To make sure of Waitwell's loyalty, Mirabell marries him to Lady Wishfort's maid, so that any marriage between him and Lady Wishfort is invalid.

The plot is clearly related to the commedia plots of Marivaux and Molière, though there are variations. The rascally servant, though still making his sarcastic observation of society, is not just the tool of his master, who has taken on his cunning. The intrigue is not directed at the heroine, but at her aunt. The father figure that is the butt of jokes has gone, but instead we have the other suitors. Congreve has taken the traditional plot structure and developed and twisted it.

Ben Jonson: The Devil is an Ass (1616)

Edition: Nick Hern Books
Review number: 363

Other than Volpone, I find Jonson's plays rather difficult to read, and I have never had the opportunity to see one on the stage. The main reason for both of these observations is to do with the large size of the cast and the lack of any large starring parts. (Shakespeare often also has large numbers of characters, but he generally writes at least one very dominant part which makes famous actors want to perform the play and also makes it easier to read - it's hard to forget who Hamlet is.)

The large casts make Jonson's plays confusing on the page, particularly when they have convoluted plots. On the stage they must be easier to follow. The Devil is an Ass is a satirical version of the Faust legend, as dramatised by Marlowe. A minor demon named Pug begs time off from his work in hell to go to Earth and cause mischief. The problem is that he is not very bright nor imaginative, and he finds that society is already far more sinful and wicked than anything he can conceive of. His tricks all go wrong - he gets employment as a servant, and seeks to cause trouble between his master and his wife by arranging for her to have an affair and him to find out; but she assumes that her jealous husband is trying to lay a trap for her.

I suspect that this, and the other parts of the plot, could be made great fun on stage, but I found that I had to concentrate so hard to follow what was going on that the play didn't grip me very strongly.

Iain Pears: An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997)

Edition: Jonathan Cape, 1997
Review number: 246

Iain Pears' current best seller is something of a tour-de-force of historical detective novel writing. It is the story of the visit made by a Venetian, Marco de Cola, to Oxford during the 1660s - the early years of the Restoration of the monarchy after the rule of Cromwell. Politically, these were days of shifting loyalties (due in large part among the upper classes to Charles II's somewhat inconsistent rewarding of services made to him and punishment of attacks against him during his years of exile). It is also an exciting time for science in England, seeing the formation of the Royal Society and the emergence of modern scientific methods. Specific aspects that make themselves apparent in An Instance of the Fingerpost include: more and more pre-eminence accorded to experiment; almost daily advances in medicine as dissection of human bodies becomes more acceptable; the feeling that ideas and knowledge should be made public.
During Cola's stay in Oxford, one of the fellows of New College dies in somewhat suspicious circumstances; using some of the new scientific techniques, it is discovered that he drank wine poisoned with arsenic. Suspicion falls on a young woman, a former servant dismissed by this man; she is in the end hanged on her own confession.

An Instance of the Fingerpost (the title is a quotation from Francis Bacon's Novum Organum Scientarum about the feature of a puzzle which points the way to a true explanation of it, which in the original context is to do with the foundations of modern science which so concern this book) consists of four accounts of these events from the points of view of different men. Each writer has his own concerns and obsessions, their own reasons for recording or suppressing (or forgetting or misunderstanding) parts of what happened, and Pears manages the literary feat of making each seem to come from the pen of a different personality.

As with any historical novel, the main ingredient by which the reader judges An Instance of the Fingerpost is the evocation of the period in which it is set. It has a very strong seventeenth century atmosphere; the accounts may be in modern English, but they are full of ideas and modes of thought which are typical of the period, akin to the writings of the early scientists who are the major characters of the book. A word of warning, though: descriptions of seventeenth century medical practice and experimentation are not for the squeamish reader.

The novel of which An Instance of the Fingerpost most reminded me is Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. There are several reasons for this, including similarities in genre (both being at the literary end of the historical detective novel market) and setting (among those involved in the philosophical developments which led to modern science - and among celibate communities, Oxbridge college fellows being forbidden to marry until well into the nineteenth century). It is the quality of the writing within the genre, though, which is perhaps the most important link.

Molière: L'amour Médecin (1665)

Translation: As Love's The Best Doctor by John Wood, 1953
Edition: Penguin, 1984
Review number: 156

A short introduction by Molière explains a lot about this play; he wrote it in five days in response to a demand from Louis XIV for something to amuse him. The rapid execution is quite apparent; important aspects of the plot are missing, and the opening (a discussion between the arts as to which of them is to entertain the king) is weak. The plot itself is the standard Molière one of the father opposing the marriage of his daughter; what is missing is any motivation for him to do so. She feigns illness; her lover disguises himself as a doctor to visit her; he prescribes a fake wedding to cure her of an obsession with marriage; the revelation that it was a true wedding ends the play.

