| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780385471909 | | Publisher: Anchor Books | | Publish Date: 4/10/2007 | | Buy.com Sku: 30055334 | | Item#: RFJ5XV | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8.5H x 5.5L x 1.25T |
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| | | | In England, November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day, when fireworks displays commemorate the shocking moment in 1605 when government authorities uncovered a secret plan to blow up the House of Parliament--and King James I along with it. A group of English Catholics, seeking to unseat the king and reintroduce Catholicism as the state religion, daringly placed thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in a cellar under the Palace of Westminster. Their aim was to ignite the gunpowder at the opening of the Parliamentary session. Though the charismatic Catholic, Robert Catesby, was the group's leader, it was the devout Guy Fawkes who emerged as its most famous member, as he was the one who was captured and who revealed under torture the names of his fellow plotters. In the aftermath of their arrests, conditions grew worse for English Catholics, as legal penalties against them were stiffened and public sentiment became rabidly intolerant.
In a narrative that reads like a gripping detective story, Antonia Fraser has untangled the web of religion, politics, and personalities that surrounded that fateful night of November 5. And, in examining the lengths to which individuals will go for their faith, she finds in this long-ago event a reflection of the religion-inspired terrorism that has produced gunpowder plots of our own time.
Annotation:
"The Gunpowder Plot" recreates the terrorist conspiracy annually commemorated on Guy Fawkes Day. Antonia Fraser has researched the plot by Roman Catholic extremists to topple the government of James I of England, and she outlines the parallels between the religious extremists of the Jacobean era and the fanatics of the 20th century. Dorris Lessing chose this title as a "Times Literary Supplement" Book of the Year for 1996.
| PraiseSpectator
"None of this is very new, but Fraser traces a well-documented course through ambiguous terrain with some original comments and details...The details are interesting." - Peter Vansittart 08/31/1996Literary Review
"Antonia Fraser has written an excellent book which unravels the whole story of the plot, exploring the background, keeping close to the evidence, and, above all, bringing the characters to life." - Hugh Trevor-Roper August 1996 New York Times Book Review
'it is such a good yarn that one wonders why nobody has tried to popularize it before." - Micheal Elliott 10/27/1996 Times Literary Supplement
"[Frazer] has brought that time to life so strongly that you fell you are there, knowing these people, faced with these choices, these dangers." - Doris Lessing 11/29/1996 |
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