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`Credo` by Melvyn Bragg

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rex icelingas
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`Credo` by Melvyn Bragg

Post by rex icelingas » Fri March 27th, 2009, 6:29 am

Imagine going to see the next Spiderman film and it being about Peter Parker doing his grocery shopping you would be somewhat disappointed wouldnt you?

`Credo` by Melvyn Bragg is a novel of 7th Century Britain telling the story of an exiled Irish Princess and her guardian a Brythonic Prince.However If you are after Adventure,action or even Romance this isnt the book for you,if your greatest idea of the 7th Century is `the Synod of Whitby` then you have indeed found your Holy Grail.
Bragg is a writer who does understand the History,Politics and Religion of the period amongst the different nations(Irish,Britons,Angles etc) but its all incredibly slow and unexciting.The infamous Arthur is mentioned quite a few times and Bragg constantly tells us he was a King of Rheged,a wild geographic boast that he fails to say much more about.
If Theological debate interests you then you may enjoy this,but if you enjoy Shield Walls and Mead Halls you probably wont :)

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Post by Carla » Fri March 27th, 2009, 11:08 am

Thanks for this! I really must get around to reading Credo some day. I wonder why he places Arthur in Rheged, of all places? Rheged had King Urien, it seems a bit unfair for it to claim Arthur as well :-) Though Melvyn is a Rheged man himself, so maybe there's a certain amount of local patriotism involved....

By the way, have you read Absolution by Murder by Peter Tremayne? It's the first of the Sister Fidelma mysteries and is set at the Synod of Whitby.
PATHS OF EXILE - love, war, honour and betrayal in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria
Editor's Choice, Historical Novels Review, August 2009
Now available as e-book on Amazon Kindleand in Kindle, Epub (Nook, Sony Reader), Palm and other formats on Smashwords
Website: http://www.carlanayland.org
Blog: http://carlanayland.blogspot.com

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rex icelingas
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Post by rex icelingas » Fri March 27th, 2009, 4:36 pm

No I`ll give them a try!

Arthur is such a debatable character that i disliked his approach to his geographic location without an lengthly explanation(of course!).I did enjoy in your own work how you managed to mention Arthur subtly without placing him anywhere in particular or saying too much.
I did like the different approach Bragg took towards Cadwallon,who is recalled as a good King who went bad after deposing Edwin.Here he is treated from a Brythonic point of view almost the same as Bede saw him,a despotic tyrant who exterminated the helpless,an interesting angle.

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Post by Carla » Fri March 27th, 2009, 7:15 pm

I think Nigel Tranter describes Edward I somewhere as "a great man gone wrong", which given Tranter's normal pro-Scot take is saying something. Is Cadwallon along the same lines in Credo?

The gap in history into which Arthur fits most readily (if he existed) is around 500 AD, give or take a few decades either side, so I reckoned that he would already have been fading into the 'mists of legend' by 605, especially outside his core area (wherever that was).
PATHS OF EXILE - love, war, honour and betrayal in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria
Editor's Choice, Historical Novels Review, August 2009
Now available as e-book on Amazon Kindleand in Kindle, Epub (Nook, Sony Reader), Palm and other formats on Smashwords
Website: http://www.carlanayland.org
Blog: http://carlanayland.blogspot.com

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rex icelingas
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Post by rex icelingas » Sat March 28th, 2009, 7:37 am

Yeah Cadwallon is treated the same way but hes only mentioned in a past sense anyway
All the Angles apart from those drawn to a religious calling are pretty one dimensional like the bullying Ecgfrith,which was a shame after how well he got the personalities of the Brythonic and Irish peoples

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Post by Carla » Sat March 28th, 2009, 3:05 pm

Oh, that is a shame. It seems usual for books to take one side at the expense of the other, but I'm equally interested in all the ethnic groups and how they interacted with each other. Minority view, I guess :-)
PATHS OF EXILE - love, war, honour and betrayal in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria
Editor's Choice, Historical Novels Review, August 2009
Now available as e-book on Amazon Kindleand in Kindle, Epub (Nook, Sony Reader), Palm and other formats on Smashwords
Website: http://www.carlanayland.org
Blog: http://carlanayland.blogspot.com

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rex icelingas
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Post by rex icelingas » Sun March 29th, 2009, 7:38 pm

No I find it highly interesting also
I mean what was the nature of the alliance between Penda and Cadwallon and later on after his death?
Some sources point to Cadwallon marrying Penda`s sister,Was Cadwaladr his son half Mercian?

You tend to find the amount of people misinformed that `Waelas` means `Foreigners` or `Slaves`when in actual fact it means something closer to `Romans` or `Those under Roman rule`.
Easy to forget that the Franks across the channel also referred to there Romano subjects as `Waelas`and they were subjects not slaves or a people to be exterminated as such.

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Post by Carla » Tue March 31st, 2009, 4:30 pm

The same root is the origin of 'Valais' in Switzerland and 'Walloon' in Belgium isn't it?
PATHS OF EXILE - love, war, honour and betrayal in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria
Editor's Choice, Historical Novels Review, August 2009
Now available as e-book on Amazon Kindleand in Kindle, Epub (Nook, Sony Reader), Palm and other formats on Smashwords
Website: http://www.carlanayland.org
Blog: http://carlanayland.blogspot.com

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rex icelingas
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Post by rex icelingas » Wed April 1st, 2009, 1:31 pm

Yeah I think quite a few places in Europe

I think while the genocide of the Britons as described in the early entries of the ASC and Gildas may have been the case especially in each areas `early years` of warfare`,but dont account for say the 100+ years between our famous Kentish Revolt and say Perhaps the death of Cadwallon,was it really non stop fighting for that long? of course not.

But I am starting to look more at Britons integrating into An Aenglisc society
Yes someone like Peter Beresford Ellis makes very good argument the other way with some very viable points
But the North Sea would have had to have been permanantly ferrying 24/7 to get the numbers of pure blooded Germanics we associate with Anglo-Saxon England
Melvyn Bragg in the novel`s own way of countering the Integration/Assimilation thing is to say the Angles breed offspring like No-ones buisiness!
Its an interesting talking point thats seen my own opinion fluctuate countless times

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Post by Carla » Wed April 1st, 2009, 3:40 pm

One can argue that the mention in the ASC of the massacre of the garrison at Anderida means that such things were highly unusual (therefore it was worth making special note of), or one can argue the exact opposite and say that it means such things were the norm. I lean towards the former interpretation, on the logic that one would expect chronicles to record (and oral tradition to remember) the significant and exceptional rather than the mundane. Besides, I can't help thinking that "Peaceful Handover, Nobody Hurt" would make just as poor a headline in 500 AD as it would now :-) You takes your choice....

One interesting thought is to ask: how would you know whether someone was Brittonic or English or of mixed parentage in, say, 500 AD? It's not as if there was DNA testing, and I doubt anybody was keeping detailed pedigrees except perhaps among royalty and aristocracy. So presumably you'd infer it from behaviour (religion, style of dress), political allegiance (which king/lord they obeyed), the language they spoke, or what they told you. All of which can be changed very fast by cultural assimilation.
PATHS OF EXILE - love, war, honour and betrayal in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria
Editor's Choice, Historical Novels Review, August 2009
Now available as e-book on Amazon Kindleand in Kindle, Epub (Nook, Sony Reader), Palm and other formats on Smashwords
Website: http://www.carlanayland.org
Blog: http://carlanayland.blogspot.com

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