Wijk bij Duurstede by bike

Kasteel Sterkenburg

Today I cycled over 40 kilometres with my dad, from my parents’ new house to Wijk bij Duurstede and back. On the way we passed by multiple castles. I photographed those that still had authentic medieval touches.

First up was the castle Sterkenburg (’strong fort’), rather arbitrarily named. It was intensively renovated in the 18th and 19th century, but the tower still betrays its medieval origin. The first castle on this spot was created in the late 12th century. It is still inhabited today and not open to the public. I photographed it from across a stream.

Kasteel Lunenburg

After that, only a few hundred metres down the road, we passed by the Lunenburg, probably constructed in the late 14th century and still authentic looking. The castle was badly damaged on one side during WWII – I think that must have been on the other side, as you can spot a lot of different masonry work here (including filling up some windows). The castle wasn’t ‘updated’ because the family decided to build a brand new mansion right beside it in the 19th century. Like the previous castle, it is still private property and can only be seen from the road. This time not only running water, but many trees as well hindered observation. It was impossible to photograph it from any other position.

The Leuterpoort (click to reveal)

Wijk bij Duurstede was one of the favourite residences of the prince-bishops of Utrecht in the 15th century. It’s currently small in size, but it was granted city rights in the middle ages and fully walled. In the 17th century the fortifications weren’t really necessary any more – there was no bishop left and the city was far from the border. The citizens decided this was as good a reason as any to make alterations to the city gate, which is now one of the strangest (and most useless) gates I have ever seen.

Kasteel Duurstede

Obviously the prince-bishop would not waste his time inside the city. Cities stank. So in stead he lived in an extensive and expensive castle just outside the walls. It was probably built in the 13th century, for a different lord, but as you can see it was modernised later on, in the 15th century.

Kasteel Duurstede

The parts of it that remain, especially the round tower, show some apparent renaissance influence. The castle saw active service, especially during the reign of the bishop David of Burgundy (r. 1456-1496; bastard son of duke of Burgundy Philip the Good). In the 1480’s a civil war broke out and the bishop was expelled from the city. He sought refuge in the castle he had modernised, but was eventually captured anyway (the place was not sieged). Maximilian of Habsburg had to come and rescue him.

The round tower was built by David of Burgundy, and because of his family called the Burgundian tower. The square tower is the original 13th century donjon.

Tower facing the gate

Burgundian Tower

Left: this artillery opening covered the approach to the gate. The castle still boasts multiple of such strategically placed openings, revealing good military architecture skills.

Right: Detail of the magnificent Burgundian tower.

Grote kerk in Wijk bij Duurstede

Stock Pigeon at Duurstede

Not just the castle was renovated and expanded during David of Burgundy’s reign, the city itself saw improvement, too. For example, the main church (pictured on the left) was improved by David as well, in 1486. He probably required a more stately church outside of the city of Utrecht, where he wasn’t very popular.

Incidentally, the city is named after the castle which is named after a former, no longer existing, city called Dorestad. The lord who founded the castle of Duurstede in about 1270 (Zweder van Abcoude) named his castle after a long-gone but not forgotten city, which had been a major Western European trading hub before it was destroyed by the Vikings raids. The new city, originally called Wijk, started calling itself Wijk bij Duurstede (Wijk near Duurstede) later on.

It’s not the end of the world

I’ve recently been updating my links section, and, apart from egotistically adding a bunch of my own articles, observant viewers may have noticed another link on the right, directing you to Fred Clark’s excellent weblog. This is an expansive weblog I only heard about quite recently myself and I’ve only really taken a look at the Left Behind section of the site. This may not sound terribly familiar to those on this side of the pond, and I’d only heard of this series of books in passing before. The books describe the end of the world as, according to the warped interpretation of the author, the Bible allegedly predicts it. This interpretation has little to do with what the book actually says and cherry-picks the bits the authors like (the more explosions and suffering, the better, basically), all the while trying to demonstrate how right they are and how wrong everybody else is. Obviously this doesn’t really work as it’s fiction, but the authors appear to hang on to Augustine’s interpretation of words – there is a direct connection between a word and the thing it represents. These books were apparently wildly popular among a particular group of Christians in the US, mostly those hoping the end is near.

