Victor Stater is Jane De Grummond Professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He is the author of Duke Hamilton Is Dead!, Noble Government, and A Political History of Tudor and Stuart England.
“Offers a timely warning. When readers look back at this world of
cruel, arbitrary justice, paranoia and sectarianism, they should be
wary of indulging in the ‘condescension of posterity.’ . . . As
Stater points out, believing in conspiracy theories is a part of
human nature. Times change, human nature does not.”—Paul Lay, The
Times
“Oddly, perhaps, historians often present the Popish Plot with a
kind of textbookish colorlessness. Mr. Stater’s achievement is to
restore the plot’s fascination and to capture—after more than three
centuries—the dread and incredulity felt by those who experienced
it. . . . His accounts have the compulsively fascinating quality of
a true-crime podcast.”—Jeffrey Collins, Wall Street Journal
“A fascinating, entertaining study in its own right—thoroughly
researched, full of colourful sketches of the leading characters,
brilliant at recreating the feverish atmosphere of the times and
wise in its assessment of the long-term consequences for English
politics.”—Tony Barber, Financial Times
“Victor Stater’s rollicking, imperious prose is both well-told
history and a thought-provoking study of a world similar to our
own.”—Madoc Cairns, Times Literary Supplement
“Stater tells this grim tale with a historian’s command of sources
and a thriller writer’s control of narrative. He skilfully weaves
the story of the plot into the fabric of England’s religious
history, as well as its party-political future. His prose is crisp
and his judgement sound. . . . Hoax is deeply rooted in the
politics and prejudices of the seventeenth century, but it fires a
warning shot across the bow of our own time.”—Jessie Childs,
Catholic Herald
“Gripping. . . . Reading Hoax one is constantly reminded how
vulnerable even powerful institutions are to the determinedly
dishonest—perhaps particularly to those who justify their
dishonesty to themselves as being for a greater cause—and how
readily rationality recedes before the irrational when deep-rooted
beliefs are brought into play. Might Hoax, as well as being a
first-rate piece of history, help alert us to any latter-day Oates
and Shaftesburys among us now?”—Mathew Lyons, The Tablet
“A rip-roaring narrative account of the Oates conspiracy. . . .
Victor Stater’s lively new book on the so-called ‘Popish Plot’ does
a wonderful job of telling this story. . . . Stater is particularly
good on the big set pieces—the courtroom drama, the executions, the
street pageantry—culling dialogue from trial transcripts and
setting the scene with enviable brio.”—Joseph Hone, History
Today
“Hoax is meant to be a rollicking read, and indeed provides a
richly descriptive narrative of one of the darkest chapters in
English history.”—Andrea McKenzie, British Catholic History
“An extraordinary story of vicious lies manipulated by desperate
politicians into a frenzy of disinformation. Stater tells it with
verve and a magnificently tight narrative control. It led to more
than thirty innocent Catholics being tortured to death. Few
conspiracy stories have been quite so lethal.”—John Morrill FBA,
Selwyn College, Cambridge
“A fascinating study. As well as describing the progress of the
‘plot,’ and the investigation into it, blow by blow, Stater gives
us a many-sided picture of seventeenth-century London. For anyone
with an interest in seventeenth-century history—this book is
unmissable. Let Hoax be a lesson to us!”—Liza Picard, author of
Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London
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