In the end, it reads like a first draft; amusing enough, but one to work on.

Molière: The Miser (1668)

Translation: John Wood, 1953
Edition: Penguin, 1984
Review number: 155

The Miser is one of Molière's best known plays, an original variation on the commedia dell'arte models which form the basis for his work. The elements are the young lovers withing to marry - a brother and sister with their chosen spouses - who are unable to because of the opposition of a parent. By making the reason for Harpagon's refusal to let them marry his extreme miserliness, Molière is able to ring the changes on his threadbare plot (shared by almost all his plays).

Harpagon dominates the play, and is splendidly grotesque. He is entirely one dimensional, avarice to the core - always wanting to run to check his store of money, yet afraid to do so in case thieves see him do it. There is a wonderful scene where he is trying to cut the costs of a banquet he wishes to hold in honour of his own impending marriage - to the young woman his son loves.

As in The Would-Be Gentleman, the idiosyncrasies of the title role are what raise the play above the standard attained by Molière's less well known plays.

Molière: Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671)

Translation: As That Scoundrel Scapin, by John Wood, 1953
Edition: Penguin, 1984
Review number: 153

That Scoundrel Scapin is definitely not an exact translation of the title of Molière's play, but it is difficult to imagine an alternative which doesn't sound a little odd in English - a fourberie is a deceit, or lying trick.

In Molière's output, there are about five really well known plays, and then lots of others which are very obscure, particularly in English. Among the obscure plays, most are very stereotypical commedia dell'arte standard plots - in fact, most of them have identical plots. This makes Molière's plays, like those of Marivaux, seem to me to be rather interchangeable and anonymous, however much fun in themselves. As so often with genre writing, as this kind of comedy is (though a genre now pretty much extinct), it is only when the conventional gestures are transcended that a true masterpiece results.

To anyone with a passing acquaintance with the genre (i.e. anyone who has read more than one or two plays by either writer), it will not come as a surprise to learn that Scapin is a reascaly servant, or that his tricks are played to bring about the marriage of his young master Octavio against the opposition of Octavio's father. The tricks in fact have little to do with the resolution of the plot, which rests on a conventional (and most unlikely) revelation that the girl he loves is in fact secretly the very woman his father wants him to marry. Not Molière's best.

John Ford: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (1633)

Edition: Everyman


John Ford's most famous play deals with the taboo theme of incest, prompting the writer of the introduction to this edition (first published in 1933) to disapprove of the decadence of the writer and audience.

The incestuous affair begins with Giovanni seducing his sister Annabella. He is a student, she on the verge of being betrothed. Their problems begin when Annabella discovers that she is pregnant; an attempt to get her quickly married off leads to her death at the hands of Giovanni, to preserve her honour. (Honour is a major theme of the play; the contrast between public reputation and private morality fascinated the Jacobeans as it did later playwrights such as Lorca.)

Some light relief from the grim plot is provided by Donado and Bergetto, his nephew. Donado wishes his nephew to court Annabella, but Bergetto is very stupid; he could almost be taken for a younger Sir Andrew Aguecheek. His idea of courtship involves innuendo and stupidity in equal measure (he talkes of showing her his "best parts", for example, but cannot bring himself to compliment her appearance).

The subject matter is not what has made this play survive for the four hundred years or so since Ford wrote it, though iots notoriety has obviously helped it to remain in the public consciousness. Ford's treatment is well thought out, avoiding the silly contrivances of Beaumont and Fletcher's forgotten incest play King and No King, where the discovery that one of the characters is a changeling allows a happy ending. Incest is the most condemned type of forbidden love, and is in fact a reasonably common theme (Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night are two important twentieth century novels to deal with it, for example). The difficulty in writing about it is not to trivialise the effects it can have, the guilt it can bring; here Ford, Faulkner and Fitzgerald succeed, while Beaumont and Fletcher and Heinlein fail.

Maurice Ashley: England in the Seventeenth Century (1952)

Edition: Penguin
Review number: 96

The Pelican English history series reaches the Stuarts. This particular volume takes each reign in turn, looking at the social, economic and art history of the period as well as the political (as does each volume in the series).

