The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory A review I have always found Philippa Gregory's historical fiction enjoyable, and The Queen's Fool is no exception. Set at the Tudor court like so many of her other books, it gives us an 'up-close' of Queen Mary through the eyes of Hannah Green (or Verde), a teenage girl …
Tag: religion
'Kill them all; God will know his own.'
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse A Review History attributes those chilling words of the title to Arnaud Amaury, the papal legate who led the massacre at Beziers in 1209 CE. Whilst the records tell that the French Crusader army spared no one, the real targets of Catholic hatred were the Cathars, a pacifist and gnostic …
Homo Deus
A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari WARNING! - This book contains spoilers - spoilers of liberal humanism, and possibly of the whole human experience. 'People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.' Harari's earlier book Sapiens challenged us …
Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 'We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.' Around two-and-a-half million years ago in the course of evolutionary history, something remarkable happened, something with stupendous consequences for this planet on which we all live. A quite unremarkable ape-like creature …
Not all universes are the same (3)
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman "While the beasts of prey, Come from caverns deep, View'd the maid asleep." These three lines by William Blake from his poem The Little Girl Lost preface the first chapter of The Amber Spyglass, the final volume of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Aficiandos of Blake will know …