And this is where Clark comes in. On his weblog he painstakingly analyses the first book of the series and carefully demonstrates that the novels are not only theologically unsound (not at all, as the authors claim, literally interpreting the Bible) but also terrible, terrible fiction. The authors take sadistic pleasure in punishing all the sorts of people they look down upon in real life, all the while acting as if they’re morally superior, even though their own characters, supposedly good Christians, do nothing to help (or even notice) their fellow man in need. Apart from providing an interesting look into the worldview of some of today’s eschatologists, the articles by Clark are very well written and humorous, making the subject matter entertaining rather than depressing. The first post of his analysis starts here (start at the bottom and work your way up, then click the ‘previous’ link).

In the past few months I’ve read into eschatology a little, myself, but where Left Behind gives a modern view, my reading was exclusively medieval. Now, medieval religion is typically looked down upon, by non-religious people, who view the period as barbaric and often think science was being kept down by religion, as well as by Christians themselves, who, in the case of the protestants, regularly view the medieval church as one of excesses, superstitions and dishonest faith (and evil popery) while the catholics often go along with this view if only to explain why the Reformation occurred (after all, if the true church was flawless, good Christians wouldn’t want to leave – Eamon Duffy disagrees with this and quite convincingly shows that the catholic church of the middle ages was quite good at regulating itself, but judging from his actions it seems the present pope follows the traditional interpretation).

The interesting thing is that the medieval church, when it comes to eschatology, was much more inclusive and humane than the Left Behind group. Well-off, middle aged Americans can easily write about the world going to hell (quite literally) without realising the severity of the events they are writing about. This was quite different from the 14th century Antwerpian clerk Jan van Boendale, for example, who was convinced, by 1350, that the world was going to end relatively soon. A few decades earlier, he had refused to give any estimate as to the coming of the end times, and predicted that it would be 700 years at the least. But by 1350, the Hundred Years War had started and a terrible disease had come out of nowhere and destroyed a third of Europe’s population. His writing is inspired by fear, and he can’t seem to properly understand what’s going on. He does qualify it as a divine punishment, and he tells of terrible rumours he’s heard: a ship, crossing from France to England, meeting Death on his way to punish the English for their sins (he had just finished doing the same to England), travellers in Bohemia stumbling upon a village with no survivors, a sole priest in Poland noticing an angry Christ striding through the woods, causing the clergyman to hurry to his church to hold mass, etc. These stories are not theologically sound, either. Christ punishing the unbelievers is essentially the same as what is happening in the Left Behind novels. But there are clear distinctions:

1. The punishment wasn’t imaginary, it was actually happening. People didn’t invent it, they were just trying to fit this terrible event into their world view. Divine punishment was the explanation they deemed most logical. In the Left Behind books, the authors are not looking for explanations but are rather seeking to predict the future.
2. The punishment is regrettable. As opposed to the events in the Left Behind books, it is the devastation that receives first priority. Mary, riding in the company of Christ, explains to the Polish priest that they want the suffering to stop and convinces the man to hold mass, in order to try and appease Christ.
3. It is Christ who is doing the punishing, not the Antichrist. This may seem irrelevant, but in the Left Behind books the Antichrist is virtually omnipotent, while Jesus and God are hardly mentioned at all as having any part in this; they only play a part in providing the believers with ‘get out of jail free’-cards. This seems a direct contradiction of one of the most basic tenets of Christianity, monotheism. The Antichrist is mentioned by Boendale, but the exact part he is going to play is never made fully clear.
4. The Black Death seems to have raised an early global awareness. Jan van Boendale, the Brabançon, writes about the effects of the ‘epidemic’ in Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, England, France, etc. It wasn’t just something that happened to people he knew – he was more than aware that this was a worldwide phenomenon and that the whole of society was being affected. This aspect is strangely absent from the Left Behind novels, even though it should be one of the first things anyone would notice in a world devastated on such a scale.

All of the above make the medieval expectations of the end of the world understandable and human, while those of the Left Behind books are almost cultist in their exclusivity. The authors also do not seem to accept their own personal fallibility, while Boendale hammers on self-improvement all the time.

Prelude to exams

The third term is nearly over; I am presently waiting for the last tutorial (handling some medieval manuscripts, yay!) to commence before I can devote myself fully to studying for the upcoming three exams. These are primarily about the middle ages, dealing with the intellectual medieval world (although it should be stressed that most historians consider the difference between the intellectual and ‘common’ world in the middle ages to be much smaller than it is today’s) and paleography and codicology. I have another exam on Europe, an important resit, which is unfortunately quite hard. A majority of students failed it the first time round (including, obviously, myself). I’m devoting most of my studying time to the first and last of those subjects. I also have to finish an essay for Middle Dutch literature in the same exam period, so it’s going to be busy alright.

