Bøger af Rene Weis

On a steamy August night in 1952, a British family settles down to sleep beside their car in a lay-by. Before daybreak all three of them, a father, a mother, and their ten-year-old daughter, have been brutally murdered.

At last-a key that unlocks the secrets of Shakespeare's lifeIntimacies with Southampton and Marlowe, entanglements in London with the elusive dark lady, the probable fathering of an illegitimate son-these are among the mysteries of Shakespeare's rich and turbulent life that have proven tantalizingly obscure. Despite an avalanche of recent scholarship, René Weis, an acknowledged authority on the Elizabethan period, believes the links between the bard's life and the poems and plays have been largely ignored. Armed with a wealth of new archival research and his own highly regarded interpretations of the literature, the author finds provocative parallels between Shakespeare's early experiences in the bustling market town of Stratford-including a dangerous poaching incident and contacts with underground Catholics-and the plays.Breaking with tradition, Weis reveals that it is the plays and poems themselves that contain the richest seam of clues about the details of Shakespeare's personal life, at home in Stratford and in the shadowy precincts of theatrical London-details of a code unbroken for four hundred years.

In the 13th century, a group of heretics in southwest France, the Cathars, became a serious threat to the Catholic church. In several waves of repression, thousands of Cathars were killed. Yet so ardent was their faith that, early in the next century, the Cathars rose one last time. Using the breathtakingly detailed and uniquely extant documentation from this period, and drawing on his intimate knowledge of the last Cathars' tracks and hiding places, many of which survive to this day, Ren Weis tells the full story of this gripping historical episode.