Tags
Douai Diaries, English College Reims, History, primary sources, Tom Walsingham Mysteries, William Allen
This one comes from the Douai Diaries – the rather miscellaneous manuscript books chronicling, mostly in Latin, the day-to-day life, struggles and correspondence of William Allen’s band of English Catholics exiled in France. Allen built an English college in Douai, first – and when he was thrown out of what was, back then, Hapsburg land, moved the whole establishment to Reims, where it remained from 1578 to 1593. There he continued to instruct and ordain Catholic priests to send back in England as missionaries. A good deal of martyrs, plotters and fanatics passed through the colleges of both Douai and Reims… Continue reading
What was your greatest fear as children, o Readers?
You know those moments – those moments when a book speaks to you? When you read something that might have been written exactly for you to find it? Well, I had a rather peculiar moment of that kind, yesterday… 
Ages ago, I was dragged into one of those meme things… I must confess I always go very reluctantly about those. After all, why would anyone want to know ten things about me, or what music I have on my iPod, or where would I like to travel…
Obviously Scotland does this to me: it sends me on Jacobite tangents. Fictional tangents, mostly – because really, the moment you try a history book, the whole adventure loses much of its shine. Then again, seven decades of intermittent and unsuccessful attempts at restoring a royal line with the dubious aid of a foreign power were bound to be, on the one hand not terribly well organised, and on the other, perfect novel material… I mean: how can you have plenty of exiles headed by a handsome and charming prince, loyal clans, recurring bursts of violence, conspirations, secret messages, toasts to the King Across the Water, songs, divided families, spirited ladies, battles, and an ultimately doomed cause – and not expect an abundance of fiction? And of course, the foremost charm of the Jacobites is that of the doomed and defeated. Would we care very much about them, would we write novels, if they’d won? 
I’ve been musing on 
I told you about 
Scribblings 