This morning we had a guest lecture for that last course, dealing with the works of Jan van Leeuwen, a lay brother in the Groenendaal monastery/community of Jan van Ruusbroec in the Zoniënwoud near Brussels. For the past hundred or two hundred years, Ruusbroec (who was the leader of the community) received most attention from Middle Dutch scholars. He stands as one of the most important writers of Middle Dutch and even European medieval mystical thought. Jan van Leeuwen was viewed as no more than a mere unoriginal follower of Ruusbroec, who copied his works and ideas and presented them in less coherent and advanced texts. Youri Desplenter from the university of Ghent convincingly argued that this was a misconception. Very few scholars have actually studied Van Leeuwen’s works, but a closer look shows that Van Leeuwen tried to reach out to a different audience, namely merchants in stead of the higher clergy. Moreover, the Groenendaal community viewed Van Leeuwen in a similar way to Ruusbroec. Of course, Ruusbroec was hierarchically superior, Van Leeuwen was no more than a brother-cook. But like Ruusbroec, Van Leeuwen was portrayed in illumination (twice), had compilations of his manuscripts made by the monastery during his life (and his texts were overall more extensive than those of Ruusbroec) and received a Latin biography after his death. These clear indications of appreciation were granted to no other monks in Groenendaal (and one might well argue that the illumination showing Van Leeuwen is richer than that of Ruusbroec).

Jan van Ruusbroec shown twice, writing a preliminary text on a chalkboard and a redirected text on parchment or paper, while receiving divine inspiration.

Presumably, Van Leeuwen’s broader, non-clerical audience and his lower (non-clerical?) education made him more typical of the traits looked for in mystics. There’s also an interesting comparison with Jan Hus (yes, everyone in the 14th century was called Jan), as both men approved and even propagated purges of those not believing/following the word of God. Chopping off the unbelievers’ heads would be just, and better for society. Also, to see Van Leeuwen’s position towards some other 14th century mystics, he thought Meister Eckhart had (and I’m quoting based on memory, not with the text at hand, so this might be slightly off) all the religious feeling of a toad’s tail. Not very much, then. This underlines that grouping people together (’mystics’) may easily overlook contemporary dispositions and thus be counter productive (the same is of course true with many similar groups, such as philosophes, as well as broader groupings based on faith or nationality alone).
So, concludingly, Jan van Leeuwen was more than just Jan van Ruusbroec’s cook. But if you want to know what else he was talking about, you’re not in luck: the last publication of any part of his work was in 1947. Until a more complete version will be published, you’ll have to make do with the 1915-1916 publications by De Vooys, the only edition up at the DBNL. Not having read any of it, I don’t know yet whether it’s worth the time.

Inventions

This is the first time in about four years (okay, three and a half) that I’ve actually had internet in my room for good. After a whole week of this, it is time to evaluate!

Generally, it’s been positive only. Despite being brand new, my pc had an occasional software-induced glitch. Without internet, it would’ve been impossible for me to locate and eradicate the problem, and I may have returned the pc to the shop to give it a proper look through. Luckily, that wasn’t necessary. Though I was half fearing the problem was caused by faulty hardware, a quick search of Microsoft’s online help features revealed it was actually a Vista bug loads of people suffer from (WMI error 10) which was essentially not a problem, except poor programming causes inexplicable freeze-ups leaving a hard reboot the only option open to the user. What this error – solved by running a simple script – is still doing in retail versions of Vista approximately two years after release can only be a complete and utter mystery to me, but I’m glad that problem is over. Weirdly enough, the freezes only happened when I tried to open notepad. Not a terribly demanding task considering all the other things I’m forcing it to do. But such is Vista!

It also didn’t really interfer with my study work. I managed to plough through the approx 80 pages due for paleography in an hour or two, three, without much pc distraction. We read up to and including the Carolingian minuscule last week, which was quite interesting. The early national alphabets were awkward in the extreme, including a’s that looked like u’s or double c’s (cc), and weirdest of all, the Visigothic t that looked a bit like ct. Ah yes, the wonders of the alphabet. Also, I found out that one Latin student apparently didn’t know enough Latin to understand the transcriptions. So what are they doing over there?!

The middle ages

After a long period of writing essays (all awarded with 9s) and studying for exams (thus far, only one marked, and with an 8.1 no less) a new semester has finally dawned, bringing the light of the middle ages to my daily life.

