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    Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh
    Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh
    Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh
    Audiobook11 hours

    Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh

    Written by Anna Beer

    Narrated by Marian Hussey

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Sir Walter Ralegh’s life is romantic, irresistible, and of central importance to our island story. His death is a convoluted and contested tale of bargaining, failure and betrayal. Through the Elizabethan golden age and Ralegh’s famous adventures to the final act, Anna Beer presents his stranger-than-fiction life in all its richness.

    How could a man once the Queen’s favorite find himself consigned to the Tower by her successor? Should his legacy be fame or infamy? Who was the real Sir Walter Ralegh?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateNov 13, 2018
    ISBN9781721336746
    Author

    Anna Beer

    Anna Beer is a cultural historian, and the author of biographies of Milton, Sir Walter Ralegh, and Lady Bess Ralegh. Her most recent book is Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music, also published by Oneworld. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford and lives in Oxford, England. Follow her on Twitter @annarosebeer.

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    Reviews for Patriot or Traitor

    3.5/5

    20 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book deserves a wide audience. If you are interested in history this book should enlarge your understanding of the Elizabethan period. If you enjoy historical fiction, this book is so well written that you may need to be reminded that this stays closely to documented facts.In modern times, we remain fascinated with Elizabeth I. How did she keep so much power as a single woman? How did she maintain that power for so long even with the challenge of Mary, Queen of Scots?There are many historical works about Elizabeth and historical fiction and romances abound. One way to get a better understanding is looking at the period through the lens of another closely related figure. This certainly brings Sir Walter Raleigh to the forefront. We love to be along for an adventure of a rags to riches story. Although Raleigh was certainly not from rags, he did climb to the top of a dangerous mountain of royalty and then fell violently to a dramatic end. That is a description of a model for the modern reader. Indeed, the subtitle "Life and Death" is reversed when the book grabs your attention with the death of Raleigh. It reads like a Hillary Mantel historical fiction but is very cautious to remain consciously disciplined to the expectations of a documented history book. I am adding this note. I just saw that this book is the cover story on the new Dec. 2018 edition of the BBC History magazne!
    • 3/5
      Half way through, I wasn't sure I could finish. I was disappointed there was not more about the Roanoke Island story, but now realized he was hardly involved. Once he was 'dead' and put in the Tower, the story actually improved, as far as readability was concerned. This is a book for those seriously interested in the subject, Sir Walter Raleigh. I learned much that I didn't know, and was fairly satisfied by the end. That seems to be a positive.
    • 3/5
      Sir Walter Raleigh, a poet, an adventurer, a soldier, is one of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan golden age. I assume that's mostly because he was such a gifted writer, while other notable figures left behind much less prolific written records. Ms. Beer clearly finds Sir Walter an irresistible figure. She finds intrigue, wonder and excitement where I did not. I fault myself. I picked up a review copy of the book from the publisher to learn more. I think the writer assumes the reader knows a bit about Sir Walter and the history of the times. I knew very little, but after reading, feel like I know a lot more about the era. But I don't find Raleigh any more compelling than I did before reading the book.
    • 4/5
      I'm writing this review with mixed feelings, not because I can't make up my mind if this book is good or not, it is in fact quite good. Instead the contents of this work of descriptive history needs to be evaluated against modern approaches to teaching history. I'm going to try to explain what I mean by that.When you're writing a novel you want to begin with a bang, you want to make the reader interested. It's a modern approach to fiction writing we can trace back to Goethe and his short novel: The Suffering of Young Werther. That novel starts with: I'm so glad I don't ever have to be here again. It puts you right in the scene and sets up the mood of everything that follows. Later on novelists and especially screenwriters have picked this up and refined it to an art. E.g. if you can't engage a movie audience in the first 10 minutes you've lost them.In this book about Sir Walter Ralegh, by Anna Beer, the same approach is used. We immediately learn in graphic detail how the protagonist meets his ending. So the question is: does the effect of starting with a bang work for non-fiction as well? I think it does, even though I don't like that it does. Chances are I'm too old and set in my ways to appreciate what this format can do for learning about historical facts, but it felt too forced, too on the nose. It does work though, it does get you engaged and connected to a human being who lived a very long time ago in a period where daily life was a lot more brutal to say the least.Ironically the author goes against the 'novel' approach of the book by adding lots of detail that gets in the way and doesn't add to our knowledge of who this person Ralegh was. This could easily have been fixed by using footnotes and end notes. Providing a listing of names who were involved in certain event in Ralegh's life, although historically relevant, gets in the way of following the narrative. At some point you simply read over it because trying to remember all those names simply doesn't work and doesn't help.Overall I appreciated the human aspects and approach. This otherwise abstract from long ago became a crisp clear individual in my mind. As such I think some of the extrapolations and interpretations the author makes are fully warranted. More so because they are noted and indicated.We're living in an age where the skill of writing is applied to otherwise dry subjects like history. I wish all high school history books were written in the same style and manner as this biography.
    • 4/5
      I didn't know much about Sir Walter Ralegh (the author's choice of spelling) except some hazy memories from high school about pirating and putting his cloak over a puddle (?) so Elizabeth I wouldn't get her feet wet. Beer covered the pirating/exploring (among many other topics), but not the muddy cloak, so I must have made that up. I found the book informative, well-researched and organized, and easy to read. The author used an interesting format, based on roles (soldier, courtier, lover, writer, etc.), to explore Ralegh's life and death. The topics are roughly chronological with considerable overlap, but works. Ralegh was a fascinating character who led a colorful life of adventure and romance. We know so much about him, compared to his contemporaries, because he was also a brilliant writer and self-promoter. The book left me wanting to know more about his formidable wife Bess Throckmorton who managed his affairs while he was at sea and lobbied tirelessly for his release while he was in prison. I see that Anna Beer wrote a biography of the Lady Bess as well as her husband. I know what my next read will be!
    • 3/5
      I received an advance copy as part of the Early Reviewers. Because it's an advanced copy it's missing some of the things like the index but did have "works consulted". The chronology at the end of the book was helpful to keep everything in line in my mind and helpful for anyone not as familiar with the time period. This is an interesting book about a man who has been called many things, both during his life and after. He's usually tied to Queen Elizabeth and is eclipsed by her but this book helps his life stand on his own. I enjoy the way the author writes and she even explains the spelling and pronunciation of his name at the beginning which I thought was interesting and gets the reader a little in her head. Overall I did enjoy reading this.
    • 3/5
      Good book overall. Interesting concept and story.