In some ways this is a more balanced book about the Stuart period than either The Stuarts or The Early Churchills; it doesn't have an axe to grind or a group of people to praise. Particularly from the economic and social points of view, the period calls out for longer, more detailed treatment than was possible here; many important trends saw their beginnings in the Stuart era and there is much argument about the causes and meanings of these beginnings. (The Marxist analysis of the Civil War by Christopher Hill is a good example - though I found many of his conclusions unconvincing - of a new way of looking at a war usually considered religious/political through economic/social eyes as part of the rise of the bourgeouisie).

Considering the limitations of space and the necessity of being accessible to a wide audience, this is another success.

Alexandre Dumas: Twenty Years On (1845)

Edition: Blackie & Son
Also translated as: Twenty Years After
Review number: 89

Twenty Years On is the less well-known sequel to the immensely popular Three Musketeers. This particular edition is an old one, from a time when the translator would either wish to remain anonymous - after all, Twenty Years On is not written in Greek or Latin and is translated into simple prose - or would not be considered important enough by the publisher to receive a credit. This is why no credit is given above for the translation, which is a good one.

Twenty years after their adventures recovering the queen's diamond from the English Duke of Buckingham, the four companions (d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis) have separated. Political events have moved on; the old king, Louis XIII has died, and so has the powerful Cardinal de Richelieu. The queen, Anne of Austria, is ruling the country as regent for her son Louis XIV, with her favourite, the unpopular Cardinal Mazarin. Civil war rages in England, and looks to be about to break out in France as well. It is impossible to avoid taking sides either for Mazarin and the queen, or for the party opposed to them, known as the Frondeurs (from which historians named these disturbances the "Frondes"). Porthos and d'Artagnan end up on the side of Mazarin, Athos and Aramis on the other. Both pairs return to England, the former to negotiate with Cromwell and the latter to aid king Charles I.

The complicated plot also involves the son of "Milady", the duplicity and avarice of Mazarin, smuggling the young king and his mother from a hostile Paris, and many other historical incidents into which the fictional characters are skilfully woven. But Dumas manages to prevent the historical detail from interfering with the sense of the period he creates and from the interest and amusement derived from the characters of the musketeers and their servants. (The portrayal of the relationships between single gentlemen and their servants, which must have been a close one for many such pairs, is something which comes across very strongly.) Dumas is helped by the fact that this is a sequel, using characters already established for the readers in the first book and needing only a reminder to renew the acquaintanceship. That fact doesn't prevent admiration for the success he has made of this aspect of the novel.

The reason it is less well-known, I feel, is to do with the comparative lack of action rather than any change in the quality of the writing.

A.L. Rowse: The Early Churchills (1956)

Edition: Penguin, 1969
Review number: 42

A.L. Rowse attempted to do something slightly different with this book; not a biography of an individual, which often ignores much of their family background, nor a genealogical record of the family history, which often ignores much of the character of the members of the family. The family chosen for this is that of the early Churchills (i.e. up until the point where the Marlborough title passed through the female line to the Spencers who took the surname of Churchill). The idea doesn't really work, as the book actually ends up reading like a set of short biographies; the principal ones here are Winston Churchill, who really founded the fortunes of the family and was a prominent lawyer and MP during the early years of Charles II; Arabella Churchill, mistress of James II; John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough and easily the most famous member of the family; and Sarah Churchill, his wife and the most interesting member of the family.

Although praised at the time (there is praise, for example, in J.P. Kenyon's The Stuarts), the book today seems old-fashioned. I gained this impression particularly from the eagerness with which Rowse turns anything he can into praise for the twentieth century Winston Churchill; every quality he mentions - and the Churchills he talks about were entirely praiseworthy according to Rowse - is also shown in the character of the prime minister.

Basically, in the nineties I think we want more critical biographies than are provided in this book.

J.P. Kenyon: The Stuarts (1969)

Edition: Fontana
Review number: 21


The Stuarts are interesting as perhaps the most devastatingly unsuccessful series of English monarchs. They managed to combine political stupidity with a belief in their own greatness, hardly a recipe for success, particularly not in the changing world of the seventeenth century.

This book follows on from The Tudors, and is part of Fontana's excellent series on English history understood through the personalities of the monarchs who have ruled the country. They have a popular feel, but don't compromise on the historical accuracy and scholarship. In the case of the Stuarts, for example, issues of sexuality are neither ignored nor sensationalised, and an intelligent assessment is made of the effects their activities had on policy (not as much as you might think).

None of the rulers, from James I to Anne, come over as terribly pleasant, and the book gives you the feeling that the English did the Scots a great service by causing the early death of so many Scottish Stuart kings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.