aBurntShip

  'Poet of Revolution- The Making of John Milton' - Nicholas Mcdowell published by Princetown University Press, out now.    Nicholas McDowell is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Thought at the University of Exeter. He is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Milton ( amongst other publications).   John  Milton ( 1608-1670)  must be the leading poet of the British Civil Wars era. I have to lay my cards on the table, and concede that I am not a Milton scholar: I read 'Paradise Lost' twice during the Spring, and am familiar with Milton's sonnets dedicated to Lord Halifax and Sir Henry Vane the Younger. Have also  recently discovered a translation of   In Quintum Novembris , Milton's longest poem in Latin, written as a student at Cambridge University, around 1626 ,  about the Gunpowder Plot. So was wondering if I was out of my league when reading-and reviewing -this book. Especially as the biography is written by an esteemed academic. Another consideratio

           Interview with novelist Tony Morgan                                                      It is a pleasure to interview York based author Tony Morgan via email, who has written three novels related to 'The Gunpowder Plot. 'Remember, Remember the 6th of November', '7th November 1617', and 'The Pearl of York:Treason and Plot'. The first novel, as the title suggests is a rather different  unfolding of The Gunpowder Plot', as if the elements that make up the traditional narrative are all in freefall. Found the start was a bit awkward, then got totally caught up in the story. '7th November 1617' is a sequel, set in an alternative post Plot world. 'Pearl of York'.....looks at the formative years of Guy Fawkes, speculating about his gradual conversion to Catholicism, which coincided with the brutal public execution of local  butcher's wife Margaret Clitherow in 1586. Mistress Clitherow later became recognised as a Catholic martyr.