Informative, though some may wince at Walsingham’s bloody tactics.
An examination of the life and sometimes gruesome career of the Protestant official who crushed Catholic resistance in 16th-century England.
Hutchinson (The Last Days of Henry VIII, 2005) delves deep into history to explore the life of Francis Walsingham (1532–90), a seminal yet little known figure whose influence still resonates today. The author’s broad knowledge of the Elizabethan era helps elucidate the key issues in which his subject was embroiled. Perhaps of even greater importance, Hutchinson unveils the methodology Walsingham employed to garner crucial intelligence for his queen after he took over her secret intelligence service from Sir William Cecil. Elizabeth called Walsingham “a rank Puritan,” but both were fervent Protestants, and one of the spymaster’s first tasks was to quash the threat from “that devilish woman,” Catholic Mary Queen of Scots. Walsingham stopped at nothing, even forging correspondence to discredit Mary. As Hutchinson details these events and the growing threat from Catholic Spain, he notes parallels between his subject’s techniques and modern day intelligence operations. Walsingham would have had no problem, the author avers, with the draconian measures taken by many Western nations in recent years to combat terrorism. Indeed, ‘human rights’ was an unknown concept in an age when suspects were routinely tortured to extract information. Hutchinson painstakingly scrutinizes the broad range of grisly devices employed in these activities and proffers information on such accomplices as chief torturer Richard Topcliffe, “rackmaster” Thomas Norton and playwright Christopher Marlowe, who became part of the spy ring Walsingham formed.
Informative, though some may wince at Walsingham’s bloody tactics.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-36822-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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