Afbeelding auteur

Alison Macleod (1920–)

Auteur van The Death of Uncle Joe

Alison Macleod is Alison MacLeod (1). Voor andere auteurs genaamd Alison MacLeod, zie de verduidelijkingspagina.

9 Werken 41 Leden 2 Besprekingen

Werken van Alison Macleod

The Death of Uncle Joe (1997) 13 exemplaren
The Muscovite (1971) 8 exemplaren
The heretic : a novel (1965) 5 exemplaren
The Trusted Servant (1972) 4 exemplaren
Prisoner of the queen (1973) 3 exemplaren
The Jesuit (1972) 3 exemplaren
No need of the sun (1971) 2 exemplaren
The Portingale (1976) 2 exemplaren
The hireling 1 exemplaar

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Geboortedatum
1920-04-12
Geslacht
female

Leden

Besprekingen

Catherine of Bergenza, Portugese Catholic princess, is sent to England to be the wife of Charles the Second, newly restored to the throne. Bringing an indomitable sense of right and wrong to a muddled and compromised court, where Charles feels obliged to pardon the wrongdoings of men who supported him or his father, even when those wrongdoings are directed against or harm him, enabling the rise of powerful lords who feel, and effectively are, untouchable by law, and who all turn against the king with savagery and ruthlessness. Charles himself wounds Catherine with his mistresses, but she remains not only faithful but manages to avoid succumbing to jealousy and bitterness, learning how to cope with the ebb ad flow of her husband's favour to best defend the interests of her beloved homeland and her fellow religionsists. It's a world of intrigue and plot and conspiracy, and it culminates in the extraordinary welter of political and religious ugliness that was the Popish Plot, during which only Catherine's good name and demeanour seem to keep the country from another Civil War.

Well written and well told, with touches of wit and great passion under the cool, precise voice, filled with extraordinary characters, as many good as evil, and many divided, such as her husband, a man of charm and grace, yet who constantly shifts and compromises weakly, and who is s casually and unquestioningly misogynistic as most other men of his age. A terrific, absorbing and fascinating read.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
Nigel_Quinlan | Oct 21, 2015 |
This book, by a former journalist on the British Communist Daily Worker newspaper, chronicles her increasing disillusionment with both Soviet Communism and the Stalinist leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, after both Khrushchov's secret speech denouncing Stalin's crimes and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which seemed to give the lie to the view that the Soviet Union had fundamentally changed under the post-Stalin leadership. The shock of the revelations on her and her comrades is well described and illustrates the capacity of many people for self-delusion, deceiving themselves into believing or blocking out the existence of events or developments depending on whether or not these fit into their world view. This phenomenon, and the associated cognitive dissonance, which can amount to a personal trauma, obviously has much wider applications than those described in this book, though it is particularly acute here, given the knowledge of the atrocities committed under Stalin's rule and the contrast with the naive view held by many that he was the saviour of the international working class. The story is excitingly told and by no means a dull political memoir.… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
john257hopper | May 31, 2015 |

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Statistieken

Werken
9
Leden
41
Populariteit
#363,652
Waardering
½ 3.3
Besprekingen
2
ISBNs
48
Talen
1