Micah Clarke His Statement as made to his three grandchildren Joseph,Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734

The only book, I have come across, that depicts the turmoil of common people under the church and the king.

This was a good story, full og interesting characters, scenery, adventures etc. The idea of it being a tale which you would tell your grand children in such a detailed way seems more than just a little bit unlikely.

For anyone interested in the Monmouth rebellion. Conan Doyle brings the characters and events alive. I appreciated the end notes.

A sweeping tale of the Monmouth Rebellion, with great historical detail an well rounded characters. Some might find the "olde english" dialogue off putting. His future interest in suspense and fear including a chase by bloodhounds across a moor, and a villain being swallowed up in a bog is signalled here.

kindle voyageを購入し、いつでもどこでも原著がfreeで読むことができるのは嬉しい。

No less a critical reader than Sir Winston Churchill said of Conan Doyle, “I read every Sherlock Holmes story, but the works I like even more than the detective stories are the great historical novels.” So, I am in good company in my enjoyment of Conan Doyle’s historical novels. “Micah Clarke” is another excellent historical novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The setting is seventeenth century, southwest England, primarily the summer months of 1685 to be exact. The event is the Rebellion of the West (Monmouth’s Rebellion), which was an attempt by the 1st Duke of Monmouth to overthrow James II of England, Scotland and Ireland (James VIII of Scotland). Although I have traveled some in this part of England, I knew absolutely nothing of this event before reading Conan Doyle’s book. However, additional research confirms that “Micah Clarke” is well-researched and that historical characters and events are portrayed with a high level of accuracy and attention to detail.The narrative is told in the first person by Micah Clarke, a seventy-something former soldier, as a winter’s tale to his three grandchildren. Initial chapters give a brief history of Micah’s family and other friends in Havant, a flourishing village in Hampshire, a few miles from Portsmouth, where his father, a stern Presbyterian and formerly a soldier in one of Cromwell’s horse regiments is now a prosperous leather merchant and tanner, and his mother is a proper, hard-working housewife of devout Anglican faith.The first few chapters of the novel are a bit tedious, with the author maintaining the first-person viewpoint of a grandfather telling family history; and the grandfather’s side comments to the listening grandchildren are somewhat distracting. However, throughout most of the book, the author maintains the first person point of view but moves away from frequent use of the grandfather’s side comments.The main body of the novel describes in detail the failed rebellion, in which an army of pious, worthy, brave, but poorly-armed protestant farmers, villagers, fishers, miners, and peasants are led by an indecisive and weak, protestant claimant to the throne held by James II/VIII who had converted to Catholicism. Conan Doyle tells the tale in his pleasant, high Victorian style, but includes much language that was archaic event at the time of his writing. So, the book is a something of a challenge to read; and I made frequent use of Kindle’s dictionary function. However, the story is well written, relatively fast paced after the first few chapters, and well worth reading for the adventure, the humor, the creative figures of speech, and the description of 17th century life in the countryside and villages of southwest England. Some details of the story are a bit contrived to allow Micah, a young and inexperienced captain of a rebel infantry regiment, to have a front-row seat for events to which a junior officer would not normally have been entitled. Many parts of the book resonate with events of the present day, particularly with regard to the harmful futility of sectarian strife and religious zealotry in matters of government and law. All of the book is enjoyable.