The wild geese of the Antrim MacDonnells

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Robert Rapley

As a Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier was an influential figure in the Loudun community and local government. A brilliant speaker, he was popular with his parishioners. But he had enemies, including Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII, who were trying to wrest political autonomy from local governors and centralize power in Paris. Grandier supported the governor of Loudun and therefore was seen as an enemy of the Crown. In addition, the debonair priest's romantic intrigues brought him into conflict with some of the town's most influential power brokers. When Ursuline nuns in a nearby convent began experiencing strange visions and hallucinations, Grandier's enemies seized the opportunity to orchestrate his downfall. These mass possessions, which despite exorcism spread through the convent, were regarded as witchcraft and Grandier was accused of having caused them. Condemned by Richelieu and Louis XIII, Grandier was tortured and burned at the stake for his alleged crimes, but maintained his innocence to the end.

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Barry Miles

"The Beat Hotel has been closed for nearly forty years. But for a brief period - from just after the publication of Howl in 1957 until the building was sold in 1963 - it was home to Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin, Peter Orlovsky, Harold Norse, and a host of other luminaries of the Beat Generation. Now, Barry Miles - acclaimed author of many books on the Beats and a personal acquaintance of many of them - vividly excavates this remarkable period and restores it to a historical picture that has, until now, been skewed in favor of the two coasts of America." "A cheap rooming house on the bohemian Left Bank, the hotel was inhabited mostly by writers and artists, and its communal atmosphere spurred the Beats to incredible heights of creativity."--BOOK JACKET.

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Sebastian Faulks

A worthy successor to Birdsong' Alain de BottonIn 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special oeprations group and to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents a microcosm of France and its agony in 'the black years'. Here is the full range of collaboration, from the tacit to the enthusistic, as well as examples of extraordinary courage and altruism. Through the local resistance chief Julien, Charlotte meets his father, a Jewish painter whose inspiration has failed him.In a series of shocking narrative climaxes in which the full extent of French collusion in the Nazi holocaust is delineated, Faulks brings the story to a resolution of redemptive love. In the delicacy of its writing, the intimacy of its characterisation and its powerful narrative scenes of harrowing public events, Charlotte Gray is a worthy successor to Birdsong.

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Frances Osborne

Using letters, diaries, and family legend, Frances Osborne explores the life of Idina, her enigmatic great-grandmother, following her from Edwardian London to the hills of Kenya, where she reigned over the scandalous antics of the 'Happy Valley set'" - Back cover.