The Clerkenwell Tales

by PeterAckroyd (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $19.37

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.93

  The scene is London, in 1399. It is the last year of the fourteenth century, and there is talk of an apocalypse. Richard II is on the throne, yet strange signs and portents are troubling the latter part of his reign. By the side of the River Fleet in Clerkenwell the people are restless, disenchanted with the church and their King. The streets of London are rife with rumour, heresy, espionage and murder and at the centre of the confusion is the nun, Sister Clarice, who has been vouchsafed visions of the future. Is she a genuine prophet, or the tool of earthly powers? This is a story of adventure and suspense set in the late medieval world. As in many of Peter Ackroyd's novels the distant past is no longer a foreign country but something alarmingly close and authentic. As one critic has put it, 'he is our age's greatest London imagination'.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $4.58

  Brilliant historical novel, set in London in the late 14th century. 'I am sister to the day and night. I am sister to the woods.' Sister Clarisse, a nun in the House of St Mary at Clerkenwell, experiences visions. She dreams of the English King. Are her prophesies the babblings of the crazed? Or can she 'see' a future in which Henry Bolingbroke overthrows Richard II? This clever and colourful novel begins with The Nun's Tale, and continues with The Friar's Tale, The Merchant's Tale and The Clerk's Tale...Thus, story by story, Peter Ackroyd builds his portrait of medieval London. The people are disenchanted by the Church, with its wealth and corruption, its Pope in Rome and its Pope in Avignon. But heresy is dangerous...almost as dangerous as rebellion. This is a novel about spies and counter-spies, radicals and idealists, murderers and arsonists, sects and secret societies...

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $18.06

  The scene is London, in 1399. It is the last year of the fourteenth century, and there is talk of an apocalypse. Richard II is on the throne, yet strange signs and portents are troubling the latter part of his reign. By the side of the River Fleet in Clerkenwell the people are restless, disenchanted with the church and their King. The streets of London are rife with rumour, heresy, espionage and murder and at the centre of the confusion is the nun, Sister Clarice, who has been vouchsafed visions of the future. Is she a genuine prophet, or the tool of earthly powers? This is a story of adventure and suspense set in the late medieval world. As in many of Peter Ackroyd's novels the distant past is no longer a foreign country but something alarmingly close and authentic. As one critic has put it, 'he is our age's greatest London imagination'.