| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Gunpowder Plot for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
About the Author
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Guy Fawkes was not the ringleader, but a pawn--somewhat like the Watergate burglars. The ringleader was a Robert Catesby, and the conspirators were devout Catholics suffering repression and seeking to replace King James with a Catholic ruler. Repression of Catholicism redoubled after the plot was foiled. Robert Catesby and his cohorts hired Guy Fawkes, a mercenary with a talent for exploding things, to blow up King James and Parliament in one fell swoop. Fawkes was caught red handed under Parliament with a lantern and more than enough gunpowder to do the job. He was not advised of his Miranda rights before questioning.
"The Gunpowder Plot" is a great story poorly told. The writer assumes too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, and the writing is closer to James Joyce than Ernest Hemingway without displaying the literary talent of either. Whenever I decide I am reading a poorly written book, I usually put it down without finishing it. Despite its shortcomings, I finished "The Gunpowder Plot". The story itself was so interesting that it carried me through to the end.
Wading through to the end proved rewarding. The book ends with a chapter on the influences of the Gunpowder Plot on Shakespeare's "MacBeth." The author makes a good case for the proposition that the Plot's influence on the play was profound.
As an American reader, I did find it a bit difficult to read between the lines for the information I didn't go into the book knowing, and according to what I read in Wikipedia the book doesn't go very far into the (apparentally) widely accepted theory that the whole thing was arranged by someone in the government (Salisbury) to give them an excuse to persecute Catholics further and tighten the Protestant hold. Primarily because he dismisses it as conspiritorial nonsense.
Definitely an interesting read -- I didn't know much about the Catholic persecution and plots in Elizabethan England before and I feel more enlightened about the era in general, if not specifically the Gunpowder plot.
It is a bit dry at times, but there are little anecdotes sprinkled throughout that make it an easier read. Definitely not light reading or a general overview of the Gunpowder Plot, but excellent for those who want detailed and unusual information.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
