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Engish Civil War

annis
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Post by annis » Fri December 24th, 2010, 6:21 am

I'd be interested to know what you think of it, Misfit. I rather enjoyed his novel Fire and Shadow, which is part grail quest thriller, part romance, set during the Crusades, and inspired by the journey of a real woman, isabel de Mortaine, who travelled to the Holy Land and left a diary of her travels. The diary remained in the Neville family till 1924 when it was donated to the British Library.

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Misfit
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Post by Misfit » Sat December 25th, 2010, 9:54 pm

[quote=""annis""]I'd be interested to know what you think of it, Misfit. I rather enjoyed his novel Fire and Shadow, which is part grail quest thriller, part romance, set during the Crusades, and inspired by the journey of a real woman, isabel de Mortaine, who travelled to the Holy Land and left a diary of her travels. The diary remained in the Neville family till 1924 when it was donated to the British Library.[/quote]

I'll be starting later on today.
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be

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Misfit
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Post by Misfit » Sun December 26th, 2010, 2:54 pm

[quote=""SGM""]I have had it hanging around for a while and read half of it. I was not particularly inspired but might reassess later. I will get round to finishing it at some point when I am less engrossed in the non fiction I am reading about the same period. I am supposed ]to be moving forward to the beginning of the 18th century but instead find myself travelling backward towards to Henry VII. No self-discipline.[/quote]

Sigh, I was doing OK until I came across the first big sex scene. Eeeewwwww.
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be

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EC2
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Post by EC2 » Sun December 26th, 2010, 3:02 pm

[quote=""annis""]I'd be interested to know what you think of it, Misfit. I rather enjoyed his novel Fire and Shadow, which is part grail quest thriller, part romance, set during the Crusades, and inspired by the journey of a real woman, isabel de Mortaine, who travelled to the Holy Land and left a diary of her travels. The diary remained in the Neville family till 1924 when it was donated to the British Library.[/quote]

My goodness, if a Medieval woman left a diary of any sort earlier than the Paston era, it would be a historical document of absolutely massive importance and implication. I've not heard about it in academic circles. I would think the document alone would be worth publishing.
Les proz e les vassals
Souvent entre piez de chevals
Kar ja li coard n’I chasront

'The Brave and the valiant
Are always to be found between the hooves of horses
For never will cowards fall down there.'

Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal

www.elizabethchadwick.com

SGM
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Post by SGM » Sun December 26th, 2010, 7:31 pm

[quote=""Misfit""]Sigh, I was doing OK until I came across the first big sex scene. Eeeewwwww.[/quote]

I just skip those if they are tedious and I can't remember it so I must have done but it might have why I got bored and moved on to something else. I'll have to go back and have a look.
Currently reading - Emergence of a Nation State by Alan Smith

annis
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Post by annis » Sun December 26th, 2010, 8:11 pm

Posted by EC
My goodness, if a Medieval woman left a diary of any sort earlier than the Paston era, it would be a historical document of absolutely massive importance and implication. I've not heard about it in academic circles. I would think the document alone would be worth publishing.
I’m just going by what Hillier says in the postscript to Fire and Shadow, EC, I can’t confirm that such a manuscript actually exists, though if it does, from Hillier’s description it seems more likely to be bits and scraps, random jottings, rather than what we think of as a diary.

From the PS:

“Isabel de Mortaine had four sons and two daughters. We know from a charter that she was still alive in 1244, when she would have been seventy one. Her eldest daughter, Alice, married Edmund Swynford.”

Here Hillier muddies the waters by saying, “Their descendant was Katherine Swnford, who married John of Gaunt in 1396”. Clearly Katherine couldn’t have been a descendant as she was totally unrelated, the only connection being her marriage to a Swynford. Katherine’s Swynford children, however, would have been descendants of Isabel’s.

He continues:
“Isabel left a diary of her travels to and from the Holy Land, which remained in the Neville family until donated to the British Library in 1924. Her account is brief and enigmatic in places, but it is from these fragments that this tale is constructed”.

Interesting if irrelevant - I've just been reading a post which indicates that Katherine and Hugh Swynford's son Thomas, who was fiercely loyal to Henry Bolingbroke, may well have contrived the death of Richard II at Pontefract.
Last edited by annis on Mon December 27th, 2010, 2:06 am, edited 4 times in total.

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Misfit
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Post by Misfit » Sun December 26th, 2010, 8:41 pm

I've a little more than 100 pages to go and skimming quite a bit. I would categorize this more in the historical thriller genre than a straight novel and would probably appeal more to the male reader. I wouldn't go running out to buy a copy.
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be

SGM
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Lady of Loyalty House

Post by SGM » Sun April 10th, 2011, 10:03 am

I was interested that two of the novels written about the English civil war published in the early 90s both shared an episode in which the family home was under seige by the other side and have long thought that this was inspired (rather loosely) on the experiences of Lady Brilliana Harley (wife of Sir Robert Harley, the man who cancelled Christmas).

A couple of weeks ago I found a cheap Kindle edition of The Lady of Loyalty House by Justin H McCarthy published in 1904 with just such an episode only this time the connection is rather more obvious because the heroine is called Brilliana Harby albeit in this novel she is a royalist. Given that this novel was published in 1904 when royalist sympathies were probably rather more to the fore (after all it pre-dates the universal franchise in the UK) and the age of the professional historian was still in its infancy, this is not all that surprising.

It's actually not a bad read given its age -- a rather flowery romance -- but OK.

I still have a huge list of OOP Victorian, early 20th century ECW novels to get through and it could take several years.
Currently reading - Emergence of a Nation State by Alan Smith

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