Tea at Trianon: The Second Sleep

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, August 12, 2019

The Second Sleep

From Willow and Thatch:

During the late Middle Ages, a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in England’s remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artifacts – coins, fragments of glass, human bones – which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death? Has the new priest discovered something kept secret for centuries?

Fairfax becomes determined to discover the truth. Everything he believes – about himself, his faith, and the history of his world – will be tested to destruction.

Publisher Penguin Random House calls the medieval era tale chilling, saying that it is “unlike anything Robert Harris has done before.” Imprint Hutchinson adds that the story is “a genre-bending thriller that explores the devastating potential of misused and oppressive doctrine, whilst challenging our notions of liberty and history. With Harris’ characteristic mastery of suspense and intrigue, the series will paint a world that is both familiar and yet strangely alien, asking what price one must pay to uncover the truth.” (Read more.)