The Gunpowder Plot

We can always expect a good book from Antonia Fraser; and in The Gunpowder Plot she excelled herself. This is a clear and engrossing account of the attempt to blow up the English Parliament in 1605. In examining the mysteries surrounding the discovery of 36 barrels of gunpowder and a tall man wearing a dark cloak in the store-room of a house in Westminster in the early hours of that November morning, Antonia Fraser unravels the confused and wrong-headed motives of the plotters and paints a convincing picture of Robert Catesby as the prime mover of the assassination attempt. Guy Fawkes has shouldered all the blame down through the centuries through an accident of history. He was caught, the others were killed. The author also vividly portrays the world of the recusant Catholics such as Lady Vaux, risking themselves and their families for the sake of 'a Mass in the corner'. She gives short shrift to those pragmatic Catholics who tempered their beliefs for the sake of a quiet life. The relationship between King James and the discreet Catholicism of Queen Anne is skillfully illuminated and the interplay of Spanish diplomacy, court politics and religious bigotry is cogently presented. Fraser has written an absorbing and in parts deeply moving book which brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of England in the early years of the reign of King James I and shows herself once again to be one of our finest narrative historians. (Kirkus UK)