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Chaucer’s Divine Seriousness

Chaucer:  A European Life marion turner princeton, 624 pages, $39.95 Chaucer has not lacked for biographies, but Marion Turner’s is of a rare ambition and competence. Its method is geographical, even topographical, approaching the poet’s life by way of the extraordinarily disparate places . . . . Continue Reading »

Carry On, Plum

Jeeves and the King of Clubs:  A Novel in Homage to P.G. Wodehouse by ben schott little, brown, 320 pages, $27 Jeeves and the Wedding Bells:  An Homage to P.G. Wodehouse by sebastian faulks st. martin’s, 256 pages, $25.99 Aunts, Comrades, Gentlemen . . . According to Hilaire Belloc, . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

A Field Guide to the English Clergy:  A Compendium of Diverse Eccentrics, Pirates, Prelates and Adventurers; All Anglican, Some Even Practising by fergus butler-gallie oneworld, 192 pages, $20 Ah, the holy fool. Though we often associate such characters with the great tomes of Russian . . . . Continue Reading »

Inside Amazon

Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by james bloodworth atlantic, 288 pages, $19.95 What single image best sums up Amazon, which this year became, after Apple, the world’s second-ever trillion-dollar company? Is it the grinning face of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and very . . . . Continue Reading »

The Monster's Servant

Thomas Cromwell:  A Revolutionary Life by diarmaid macculloch viking, 752 pages, $40 They said it could not be done. At least Sir Geoffrey Elton, to whose memory his former doctoral student has dedicated this book, said it could not be done. According to him, as Diarmaid MacCulloch reminds us, . . . . Continue Reading »

Latimer and Ridley Are Forgotten

Hidden in the northern suburbs of Oxford are the last traces of a path first trodden by multitudes of country folk hurrying to see the burning of the Protestant martyrs Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley on October 16, 1555, and trudging home afterward. For some years I lived very close to this track, . . . . Continue Reading »

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