Of course, it already was pretty noticeable in my life thus far, if my book collection is anything to go by.

The courses I have at present seem to be comparatively light work. There’s Middle Ages, a subject dealing with the cultural background of the middle ages, in a more in-depth way than that achieved in last year’s introductory course on the middle ages (there is, however, far less attention to political or economic history and a focus on the cultural aspects). Middle Dutch Literature (or Medieval Literature, the course name changes regularly) is the other compulsory subject, one I haven’t had yet, so can’t comment on. My two ‘free’ subjects are ‘Princes (Vorsten) of the World: the Popes in the Middle Ages’, a course by the superb orator professor Peter Raedts. Had one lecture of this thus far, and it was excellent. Probably the most politics-oriented of the courses of my pick, as it stresses the worldly function of the popes in the middle ages in combination with their religious function. Finally, I have picked a course (Handschriftkunde) combining paleography, codicology and the study of illuminations. This course has a massive heap of material, but luckily not all of it has to be studied by heart. For example, the 12 pages showing medieval abbreviations and their meaning are for reference only, as are all the names given to describe the various constituent parts of letters. This course is probably the most practical but certainly the least popular. There’s only about 20 students in the class, which allows for better contact with the lecturer. There’s also a greater percentage of older people (although they’re only with two, so their number isn’t directly overwhelming).

This course should hopefully prepare me for an internship in an archive next year, when I hope to work with some authentic 15th century manuscripts. As the Gothic script (which was used back then) is much harder to read than the preceding Carolingian minuscule this may still be quite tough.

On a related note, I recently (during my exam period) finished reading Umberto Eco’s Baudolino. I can only highly recommend this wonderful novel, which is about the arch-liar Baudolino, who tells his life story to a Byzantine historian to the backdrop of the capture of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. Baudolino’s stories are consistent in their unlikeliness, as his life sometimes resembles that of the saint he was named after, sometimes places him in an unbelievably prominent role in the unwinding of history and sometimes is so plainly absurd that it beggars belief. But the story is simultaneously appealing and factually consistent, making it hard for his contemporaries to simply discard, and making it very memorable to both the general and the specialist reader.

Review: Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex

Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex is a very neatly shot big-budget German film about the first and second generation of Rote Armee Fraktion terrorists, the most famous of which were Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. Made by at least partly the same team that made Der Untergang (aka Downfall in English), the 3-hour action film is bound to attract international attention, although it may be hard to follow for those unfamiliar with the RAF.

As said, the film is pretty much an action film. There’s more than a bit of violence (although actually the gore wasn’t bad; the only scene I found hard to watch was the one showing force-feeding) but it is used with a very specific purpose in mind.
The RAF is apparently mostly ignored in German schoolbooks, even though they were incredibly violent and had a significant impact on the West-German state: the RAF required special and far-stretching anti-terror laws that shocked neighbouring countries and one of the relatively largest police actions of all time was undertaken to weed them out, which saw the mobilisation of, apparently, every West-German police officer to stop and inspect every single car on the road at the time.
Perhaps a part in this apparent memory loss is played by the union of the BRD and DDR, the two Germanies, and as the DDR (the commies, basically) were to some extent supporting the RAF against the western BRD it was in the interest of their union to just forget about it. The total absence of the DDR in the film at all may be a late reflection of that (the film doesn’t even hint at the existance of two Germanies).

The film starts in the second half of the ’60s, showing the conflicts between students and state getting out of hand. There was a public explosion in ‘69 in much of the western world, and although most states (including Western Germany) made an accord with the students to some extent, a spirit of violence and anti-state feelings remained among a very small part of youths. Angered by the assassinations of their heroes, such as JFK, Martin Luther King and, in Germany, the 1968 near-assassination of student leader Rudi Dutschke, there were those who argued that it was the state that had started the violence, and threw down the gauntlet. Or at least that is the (really quite plausible) explanation offered by the film in an impressive montage of historical and dramatised scenes showing the birth of the RAF. As the film progresses the original pro-communist and anti-capitalist attacks grow more and more absurd and out of touch with the ideology that caused the struggle in the first place. As the youths fight against what they perceive as a police state, they actually create one.

