The king is Harold, the loser of the Battle of Hastings, and his
story is told by one of his bodyguards, Walt. Full of shame at
having failed to save his lord, Walt embarks on a journey to the
Holy Land, through countries plagued by marauding Turks (the First
Crusade is not far off). He falls in with an ex-cleric Quint to
whom he narrates his tale, a magician and his children and a
red-headed trader in lapis lazuli who is not all she appears. The
elucidation of the power politics of 11th-century England and
Normandy is fascinating, as are the details of the social
structures which underpinned them, and the many vignettes of
everyday life. The story is earthy: as Rathbone points out in his
introduction, this is hardly the place to be coy about
Anglo-Saxonisms. The parallel story of Walt's journey is more
compelling than the one he is telling, unfettered as it is by the
constraints of history. This type of format always presents
problems of anachronism, and of the need for the narrator within
the story to explain things to the reader while at the same time
apparently speaking to somebody who would be familiar with them.
Rathbone makes a fair fist of this, but occasionally mars it by
joining with his readers in a 20th-century 'we'. He also plays
irritating cultural-reference games, such as introducing a busker
who sings a song about how 'the answer to everything is blowing in
the breeze', and giving Walt, the elite soldier, the motto 'winners
dare'. That apart, it is an entertaining novel which combines two
good stories. (Kirkus UK)
On the Sussex Downs in 1066, the psychotic William and his gang of European mercenaries began the process which fragmented a civilisation. Walt, the last of King Harold's bodyguard, the one who survived Hastings, wanders across Asia Minor in the company of Quint, an intellectual renegade monk. On the way he unfolds the events that led up to the battle which affected the destinies of every English man and woman. With rare skill, Rathbone vividly recreates a civilisation that stubbornly remains alive in the collective memory to this day, and so identifies the roots of the still-held belief that every English person is born free and should stay free. Tender romance, savage war, courtly intrigue and some wry humour combine to make THE LAST ENGLISH KING an exhilarating roller-coaster ride into our past.
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