Midnight in Westminster Abbey

Dennis Cashman Sean

Description

The English kings who rise from their graves in Westminster Abbey on All Souls' Eve are in a terrible fix. They want visiting New Yorker Charlie Chancer to use his special IT skills to steal abbey funds and send them off to queens who have already come to life and escaped the abbey. Handsome commodities trader Charlie is also in a bind. He has whisked his young son, Georgie, away to London (amid a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife) to join his teenage daughter, Ginny, who is on a student exchange. Tudor queens show Georgie architectural wonders of the abbey. Plantagenet kings give Ginny picturesque tutorials on their colourful but devastating battles. But what are the kings to do with these visitors who have seen their dazzling coronation ceremony and their daring TV games? Kill them or free them when they may tell what they have seen?

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528957663
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Midnight in Westminster Abbey
Sean Dennis Cashman
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-11-29
Midnight in Westminster Abbey About The Author Dedication Copyright Information © FOREWORD 1 AMERICANS EXPECT THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS COCKAIGNE—IN LONDON TOWN 2 THE KINGS’ RIDE CURTAIN UP THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR SPITTING FEATHERS BY OUR LADY EARL KING TURNS OF THE SCREW CHARLIE THE TWO FACES OF RICHARD II KNIGHT SOIL 3 THE QUEENS’ PARTY GEORGIE AND THE DRAGONS ELIZABETH I AND THE NEW WORLD REELING CIRCLES OF DECEIT TWO-FOR-ONE: JAMES VI AND I 4 KINGS’ REVENGE CORONATION EXERCISES SHOWSTOPPER CHARLIE CAPTURED A CAT CAN LOOK AT A QUEEN TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES HIGH STAKES IN THE L-SHAPED ROOM QUEEN FOR A DAY HEAVEN SENT FIVE-A-SIDE FOOTBALL SIGNING OFF GAME ON 5 HIDDEN FIGURES WHEN THIEVES FALL OUT ESCAPE ARTISTS KINGS AND QUEENS IN WESTMINSTER
About The Author
Sean Dennis Cashman worked as a historian for New York University Press, an editor for the Ford Foundation and a music and theatre journalist for the New Haven Register. He taught at the University of Manchester, New York University and Adelphi University on Long Island where he was dean of arts and sciences. His America in the Gilded Age is a classic.
In this novel, he draws from his varied life to create a vivid tapestry mixing history, fantasy and satire. Kings buried in Westminster Abbey rise on All Souls’ Eve. They entertain a New York family for a scary price.
Other books by SDC include:
America in the Gilded Age
America in the Age of the Titans: The Progressive Era and World War I
America Ascendant: From Theodore Roosevelt to FDR in the Century of American Power, 1901–1945
War in Pieces 1: Ivan the Terrible from Tulsa
War in Pieces 2: The Holly Wood Years of Ivan the Terrible
Luke Reader, blind detective
Dedication
For Kenneth McArthur
Copyright Information ©
Sean Dennis Cashman (2019 )
The right of Sean Dennis Cashman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528904315 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528957663 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
FOREWORD
The core idea of this book—the kings laid to rest in Westminster Abbey coming alive to an American family—came to me in a flash. In May 2012, I was visiting the abbey with three friends—Susan Zucker (who lives in North Hollywood), one of her grandchildren and Spencer Pearce (then of Italian Studies at the University of Manchester).
A kindly guide explained when I asked about a grave marked ‘Oliver Cromwell’ that the Republican revolutionary leader had originally been buried there. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 because Cromwell had been one of the regicides of Charles I, his body had been dug up, reviled and destroyed—apart from his head that lies in a secret place in Sydney Sussex, his old Cambridge College. As further insult, the new king, Charles II, used Cromwell’s now empty grave to deposit there his illegitimate children.
How about a novel in which the kings and queens rise on All Souls’ Eve and regale a visiting family from New York with their long past triumphs and tragedies? And how about conjuring the battlefields of Crecy and Agincourt, the Black Death and the Spanish Armada within Westminster Abbey?
Then there is a literary, radio and TV formula of whisking youngsters back in time to witness famous historical events. The result is this hybrid novel, also inspired by Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books (1865 and 1872); the first Night at the Museum film (2006) with screenplay by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon; the dazzling metaphysical journeys in Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy (1995–2000); the political conversation plays of George Bernard Shaw and the ironic French-inspired essay soliloquies by William Shakespeare in various plays.
The influence of Lewis Carroll and Alice is obvious here in scenes with talking fauna, the Lion and the Unicorn, the rose gardeners, and double-dealing twins ridiculing a heroine aside a sleeping king and the petulant queen whose costume is never straight.
