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The Siege of Loyalty House
- Author
- Jessie Childs
- Narrator
- Miranda Raison
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 19 May 2022
- Run Time
- 9 hours 50 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other and tearing down the old order.
Award-winning historian Jessie Childs plunges the reader into the shock of the struggle through one of its most dramatic episodes: the siege of Basing House. To the parliamentarian Roundheads, the Hampshire mansion was a bastion of royalism, popery and excess. Its owner was both a Catholic and staunch supporter of Charles I. His motto Love Loyalty was etched into the windows. He refused all terms of surrender.
As royalist strongholds crumbled, Loyalty House, as it became known, stood firm.Over two years, the men, women and children inside were battered, bombarded, starved and gassed. Their resistance became legendary. Inigo Jones designed the fortifications and the women hurled bricks from the roof. But in October 1645, Oliver Cromwell rolled in the heavy guns and the defenders prepared for a last stand.
Drawing on exciting new sources, Childs uncovers the face of the war through a cast of unforgettable characters: the fanatical Puritan preacher who returns from Salem to take on the king; the plant-hunting apothecary who learns to kill as well as heal; the London merchant and colonist who clashes with Basing's aristocratic lord; and Cromwell himself who feels the hand of God on his sword. And we hear too the voices of dozens of ordinary men and women caught in the crossfire.
The Siege of Loyalty House is a thrilling tale of war and peace, terror and faith, friendship and betrayal - and of a world turned upside down.
© Jessie Childs 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Critics Review
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Atmospheric, unflinching and...exquisitely witty
Guardian, *Books of the Year*
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This is war as it should be, passionate, brutal, bloody and chaotic, all described in luscious, evocative prose
The Times, *Books of the Year*
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Jessie Childs is one of the finest historians working today; her illuminating, deeply researched, and beautifully written books are never anything short of superlative, and here she does it again. This is a vivid, thrilling story, rendered in delicious prose and brilliant with gems dug from the archives
Suzannah Lipscomb
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A gripping account of the agony at Basing... Characters step off the page... The prose sparkles... Childs's book conveys the raw emotion of events, especially the trauma of the siege itself... In her aim 'to recover the shock of that experience and to look upon the face of the war' Childs could be describing the trenches of Ypres or Bakhmut or the sieges of Leningrad or Mariupol
London Review of Books
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Compelling... Childs reveals brilliantly the world of the Civil War in the grain of sand that is Basing House. She captures the horror, the courage, the sheer humanity of those, both besiegers and besieged, who endured the long, desperate lulls punctuated by intense episodes of visceral violence
Daily Telegraph
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The Siege of Loyalty House... enriches the packed civil war bookshelf with this elegantly written, close-focus history of a place whose ordeals epitomised the pain of a struggle that tore homes, clans, trades, and souls apart
Financial Times
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A spectacular work of scholarship, this is epic, vital history, sweeping from the great trends and ideas of the time to the individual details of vividly lived lives. This brilliant book takes you into the heart of the Civil War, the brutal struggle for the sympathies of a country, the men who fought, women who tried to survive; this is blood, desire and struggle on the page, taking you deep into the seventeenth century world; you can feel its beating heart
Kate Williams
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Compellingly readable... [a] beautifully written and lucid account
Mail on Sunday
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A thrilling account of Basing House, a royalist stronghold during the English Civil War nicknamed 'Loyalty' and the sieges it withstood until its fall to Oliver Cromwell in 1645
New York Times
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Riveting... The breaking of such lives and communities makes poignant reading... [Childs's] focus is local and English, but the story is human and timeless
Economist
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Jessie Childs
- Narrator
- Miranda Raison
- Duration
- 9 hours 50 minutes
- Release Date
- 19 May 2022
- ISBN
- 9781529195675
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Civil wars, European history, True war and combat stories, Social and cultural history, Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other and tearing down the old order.Award-winning historian Jessie Childs plunges the reader into the shock of the struggle through one of its most dramatic episodes: the siege of Basing House. To the parliamentarian Roundheads, the Hampshire mansion was a bastion of royalism, popery and excess. Its owner was both a Catholic and staunch supporter of Charles I. His motto Love Loyalty was etched into the windows. He refused all terms of surrender.As royalist strongholds crumbled, Loyalty House, as it became known, stood firm.Over two years, the men, women and children inside were battered, bombarded, starved and gassed. Their resistance became legendary. Inigo Jones designed the fortifications and the women hurled bricks from the roof. But in October 1645, Oliver Cromwell rolled in the heavy guns and the defenders prepared for a last stand.Drawing on exciting new sources, Childs uncovers the face of the war through a cast of unforgettable characters: the fanatical Puritan preacher who returns from Salem to take on the king; the plant-hunting apothecary who learns to kill as well as heal; the London merchant and colonist who clashes with Basing's aristocratic lord; and Cromwell himself who feels the hand of God on his sword. And we hear too the voices of dozens of ordinary men and women caught in the crossfire.The Siege of Loyalty House is a thrilling tale of war and peace, terror and faith, friendship and betrayal - and of a world turned upside down.© Jessie Childs 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
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