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    The Man on a Donkey: A forgotten literary masterpiece rediscovered
    Unavailable
    The Man on a Donkey: A forgotten literary masterpiece rediscovered
    Unavailable
    The Man on a Donkey: A forgotten literary masterpiece rediscovered
    Ebook1,043 pages16 hours

    The Man on a Donkey: A forgotten literary masterpiece rediscovered

    By H.F.M. Prescott and John Cooper

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    'The most immersive book I've ever read... Truly brings Tudor England to life' Frank Cottrell Boyce, The Times

    'One of the finest historical novels ever written' TLS

    A forgotten literary masterpiece, The Man on a Donkey is less about the great figures who shape historical change and more about what it's like to live through it.

    This is a sweeping, immersive historical novel that invites the reader to inhabit Tudor history as it unfolds: Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon; Robert Aske's rebels fighting the Dissolution of the Monasteries; the machinations of Cardinal Wolsey and Anne Boleyn.

    It is, quite simply, one of the finest historical novels ever written.

    'A masterpiece' Eamon Duffy

    'A classic of historical fiction... Captures all the poignant strangeness of the era' Hilary Mantel

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHead of Zeus
    Release dateDec 1, 2016
    ISBN9781784977702
    Unavailable
    The Man on a Donkey: A forgotten literary masterpiece rediscovered
    Author

    H.F.M. Prescott

    H.F.M. Prescott (1896–1972) is best known for her historical novel The Man on a Donkey and her biography of Mary Tudor, which won the James Tait Black Prize in 1941. The daughter of a clergyman, she read Modern History at Oxford and later received MA degrees there and at Manchester. Her wide-ranging interests included travel and a deep love of the English countryside that lasted all her life.

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    Reviews for The Man on a Donkey

    4/5

    26 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I started this with a bang but fizzled out. The prose is beautiful and evocative but the action moves so very slowly that I found myself struggling to engage. There's a load of character who don't yet have a role in the narrative but we are given glimpses into their lives and thoughts that are pleasant but confusing. Who are these people and why are they here? I know that it will all come together later but I've gradually stopped caring! Maybe I'll take it on holiday sometime and give it a bash then but for now its lost momentum.
    • 5/5
      H. F. M. Prescott’s Man on a Donkey must surely be one of the finest historical novels ever written. Its subject is the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion (1536-1537) of England’s northern Catholics against the harshly imposed reforms of Henry VIII to the power structure and observances of the Church in England.Prescott calls her story a chronicle, and she tells it in chronicle-like fashion. Historical figures people its pages, among them, Henry VIII and his first three queens, Princess Mary, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, the Duke of Norfolk, and members of the Percy family. The story progresses by dated entries through the first three decades of the 16th century, keeping its focus on its main characters. They are the ordinary folk of their day trying to determine how best to respond to the deeply significant changes thrust upon them; “the Chronicle is mainly of five:—of Christabel Cowper, Prioress; Thomas, Lord Darcy; Julian Savage, Gentlewoman; Robert Aske, squire; Gilbert Dawe, Priest....There is also Malle, the Serving-woman.”Told in beautiful language that skillfully evokes the spirit of a medieval chronicle, The Man on a Donkey is not a book to read quickly. It moves at a slow pace, though its central events are momentous. It absorbs the reader into its atmosphere of struggle, physical, mental, and spiritual. It raises for its characters (and for its readers!) such questions as how to live with integrity in a world filled with injustice. How to find within oneself the courage to follow one’s conscience, knowing the risk involved. How to maintain one’s faith in a time so filled with despair.Violence, cruelty, betrayal, greed, tyranny are present everywhere in this novel; but so also are gentleness, compassion, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and love. I think anyone who enjoys historical fiction, especially fiction set in Tudor times, would enjoy it.5 stars