Even though, as in the controversial Der Untergang, we almost exclusively follow the ‘bad guys’ (in this case the terrorists), this actually makes the state officials seem more sympathetic. The ideological inconsistency of most of the terrorists as well as, in many cases, their useless ruthlessness, makes them lose the sympathy of the viewer quite early on. What remains is an feeling of surprise at how easy it is for just a few people to create terror and potentially destabilise a state, something also demonstrated by the recent Mumbay attacks.

City Review: Liège

Monday 23-11

It is very cold. In fact, snow is lying on the roof and in the garden, and if it weren’t for the heating I would probably be unable to write this, as my fingers would be too busy freezing to bother about typing blog entries. In fact, the snow on the rooves behind and above me has been lying there for well over 48 hours, as it’s been nearly that long since I returned and it must have been lying there for some time then.

On Friday I went to Liège with Eva, which was really nice, if also (though slightly less) cold. Liège is a rather sad city but with some beautiful buildings commemorating the days of the city’s prosperity. The centre is quite small compared to the overall size of the city, and doesn’t actually appear to have too much to offer to tourists – there’s few shops and the large tourist streams in cities like Bruges or Maastricht are pretty much lacking. Also, the only language you hear in the centre is French, as opposed to Maastricht where you can pretty much bank on hearing at least five different languages while walking through the high streets. Even worse was the fact that it was terribly difficult to find Liège waffles – we found only two shops selling them home-made and both offered them only for take-away, not eat inside. One chap we asked about waffle shops even had the audacity to ask what kind of waffles we wanted! It’s actually easier to buy them in Maastricht, and so I propose renaming them to Maastricht waffles. Nobody in Liège will notice anyway.

Although the nice spots are not always easy to find, there were still some more than impressive locations, like the view from the mountain over the entire city and far beyond, which was spectacular. There are also, as has been mentioned, many very nice buildings, though quite a few are in need of repairs or are simply very grey. The city has an incredibly large number of churches, which makes it hard to know which ones are worth visiting (especially as the originally most important one, the cathedral of saint Lambert, was destroyed during the French Revolution). Even in the centre itself many houses and shop fronts had ‘to lend’ or ‘to buy’ signs in the windows, which probably says something about the state of the economy there.

So, altogether, a nice city, but it probably requires rather intense planning to know what places to visit.

Up soon: review of Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex.

Reviews!

Spooks season 326 episodes 1 & 2.
The new season took off this Monday and continued the day after. As so often, it is difficult material to review. The episodes were both entertaining, the first, I thought, better than the second, with realistic character development, if less realistic storylines. This year’s season seems to be all about the Russians, as opposed to last year’s Iranians, and I think that’s where part of the problem lies.
On the one hand, yes, it does seem realistic for Russia and the UK to be involved in a spying war. The Litvinenko incident leaps to mind, and the recent war between Georgia and Russia also cooled relations. On the other, it doesn’t seem quite as convincing that Russia would try to destroy the British state; Russia may be cocky at present, but does it really think it can do without western imports and exports? Not that all of those are channelled through the UK, of course – far from it – but without a British market left, global markets would fall even worse than they are doing now. Quite shockingly, the writers didn’t even bother to smooth out this plot hole, apparently considering it nothing out of the ordinary that Russia would attempt to bring down the entire British computer system through hacking and while there was discussion of a nuclear fallout it was never quite explained what would cause this. However, the problems in the plot of the second episode were sort of masked by the hacking being conducted by a Russian submarine, which was pretty neat and an original idea.
The dubious nature of the loyalty of Lucas North was also solved with considerable ease and a bucketful of nationalism, but this was sort of to be expected from a show that’s about a bunch of mad chaps willing to put their lives on the line for an abstract idea. Concluding, this season seems tamer than the last, where in the opening episode MI5 was burdened with a considerable guilty conscience in an opener that dared cross some boundaries, but it’s still worth watching.

Eric Christiansen: The Northern Crusades (second edition 1997)
This is an excellent book with incredible depth and loads of detail pressed into 260 pages of text. The author covers the crusades in the Baltic from their inception to their conclusion, detailing all possible theatres and avoiding the common enough pitfall to concentrate on the Teutonic Order. Crusades in Pomerania, Prussia, Estonia, Livonia, Lithuania, Russia and even Finland pass by in considerable detail, leaving the reader with knowledge of the opposing sides, the social structures of the area, the strategies and tactics employed by all and the theoretical problems created by the conflicts. Even the different economies are examined, as they played a key part in shaping the conflicts, and a critical eye is cast on the traditional, nationalistic historiography of the crusades, be it from a German, Russian, Swedish, Polish or Lithuanian point-of-view. The latter, for example, long portrayed their struggle against the Teutonic Order as a defensive fight for survival against a cruel opponent. While the Teutonic Order certainly was a cruel opponent, Lithuania itself was far from innocent, and subjugated independent peoples to support its war effort. The ways in which the Baltic climate and environment dictated the flow of war are also made abundantly clear. Finally, the last theoretical legal fight over the existence of the Order at the Council of Constance was a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening piece of writing which gives a great example of scholastic thinking. An excellent read.

