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About this book
Guardian & Observer reviews
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Trade review
Subtitled, "A Ghost Story". This is a real life historical detective story of sex, scandal and the supernatural. Marshall sets out to uncover the links between an execution in Dublin and the sightings of a ghost in Minehead in the fifteenth century.
Synopsis
Halloween 1636: sightings of the ghost of an old woman begin to be reported in the small English coastal town of Minehead, and a royal commission is sent to investigate. December 1640: a disgraced Protestant bishop is hanged in the Irish capital, Dublin, after being convicted of an crime. This work presents the links between these two events.
Book Details
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Publication Date:
22-Feb-2007
ISBN:
9780199273713
Observer review
A historical haunting
Helen Zaltzman the observer Sun 02 November 2008
History professor Peter Marshall has unearthed a 380-year-old ghost story and combined it with 17th-century religious conflicts, Anglo-Irish relations, and the machinations of Charles I's minions, to rather jolly effect. After her death in 1634, widow Susan Leakey kept popping up from beyond the grave to pester her family and neighbours; not unusual for the time, apparently, until she intoned something about a son-in-law in the Church of Ireland. This piqued the attentions of the privy council, whose investigation into the spectre's claim culminated in Protestant bishop John Atherton being hanged after accusations of incest, sodomy and bestiality. A wider picture of how religion and gossip have developed since emerges from Marshall's engaging presentation of this intriguing case.