PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Piers Paul Read read history at Cambridge and is the author of twelve acclaimed novels and three works of non-fiction, including the international bestseller Alive. He is married with four children and lives in London.
For almost 800 years the Templars have received a bad press. At the time of their downfall in 1307 they were accused of crimes so 'horrible to contemplate' that they were 'set apart from all humanity': crimes of devil-worship, blasphemy, sodomy and treachery, with the added sins of avarice and pride. That they were, in fact, innocent of these crimes is now received wisdom in academic circles, but to the public at large the charges stand - added to by the lunatic claims of modern conspiracy theorists and pseudo-historians, for whom the Templars guarded variously the Ark of the Covenant, the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Grail, worshipped the embalmed head of Jesus, and kept secret the truth of his marriage and children. Against this nonsense Read's book comes like a breath of fresh air. Dismissing such modern lunacies, he sets the Templars firmly in the context of their times and their primary purpose: to safeguard the newly recovered Holy Land for pilgrims and to keep it in Christian hands. And yet the foundation of his book is not the 'Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ' themselves, but the temple at Jerusalem from which they took their name. In concise and elegant prose Read takes us through the history of the temple and of the three religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - for whom it was a supreme religious symbol. The history of the Templars is essentially the history of the Crusades, that long and ultimately doomed struggle to wrest back the Holy Land from the Muslim invaders who had seized it by force, and Read deftly interweaves the two, guiding us with a sure hand through a maze of political, ecclesiastical and dynastic rivalries and follies, and through the parallel ebb and flow of the tides of war up to the Templars' final defeat in 1291. Driven back to Europe, the final act in the Templars' tragedy was their destruction at the hands of the cynical and greedy Philip IV of France, and it is a tribute to Read's skill that he can disentangle the strands of this complex and sordid affair with such seeming ease. But his real success is in showing the humanity of the Templars through their everyday lives. Neither monsters nor supermen, they were simply inspired to be both monks and warriors: to take up the cross and the sword in defence of their faith. And in this they were second to none. (Kirkus UK)
