One of
the undisputed classics of science fiction and, perhaps, one of the finest
novels written in England in the second half of the twentieth century(this from
no less an authority than Anthony Burgess in his book Ninety-Nine
Novels). This episodic tale of a Britain that remained a Catholic state
subservient to the Popes of Rome, is also, to my mind, the greatest of all
alternate history stories. First editions are all but impossible to find (and
expensive when they do turn up) but there have been numerous paperback
editions.
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DUSTJACKET BLURB: On a warm July evening of the year 1588, in
the royal palace of Greenwich a woman lay dying, an assassin's bullets lodged
in abdomen and chest. Her face was lined, her teeth blackened, and death lent
her no dignity; but her last breath started echoes that ran out to shake a
hemisphere. Elizabeth the First was no more. The turmoil that followed saw
Philip II esconced as ruler of England. With the authority of the Catholic
Church assured, the rising nation of Great Britain deployed her forces in the
service of the Popes. In England herself, across a land half ancient and half
modern, split as in primitive times by barriers of language, class and race,
the castles of medievalism still glowered. To some the years that passed were
years of fulfilment, of the final flowering of God's design; to others they
were a new Dark Age, haunted by things dead and others best forgotten; bears
and catamounts, dire-wolves and Fairies. Over all, the long arm of the Popes
reached out to punish and reward; the Church Militant remained supreme. But by
the middle of the twentieth century widespread mutterings were making
themselves heard. Rebellion was once more in the air.
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