Books

A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon As, with a hand still trembling, Clémence poured out the tea, she remembered the stories she had heard of such evening visits made by the Czar, “to talk at his ease,” and recalled the words of De Maistre when someone criticised this habit in his presence: “It is a touching thing to me to see the ruler of a great empire, in the age of all the passions, find his recreation in taking a cup of tea with an honest man and his wife.” Ivan Ivanovitch Pojarsky, an orphaned Russian Prince, adopted by loyal people in the village of Nicolofsky meets the great Czar Alexander of Russia while the Czar does his best to bring back to life a seemingly dead carpenter. This historical fact, and many others related in this captivating story, gives a very accurate picture of the life in Russia during the time of Napoleon.

An Other Tale of the Scottish Reformation So passed the men of Dundee, in the summer months of that terrible year, step by step from vague apprehension to vivid, actual terror; as the pestilence that walketh in darkness first struck down one, and another, and another; then gradually multiplied its victims until the voice of lamentation filled the city, and no man felt his own life safe from the destroyer for a single hour. Not very long after the first appearance of the pestilence, Archie Duncan came back one morning in high glee from the grammarschool, to which he had been despatched by the careful Janet only half an hour before. “Nae mair schule,” he cried, flinging his book on the table; “maister’s awa’, for fear o’ the sickness; — and may guid gang wi’ him!”

After the Second World War, Anne De Vries, one of the most popular novelists in The Netherlands, was commissioned to capture in literary form the spirit and agony of those five harrowing years of Nazi occupation. The result was Journey Through the Night, a four volume bestseller that has gone through more than thirty printings in The Netherlands.