Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #131100 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

John Coulter, Tribune, April 4, 2007
A shining example of how narrative history can be used to
illustrate a complicated subject... A remarkable piece of detective work.

Review
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. )

Spectator, March 24, 2007
'Shrewdly calibrated, abundantly entertaining.'

Customer Reviews

Magical mystery tour
This is huge fun ... or at least, it starts as fun and ends up as a bit more than that. The sensationalist raw material - the ghost, the bishop convicted of sodomy (though probably not of bestiality, sadly), and the weird connections between them - are up front. But having given us this racy drama, Marshall then won't let us get familiar with it: he keeps showing us the same events through different eyes, how history and prejudice and everyone's agenda has changed it. You start by enjoying a rollocking tale, and you finish wondering how we actually know anything about anything. Oh, and mourning for the loss of the teashop.

A great read
This is a cracking history book based upon the obscure tale of a seventeenth century haunting in Minehead and the related execution of a bishop for sodomy in Dublin. The book adopts an amusing and sardonic tone, but is in fact a serious investigation into the relationship between supernatural events and politics, ideas, and the social order in early modern England. Peter Marshall deserves credit for producing a really imaginative book. To my mind it is almost up there with Eamon Duffy's great book The Voices of Morebath or Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's book Montalliou. Micro-history at its best!

From one who actually bought the book.

This book is very tedious. He wanders all over the place. I can't believe he was given a grant to write it. Some of his phraseology is toe curling.

Harsh words I know. Maybe one has to be a lover of the seventeenth century to like this book.