The King's Exile
- Автор: Swanston Andrew
- Серия: Thomas Hill #2
- Год: 2013
- Язык: английский
- Год: Transworld
- ISBN: 9781446487280
- Жанр: Исторические приключения
Электронная книга - «The King's Exile». Краткое содержание книги:
Spring, 1648. When Thomas Hill, a bookseller living in rural Hampshire, publishes a political pamphlet he has little idea of the trouble that will follow. He is quickly arrested, forced on a boat to Barbados and condemned to life as a slave to two of the island’s most notoriously violent brothers.
In England war has erupted again, with London under threat of attack. When news of the king’s execution reaches the island, political stability is threatened and a fleet commanded by Sir George Ayscue arrives to take control of the island for Cromwell. The threat of violence increases. Thomas finds himself witness to abuse, poison, rape and savage brutality.
When a coded message from Ayscue to a sympathiser on the island is intercepted, Thomas is asked to decipher it. A disastrous battle seems inevitable.
But nothing turns out as planned. And as the death toll mounts, the escape Thomas has been relying on seems ever more unlikely…
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that, for the sake of the story, I have delayed the arrival of Lord Willoughby in Barbados by about twelve months.
Acknowledgments
As always, my thanks to my long-suffering wife Susan for her moral and practical support and to my daughter Laura, son Tom and brother Michael for their encouragement and suggestions.
Emma Buckley, my editor at Transworld, has nursed me through two Thomas Hill books with skill and patience. It is a delight to work with her and her colleagues and I thank them. Without them, The King’s Exile would have been a much poorer thing.
Select Bibliography
Hilary Beckles, A History of Barbados, Cambridge University Press, 1990
Michael Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire, Penguin Books, 2008
Charles Carlton, Charles I – The Personal Monarch, Routledge, 1983
Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, University of North Carolina Press, 1972
Antonia Fraser, Cromwell, Our Chief of Men, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973
Cynthia Herrup, The Common Peace, Cambridge University Press, 1987
Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, White Cargo, Mainstream Publishing, 2007
Richard Ligon, A True amd Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, 1657
Matthew Parker, The Sugar Barons, Windmill Books, 2012
Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in the Age of Revolution, Harvard University Press, 2004
Diane Purkiss, The English Civil War, Harper Perennial, 2006
Ivan Roots, The Great Rebellion 1642–1660, B. T. Batsford, 1966
Ronald Tree, A History of Barbados, Granada Publishing, 1972
About the Author
After reading Law at Cambridge University, Andrew Swanston held various positions in the book trade, including being a director of Waterstone & Co. and chairman of Methven’s PLC, before turning to full-time writing. Inspired by a lifelong interest in seventeenth-century history, his Thomas Hill novels are set during the English Civil War and the early period of the Restoration. He lives with his wife in Surrey.