Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Quarrel with the King by Adam Nicolson - Available

Quarrel with the King

The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War

by Adam Nicolson
Simon Vance
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
Spanning England's most turbulent and dramatic decades-from the 1520s to the 1640s-Quarrel with the King tells the story of four generations of one of the greatest families in English history, the Pembrokes, and follows their glamorous trajectory across 130 years of change, ambition, resistance, and war. As he tells their story, Adam Nicolson reveals how a struggle for dominance began as the English crown slowly grew in strength and power, which evoked questions of loyalty that would simmer for decades. Was government about agreement and respect or authority and compulsion? What status did traditional rights have in a changing world? Did a national emergency mean those rights could be ignored or overturned? These were the questions that, in 1642, would lead to a brutal civil war, the bloodiest conflict England has ever suffered, in which the Earl of Pembroke-a devout subject-had no choice but to rebel against a king he believed had betrayed him and his country.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 4, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400128761
      • File size: 258550 KB
      • Duration: 08:58:38

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Book by book, Nicolson has developed into one of the most interesting and enlightening of today's popular historians. Simon Vance is an excellent, one might say the predestined, choice to convey Nicolson's particular narrative vigor and attention to detail. This title is less about the personality clashes that led to the British Civil War of the 1640s than it is about the British "common" system of community farming that had grown out of the feudal ages, and that eventually fell away under centralized government and industrialization. From the perspective of today's economic and community crises, Nicolson's vision of a cooperative culture becomes increasingly applicable and thought provoking. Vance has the grace and skill to sustain a narrative in which character and action are not the central thread. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 15, 2008
      In his typically supple and elegant prose, Nicolson—author of the acclaimed God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
      —traces the Pembroke family’s “arc of ambition, success, failure, and collapse” between the 1520s and the 1640s, when the fourth earl of Pembroke joined the Puritan rebellion. Along the way, Nicolson highlights the ambiguous nature of this most powerful of dynasties—“one of the richest and most glamorous” of their time. Outwardly the servile courtiers of the king in London, in fact they presented a potent provincial counterweight to the monarchy’s centralizing preferences with their vast Anglo-Welsh palatinate and a legion of loyal tenants. While fiercely protective of their rights, the Pembrokes were not “liberal” by today’s standards; if anything, it was the royal administration that represented the future modern state while the Pembrokes and their feudal values harked back to the Middle Ages. As Nicolson wistfully concedes, “this story is about the end of an old world, not the making of a new one.” For fans of the Tudor and Stuart era, this will be a welcome treat. 16 pages of color photos.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading