![]() ![]() One cannot, however, reasonably expect depth of character or fully fleshed-out life stories of individual players in this kind of saga. ![]() ![]() Who but Edward Rutherfurd would make sure we know the origins of Piccadilly? "The name, originally, had been a joke, because the merchant who had bought up the land had made his fortune supplying the 'picadils' - ruff collars - to the Elizabethan and Stuart court." Or point out that each city in England set its own clocks until the coming of national railroad schedules made this impractical and Greenwich Mean Time took over the land? The cumulative effect is of a Bruegel painting or a Victorian diorama, something happening in every corner.Ĭomparisons with James Michener are inevitable, but Rutherfurd's prose is tighter and his research woven more closely into the narrative than that of the famous standard bearer of the edu-novel. His pages are crammed with curious and unusual facts. His characters pop in and out, while the narrative moves inexorably on. His subjects are as large as the climate: the growth of an English cathedral town (Sarum), the history of Russia (Russka) and now London, unabridged. ![]() Edward Rutherfurd's novels are like that. My family used to have a weather house - as the weather changed a figure popped out: man for rain, woman for sun. ![]()
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