June's Books

Well, its been a while ...... quite a while since the library opened its doors for some new arrivals. But better late than never, June's order has just gone in, and here's what should be arriving before month's end:

The Third Plantagenet: George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III's Brother by John Ashdown-Hill

Less well-known than his brothers, Edward IV and Richard III, little has been written about George, Duke of Clarence, leaving us with a series of unanswered questions: What was he really like? What set him and his brother Edward IV against one another? And who was really responsible for his death? 

The Knights Templar Absolution: The Chinon Parchment and the History of the Poor Knights of Christ by A.A. Grishin

the Chinon Parchment .... Originally created in 1308, this official legal record has been recently recovered after missing for centuries. It is finally made widely available here in its original Latin with a new English translation. In the early 14th century, after a long series of defeats in the Levant, the Order was charged with heresy by King Philip IV of France. The Chinon Parchment details a crucial step in subsequent papal investigations into the Knights Templar activities.

Franks and Alamanni in the Merovingian Period: An Ethnographic Perspective edited by Ian Wood

The Alamans were early victims of post-Roman expansion of the Frankish empire. This volume considers the Franks and Alamans from a series of perspectives, historical, archaeological, and linguistic. It explores the origins of both peoples.

Owain Glyn Dwr - the Last Prince of Wales by Peter Gordon Williams

This is the compelling tale of a warrior prince and a host of other characters, ranging from his loyal bodyguard Madoc to mad King Charles of France, who influenced his life. Owain Glyn Dwr was more than a courageous and resourceful commander; he was an eminent scholar who, in the pursuit of learning and scholarship, looked beyond the boundaries of Wales.

Somerled by John Marsden

Investigates Somerled of Argyll's emergence in the forefront of the Gaelic-Norse aristocracy of the western seaboard, his part in Gaeldom's challenge to the Canmore kings of Scots, his war on the Manx king of the Isles, his importance for the church on Iona, and his invasion of the Clyde which was cut short by his death at Renfrew in 1164.

The Knight Who Saved England

For a brief period in English history, a French king was named monarch of England – this was the Dauphin Louis and the time was 1216.  It was a period of turmoil in England – King John was at odds with his powerful barons, who invited the prince to England to lay claim to the throne in 1215.  Louis duly accepted and landed in England where he was welcomed by the rebellious barons.  John had only the year before signed what is now known as the Magna Carta at Runnymede (1215).

That same year as the French prince landed to claim his throne, King John died leaving his infant son Henry as England’s next monarch.  Many of the barons in rebellion against John gave their support to the young boy-king and support for Louis fizzled but not before a small force of French under Thomas, Comte de Perche laid siege to Lincoln Castle.  The English force was led by the 70yo Earl of Pembroke – the formidable William Marshal.  The French were routed and the sack of the rebel town became known as the Battle of Lincoln Fair.

The chronicler Roger of Wendover, who wrote an account of events (Flower of History trans by JA Ggiles London 1849), said …

“This battle, which, in derision of Louis and the barons, they called “The Fair,” took place on the 19th of May, which was on the Saturday in Whitsun-week; it commenced between the first and third hour, and was finished by these good managers before the ninth.

This then is the back-drop to Richard Brooks’ book, The Knight Who Saved England.

Brooks details events in English history leading up to and including the battle of Lincoln, and in doing so, recounts important events under the Angevin kings – Henry II, Richard I and John.  We are then treated to a short history of the life of England’s pre-eminent knight, William Marshal, which is based on an epic poem written after his death in 1219 entitled “ L’Historie de Guillaume de Marechal”.  

He was "marshal and then regent of England who served four English monarchs as a royal adviser and agent and as a warrior of outstanding prowess."

Brooks pays special attention to William’s career at the tournaments and his life with Henry, the Young King of England (eldest son and heir of Henry II of England).  Brooks goes on to detail William’s long military career on battlefield and siege, and gives us an insight into the chivalric and knightly class of the period.  All of this leads us up to William’s role and leadership in the battle of Lincoln, in which we find the aged knight so eager for battle that he leaves without his helm.

Needless to say, the life and character of William Marshal is extraordinary and you will find a list of further reading at the end of Brooks’ book.