News!

University has picked up again and the long Summer of doing nothing is over. I’ve got loads and loads of pages to read each day, and after doing that I actually have to formulate a structured and viable argument regarding issues raised in said pages. I have not yet been evicted, despite some of my products already having been scrutinised. So that’s good.

Another bonus is the fact I also passed my only resit, with a 7.5, meaning I have my first year – the propedeuse or P, as it is known in Dutch – in the bag, so I don’t have to worry about taking first year classes anymore.

My new classes seem okay at present. Dutch history is probably the most interesting, followed closely by the history of the European idea, where we (that is, those specialising in cultural history) will be studying the Enlightenment, both in its actual context and its use and abuse at the present time. I’ve already read more about ‘the concept of Europe’ in the past few days than I had in many years before.

My bookshelves have also been filled with excellent editions of the two Reynaert stories and a medieval novel (the ‘Historie vanden Vier Heemskinderen’, known to some perhaps as a wild Middle Dutch variant of the Middle French poem Renaud de Montauban, which describes the troublesome adventures of some noblemen who have fallen out with Charlemagne).

Anyway, because of this, and other literary pursuits of mine, book reviews are forthcoming!

Books

This is quite old news already, but apparently Bernard Cornwell has finished another, fourth novel set in the Hundred Years War dealing with the battle of Agincourt (1415) and called ‘Azincourt’, which is French. For Agincourt.
I consider Cornwell on the whole an entertaining writer. He has a few excellent books (the Warlord Chronicles, particularly, which I consider among my favourite novels altogether) and a bunch of others that are okay, even if they merely seem an exercise in writing stories about individualistic warrior heroes facing up to (usually French) opponents from without and arrogant noblemen from within.
However, this new book seems to be a complete waste of time, as setting, characters nor prose seem to have anything new to offer. According to Bernard’s own site, the hero character is a longbowman (just like in the previous three HYW novels of Cornwell, although it is not the same person altogether as there’s a sixty year gap between that novel and this) with a massive longbow who quickly picks up a French girl he protects from evil villains, because he is a proper English hero.
Yawn.
Would it really be too much to ask to develop plotlines and characters? It seems Cornwell has merely grabbed the same characters from out of the freezer, pasted on a new name and face and dropped them in an ever so slightly different setting.
With the battle in mind (and subtly dropped into the title – think anyone might notice?), the book is bound to get high sales for that reason alone, and even more so because it is coupled to Cornwell’s name. However, I’m going to pass up on this one. I think I can dream it already… silly and martially ineffective Frenchmen (though at least one who will be sympathetic to our gallant hero), betrayal, love, arrows blotting out the sun, a cameo appearance of Henry V, etc.
But feel free to disagree with me; you can read a part of the book on Cornwell’s website here.

In other news, in a fit of joy after doing well at my recent exam, I bought and devoured The Reavers, George MacDonald Fraser’s last published novel before his death (and the only one readily available in Dutch bookstores, apparently) which is wonderful. It is set somewhere in the 1590’s, somewhere on the border between England and Scotland, where all is supposed to be quiet after peace has arrived. But not everything is as it seems, and the border is crawling with reavers (basically cattle raiders), English spies, Scottish spies, and Spanish villains plotting to re-catholicise the British Isles, starting with a daring operation codenamed Jimsnatch. The book is purposefully filled to the brim with anachronisms and insanity and is not a serious historical novel at all, and is all the better for it. All the characters are stereotyped to the extreme, from beautiful female lead Godiva Dacre to the pygmy Clnzh and the book even starts with a wonderful ‘It was a dark and stormy night in Elizabethan England, …’ after which the sentence rambles on for well over a page, explaining the extent of the storm and setting the scene (livestock being blown through roofs, small Essex villages whirling away, the usual). The book is worth the money for that sentence alone (try keeping a straight face reading it), though if you don’t like reading pure silliness you will probably consider it a waste of time.