Customer Reviews

Secret Chambers and Hiding Places

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I'm going to assume that the book is the reprint of the 1901 book of the same title and author which I had in my hands a short while ago.
This is a book mainly about hiding places in great mansions of Great Britain. There are a few pictures of the mansions but I didnt see any diagrams or detailed technical information on the hiding places. The book is really concentrated
on the historical conditions which made some of these hiding places necessary. For example there is a lot
on the persecution of the Catholic church in Britain, especially of jesuits, whereby it was forbidden to celebrate a catholic mass and priests often had to hide to escape search parties. Unfortunately these parties were very tenatious and sometimes spent days inside a single building trying to find the hidden priests.

There is also a chapter on the hiding and escape of Bonnie Prince Charlie and one on the gun-powder plot.
It's interesting to compare all of this with the issues concerning terrorism nowadays.
The whole book reminds us of how barbaric Britain, and I suppose Europe was at the time.
It's not for the faint-hearted.
The writing is charmingly quaint.