THE PILGRIM PRINCE: A Novel Based on the Life of John Bunyan

reads this out of fond curiosity about Bunyan, but God save us from novelists writing about manly men. Bunyan, was a rugged, barky man whose clanged like a tinker's damn. Miss Barr has softened and rounded his edges. She tells us he swore, but won't tell us the words, and we conclude his curses were harmless blasphemy rather than a rich compost of genuine pro. She says he's a hell-raiser but presents him as chaste. He groans over sins, but one wonders what sins. The son of a loyalist tinker, John sided with and fought against the crown. He married early, fathered four children, as later remarried. After Cromwell's death he was arrested and jailed for 12 years or preaching without a license and failing to attend Anglican services. In prison wrote nine books, the last being The Pilgrim's Progress- something of a jeu d'esprit or this polemicist. Apparently to be taken with 1 tbs. of salt is the incident in the novel where the famous courtesan Nell Gwyn arranges a private interview for with Charles II.