![]() ![]() ![]() Storytelling at its most gripping comes in the novel's powerfully moving centerpiece. ![]() Here are dark intrigue and adroitstatecraft, hand-to-hand combat and sharp wits in collision, anavaricious ruler attempting to seduce his sheriff's wife on Christmasnight, and the hatching of the Magna Carta itself at Nottingham Castleone fine September eve in 1213 (along with the reasons why Philip Markis specifically mentioned in that immortal document). In vital, dramatic colors, Klugerpaints a panorama of that England at the dawn of modernity and itsprincipal players and events. Posted to Nottinghamshire in 1208 as the crown'schief law officer, he is answerable only to King John himself, a monarch who has been handed down to posterity - perhaps not altogether fairly - as an unredeemed tyrant presiding over a tumultuous age. Philip Mark, a soldierof fortune from Touraine in the heart of France and actually cited byname in the text of the Magna Carta as objectionable to the king'sbarons, is a complex figure, a man with a heart, a conscience, and deftpolitical instincts. Through a fusion of art and documentedfact, Kluger portrays a far different sheriff. Now, with his novel, The Sheriff of Nottingham, Richard Kluger turns the timeless tale on its head in a vivid,compassionate narrative based upon authentic and quite startlinghistory. Has there ever been a less lovable character in folk literature than that craven creature, the nameless Sheriff of Nottingham? He remains to this day, fed byHollywood versions of the legend, the hateful, impotent foil to thatcelebrated bowman, Robin Hood. ![]()
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