The influence of Philip Pullman comes in children moving through parallel worlds against a background of competitive high-power politics. Influential poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who is buried in Westminster Abbey, appears as a character in this novel to inspire a hero to practice the tricks of his ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ from his Canterbury Tales on royal jailers. There are variation sprinklings of the wit and wisdom of Oscar Wilde’s characters in ‘The Canterville Ghost’ first published in The Court and Society Review (1887).
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Some of the sovereigns’ histories are familiar. But whereas we have our own individual and equally valid ideas about Elizabeth I, when we come to, say, Edward I or Edward III, we may find ourselves adrift. For these kings I needed to give readers some help. I tell their histories in various ways.
Beyond my memory of the kings and queens, I have read (and made use of) various published histories. For a child’s perspective, I referred to The Pictorial History of Britain, edited by Richard Haddon, Charles Harvey, Lionel M Munby, E S Wolf (London, circa 1955). It begins with the pattern of creation and the coming of man. For an openly Whig and romantic perspective of English history, I turned to Winston S Churchill’s deliberately noble-sounding A History of the English Speaking Peoples, volumes 1, 2 (London, 1956, 1957).
For an authoritative overview incorporating conclusions from recent scholarship, I referred to a most aptly named author, Robert Tombs, and his The English & Their History (Cambridge, 2015). Its span includes mores and the development of language as well as the achievements (or otherwise) of sovereigns in front of and behind the scenes. He brings a fresh approach to retelling English history with a considered analysis of the shifting ways in which English people interpret and reinterpret their past. Although James Shapiro is best known as a Shakespearean scholar, his two books setting Shakespeare’s mature plays within their historical contexts offer invaluable information on the interaction of high politics and culture with many insights into contemporary London life as well as court intrigues in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. These magnificent books are: 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (London, 2005) and 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear (London, 2015). Lovers of Henry V and As You Like It may feel gratified by James Shapiro’s ecstatic praise of these plays. Those who rate Twelfth Night the greatest Shakespearean comedy (not because it is so funny but because it is so sad) and those who find Troilus and Cressida superb for its harsh distillation of human foibles may be disturbed and mystified by his dismissal of Troilus and Twelfth Night.
These mighty analytical books by Professors Tombs and Shapiro may go to the top of many visually impaired people’s recommendations because they are available from the RNIB in Braille and in large print.
Whereas there has been a historical consensus about the tragedy of the Black Death, research and scholarship at the turn of the twenty-first century have yielded startling different conclusions about mortality and social and economic consequences. James Belich in his article, ‘The Black Death and European Expansion’, in The Oxford Historian , Issue XII, 2014/15, pp 42–45, summarises some of these. I have drawn from his interpretation and used his statistics. It is unfortunate that aside the wealth of gorgeous illustrations, the text is in Times Roman font of miniscule size on glossy paper and thus problematic for many of us visually impaired people to read.
For ideas on how kings should manage themselves and their power in the interests of the country, and with courtesy I turned to the advice American columnist and onetime diplomat Walter Lippmann gave to his fellow Americans as World War II drew to a close. His article was intended as a complimentary premature obituary to dying President Franklin D Roosevelt. It is quoted at length and discussed in Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century, (New York 1987). The summary of the changing nature of capital, energy and wealth that I put into the mouths of characters Geoffrey Chaucer and Charlie Chancer comes from Washington editor Mark Sullivan in volume VI of his Our Times: The United States 1900-1925: The Twenties (London, 1935).
There are also brief quotations from ten plays by William Shakespeare and quips from the golden age of Hollywood and after, both onscreen and off. Some inspirations are musical. Apart from compositions directly referenced in the text, for the child predators toward the close of the novel I drew from Franz Schubert’s song, ‘Erlkonig’ (The Erl King) (1815)—his setting of a poem (1782) by Goethe; for the idea of Death as succour to a mortally ill child and as a malevolent general I drew from Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Lullaby’ and ‘Field Marshall’ from his Songs and Dances of Death (1870s)—his settings of poems by Arseny Olenishchev-Kutuzov. For the remorseless musical crescendo of a malevolent army advancing I was haunted by the first movement of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No 7 ‘Leningrad’ (1941).
To assist any readers who would like to place the kings and queens of this novel in their historical