Further Reading:

A Knight’s Tale – Thomas Asbridge (http://www.thomasasbridge.com/)

William Marshal by Georges Duby (trans Richard Howard)

History of William Marshal by A J Holden

William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147-1219 by David Crouch

Magna Charta Barons, 1915. Baronial Order of Runnemede  by Charles H. Browning

William Marshal: Medieval England's Greatest Knight by Myra Weatherly

William Marshal, Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England by Sidney Painter

Links

William Marshall: flower of chivalry - http://www.medievalwarfare.info/marshal.htm

William Marshall - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Marshal,_1st_Earl_of_Pembroke

Medieval English genealogy – notes on William Marshall - http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/families/marshal/williammarshal.shtml

Battle of Lincoln 1217 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lincoln_(1217)

History of Eengland podcasts – William the Regent - http://historyofengland.typepad.com/blog/2012/05/60-william-the-regent.html

Ten Controversial Books about the Middle Ages

Medievalist dot net has published an insightful article on what are considered to be ten of the most controversial books to have been written about the middle ages.

The following books are listed:

• Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century by Norman Cantor
• The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
• 1421: The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies
• Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted by Susan Reynolds
• The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe by Robert Gottfried
• City of Light: The Hidden Journal of the Man Who Entered China Four Years Before Marco Polo edited and translated by David Selbourne
• The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation edited by Raleigh A. Skelton
• Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn Townsend White, Jr.
• Passovers of Blood: European Jews and Ritual Homicides (Pasque di sangue: Ebrei d’Europa e omicidi rituali) by Ariel Toaff
• Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe by John Boswell

Medievalist dot net provides a short synopsis on each book and an explanation (which additional links) as to why each book made the list.

After reading this article, I am quite thankful that none of the above books are a part of my library - though I have considered the "1421" book a number of times but kept passing it over for something else.  It does, however, make one curious enough to pick up a copy (from a library) and read for oneself and decide whether these books really do belong on the abovementioned list.

Happy reading!

Library Open For Business

Well, this Librarian is back on board and the Library is again open for business.

A change of job, followed by an unexpected promotion two months later, followed by a move of domicile two months following that has meant that reading and reviewing has fallen by the wayside - which was unintentional.

However, house move complete, books have been re-shelved and things on the employment front have settled so it is now back to business as usual.

So all of those books which have been awaiting review will be reviewed; all those books awaiting reading will be read - shortly!

Anyway, glad I am to be back on board.

Happy reading!

A Burnable Book

Review of Bruce Holsinger's novel "A Burnable Book" by Washington Post fiction editor Ron Charles:

Forget Tom Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa tower; the hot new super-agent is 14th-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer. Thrill to his daring Middle English rimes! Gasp at his mighty scansion! Here in the pages of Bruce Holsinger’s medieval adventure, that randy old poet finally gets the “Mission Impossible” cameo he deserves.

“The Burnable Book” takes place in 1385, when the walled city of London is still finding its footing after the Peasants’ Revolt four years earlier. As the Hundred Years’ War drags on, young Richard II faces myriad threats inside and outside his country. Who knows when fresh blood may flow between the Earl of Oxford and the king’s uncle, John of Gaunt?

The intrigue opens during a dark night on the Moorfields. A cloaked man is beating a young woman for information. Whatever he wants to know, she won’t tell him. She screams out two lines of an allegorical poem just before he finishes her off with a hammer. This doesn’t say much for the efficacy of poetry as a defense against blunt-force trauma, but it gets the novel off to a rousing start.

I had this one on my TBR list - and after reading this review, the book has moved ever closer to the top.  I am looking forward to getting my hands on a copy and settling in for a journey into " the grimy underbelly of London".

New Poems by Sappho

From the Guardian:

Sappho is one of the most elusive and mysterious – as well as best-loved – of ancient Greek poets. Only one of her poems, out of a reputed total of nine volumes' worth, survives absolutely intact. Otherwise, she is known by fragments and shards of lines – and still adored for her delicate outpourings of love, longing and desire.

But now, two hitherto unknown works by the seventh-century lyricist of Lesbos have been discovered. One is a substantially complete work about her brothers; another, an extremely fragmentary piece apparently about unrequited love.

The poems came to light when an anonymous private collector in London showed a piece of papyrus fragment to Dr Dirk Obbink, a papyrologist at Oxford University.

Read Poem Here => http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/30/read-sappho-new-unknown-poem-papyrus-classical

Sappho's poems, which were lost from the manuscript tradition and were not collated and copied by medieval monks as were so many surviving ancient texts, have been preserved by two main means: either through quotation by other authors (often as examples of particular syntactical points by ancient grammarians) or through the discovery of fragments written on ancient papyrus. There is hope yet for more poems to come to light, preserved in the Egyptian sands.

