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The Man in the Iron Mask: The Mystery Solved
 
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The Man in the Iron Mask: The Mystery Solved (Hardcover)

by Roger MacDonald (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Hardcover (1st Carroll & Graf Ed) 3 used & new from £12.17
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishing; 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition (25 Oct 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0786716061
  • ISBN-13: 978-0786716067
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 3.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,387,392 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Oxford Times
He brings to life one of Europe's most exciting periods. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
Alexandre Dumas said that his famous Three Musketeers never existed, but Athos, Aramis and Porthos were flesh and blood. Their supposedly fictional duel with Cardinal Richelieu's guards actually took place in 1640 and Charles d'Artagnan, a teenager on his first day in Paris, fought alongside the Musketeers. According to Oxford historian Macdonald, several other elements of the tale are also based in fact the Cardinal's agent, Milady de Winter, really was an English aristocrat, and against all odds, the country boy without influence, d'Artagnan, did succeed in becoming Captain of the King's Musketeers, the only man whom Louis XIV could trust to arrest his over-mighty minister, Fouquet. It was d'Artagnan who escorted Fouquet to the feared Alpine fortress of Pignerol, wherein lived the most mysterious of all prisoners, the Man in the Iron Mask. Macdonald has spent five years unraveling fact from fiction to reveal the true story of the Musketeers and their link with the Man in the Iron Mask. It is a reality more extraordinary than anything Dumas could devise. Honor and heroism, betrayal and intrigue, are set amidst the lust, jealousy, and deadly poisons that made the Sun King's court a world of glittering paranoia.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding - history is truly stranger than any fiction, 4 Jan 2006
This book is very well written and engaging telling the stories of the (in)famous musketeers as part of the essential background to the revelation of the identity behind the mask.

Macdonald's narative brings the times to life effortlessly. The reader can almost smell the stench of Paris, witness the unbelievable levels of corruption at all levels in society and see the endemic casual violence.

Macdonald's thorough research notes and useful appendices are all that prevents the reader from placing this book on the shelf marked fiction.

You won't want to put this book down until you know the truth behind the mask.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars excellent read, 5 Feb 2006
By armourersergeant (kilsby, warks United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
I found this book an excellent read, the research was obviously thorough and the author knows his subject. Yet I can not bring my self to conclude the real Man in the Iron Mask. But then perhaps my mind is tainted by my previous knowledge. It is almost as if I do not want to believe it.

All of that however does not detract from a good informative read.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Not even wrong, 15 Dec 2008
Roger Macdonald's contribution to the numerous theories about the Iron Mask is engagingly written, with a strong sense of place and time. Unfortunately, that's about all there is to recommend it.

The Iron Mask, like King Arthur or Rennes-le-Chateau, is a magnet for people with their own theories. Macdonald is typical of this type, using evidence as it supports them and quietly ignoring it if it doesn't. In telling his compelling story, facts are seemlessly entwined with interpretation, supposition and pure invention. Indeed, only if you have read other books on this subject would you realise how the evidence has been deployed to support his ideas without pondering alternatives.

Frankly, Macdonald's thesis doesn't make much sense to start with. Motives, which must be critical, are vague and inconsistent. The author himself sets out some questions at the beginning that must be answered, and fails to do so convincingly. Worst of all though, is that crucial dates have been massaged to make the theory stand up. Once these dates are corrected, we have to believe that the Iron Mask was over 90 when he died, having received a bullet through the throat at the age of about 60 and been kept in appalling conditions of imprisonment.

It's a decent read but it's no closer to the truth than Dumas's novel.
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