Mother Leakey and the Bishop
A Ghost Story
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:9th Oct '08
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Halloween 1636: sightings of the ghost of an old woman begin to be reported in the small English coastal town of Minehead, and a royal commission is sent to investigate. December 1640: a disgraced Protestant bishop is hanged in the Irish capital, Dublin, after being convicted of an 'unspeakable' crime. In this remarkable piece of historical detective work, Peter Marshall sets out to uncover the intriguing links between these two seemingly unconnected events. The result is a compelling tale of dark family secrets, of efforts to suppress them, and of the ways in which they finally come to light. It is also the story of a shocking seventeenth-century Church scandal which cast its shadow over religion and politics in Britain and Ireland for the best part of three centuries, drawing in a host of well known and not-so-well-known characters along the way, including Jonathan Swift, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Walter Scott. A fascinating story in its own right, Mother Leakey and the Bishop is also a sparkling demonstration of how the telling of stories is central to the way we remember the past, and can become part of the fabric of history itself.
What a surprisingly wonderful read! With this work, Peter Marshall has written one of the best narratives on seventeenth-century English history, bringing together the small world of a Somerset fishing village with the larger worlds of Sir Thomas Wentworth, Archbishop Laud, and even Charles I. * Journal of British Studies *
An engaging and ambitious work...a remarkable achievement...thought-provoking and enjoyable. * Tom Webster, Histoire Sociale-Social History, 42 *
[This] will appeal to the divergent fields of academic history and broader reading without either boring the academic or patronizing the general reader. * Tom Webster, Histoire Sociale-Social History, 42 *
This is as fine an example of microhistory as is likely to be written. * Craig Herline, Church History and Religious Culture *
Hugely enjoyable feat of historical reconstruction...intiricate story told with hilarious elegance. * London Review of Books *
It is an ugly story but Marshall's way of telling it is irresistible and richly informative. * Sunday Times. John Carey. *
...an engaging and ambitious work... that will appeal to the divergent fields of academic history and broader reading without either boring the academic or patronizing the general reader... a remarkable achievement... thought-provoking and enjoyable. * Histoire Sociale - Social History, 42. Tom Webster. *
ISBN: 9780199532070
Dimensions: 195mm x 129mm x 18mm
Weight: 368g
352 pages