Obit: Thomas F Mayer

From Quad City Times:

Thomas F. Mayer, 62, died Monday, Jan. 20, 2014, at the Clarissa C. Cook Hospice House in Bettendorf, after a year-and-a half-long struggle with cancer. He was born Sept. 10, 1951, in McLeansboro, Ill.

Tom was professor emeritus of history and an internationally known scholar who taught for most of his life at Augustana College in Rock Island. He received his master's degree in medieval history at Michigan State University and his Ph.D. in Tudor/Stuart history at the University of Minnesota.

As the author of 15 books, he wrote a study of the early 16th century political thinker, Thomas Starkey; a biography of Starkey's patron, Reginald Pole, who missed becoming pope by one vote; and a trilogy on Galileo's trial and the Roman Inquisition. His second volume on the Inquisition was published just before his death, and another book on Galileo's trial will be published posthumously. He also edited five volumes of Pole's correspondence.

The Ruin - A Word From The Author

I posed a couple of questions to John in relation to his book "The Ruin" which I shall share with you all now.

=== === ===

Following up on Melisende's review of my novel The Ruin, there were some questions she raised with me.

The first was why I chose the mid-5th century as my setting, when the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain began in earnest and the post-Roman civilisation was in its death throes. As Melisende mentioned to me, there is a pretty near endless supply of fiction set in the supposed Arthurian era around the turn of the sixth century, and that's partly why I chose the period fifty years earlier. 

Vortigern's era has some of the same advantages as the Arthurian period (dearth of primary sources, wealth of legendary material) while the disadvantages (done to death by fiction, rendered meaningless by pseudohistory) aren't quite so severe. There is simply more room to develop a story without straying into areas that get pillaged for new material every year by every conceivable medium, in fiction or non-fiction, whether anyone is paying attention or not.

That said, there are already some great fictional pieces that deal with broadly the same period - The Little Emperors by Alfred Duggan, and 'Hun' by Anthony Burgess (this is a novella in a collection called The Devil's Mode). Well worth checking out.

Melisende also asked why I didn't use the more familiar forms of some of the names in dealing with historical figures. There were a couple of reasons for this. 

The first was to avoid familiarity dictating the reader's perceptions, especially for readers who might be familiar with some of the historical figures involved. You may already know the story of St Patrick, for instance - how he was taken into slavery by Irish raiders at the age of sixteen and later became a missionary. In The Ruin he is known by his birth name, partly because he adopted the name 'Patricius' later in life, and partly to preserve the sense of danger when the raiders land near his home.

The other reason was because a lot of the names have come down to us through different linguistic routes, and they often just look odd on the page together - the Latin 'Eldolus' and 'Pascentius' alongside the Middle Welsh 'Amllawdd', 'Ynyr' and 'Glywys', for example. So I did a bit of linguistic detective work. I could explain why the form 'Vertigern' is more historically correct than the familiar 'Vortigern', but I'm afraid it would bore any sane person to tears. The same goes for the place names.

Melisende asked if there might be a sequel on the cards, and to be honest I think it's unlikely for the time being. I have a pretty clear idea in my head of how a continuation might go, just in case there was some demand for it one day, but for the moment I'm just concentrating on trying new things.

JOHN SAWNEY
Website: http://jacksawney.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @JohnSawney 

Review - The Ruin

"A gritty tale of Dark Age Britain, where heroes are few and the lives of thousands hinge upon the whims of greedy and unscrupulous men. In fifth century Britannia .... Eiteol, a cloddish nobleman, manages to save the dictator Vertigern from an assassination attempt and the pair must flee for their lives …...."

The story is that of the early invasions of Britain by the Saxons, Angles & Jutes, during the 5th century. It is a time of chaos and ever-wavering loyalties and the leaders fight each other and themselves for power and control - and prominent is the backdrop of the story of the Night of the Long Knives

Here are names that may be tantalizingly familiar to those whose forte is the early Anglo-Saxon history of Britain: Horsa, Hengist, Vortigern (here called Vertigern), one Eldol (called Eiteol), Gildas (Glivis), and Arthur (called Ambris, and finally Flavius Ambrosius Aurelinus). Many other of the “founding” Saxons, Angles & Jutes are here in some form as are the missionary figures who feature in the early christianisation of Britain (including St Germanus).

It is a fast paced story – though those unfamiliar with this period may find the going a little hard (ie: keeping track of the main characters) but there is enough action to keep the reader entertained.

This story is a glimpse into the past, although I wonder whether the author considers that there is more to tell …. 

For more about Vortigern visit: Vortigern Studies
For more on the author visit: John Sawney