I'D PREFER A CENTAUR

By the Rev. Desmond Morse-Boycott
SIMON OF LEICESTER, by Willa Gibbs (Hodder & Stoughton, 113s.).
SIMON of Leicester is Simon de Montford. His King was Henry Ill. The Pope had offered the throne of Sicily to Henry's second son, Edmund, who was twelve years old, and so, in Sicilian dress, he was presented to Parliament by his father, with
the request for a large sum of money to further the Pope's arrangement.
"The ears of all who heard it tingled,". The Barons' react ken was unfavourable, especially because they had found a great man to lead them, namely, Simon de Montford who, according to the estimable Green, .haei inherited the stria and severe piety of his father, the great Crusader, was assiduous in his attendance at Mass, was a friend of Grosseteste and the patron of friars: "His life was pure and singularly temperate".
He was cheerful and pleasant, a man of honour and conetancy, purpose and patriotism, but withal of fiery temperament. In a very real sense he was the father of our Parliament. He went out to his death from Mass in the Abbey of Evesham, in the year of our Lord, 1265.
Baffled
HE above I have written for the benefit of students of medimval history with. I must confess, the same kind of puckishness as our immortal wartime Prime Minister used to quote tags of Latin "for the benefit of Etonians", who knew, perfectly well, that the speaker had never got beyond the stage of mensa.
Act uelly, it your editor had been so kind as to send me a Centaur for review, I would have been happier. Of course, Centaurs are in short supply but have their humorous value in class. "What is a Centaur?" one solemnly asks, and a bright boy responds: "Half a horse and half a man." Without any pretensions to being a biologist I could have decided. objectively. where the horse began and the man ended.
This hook baffles. For well over a month I have tried to sort out the novel from the history, and own to defeat.
imaginative
/THIS is not tc decry the author' ess. She has a deep knowledge of history. The historical novel is not to be despised. -the influence of Sir Walter Scott on the Catholic revival, to use the term in its broadest meaning, has yet to be fully valued. He set many musing on the historic past, to their souls' salvation. But his talent was supreme.
This book falls between two stools. It is too historical to be enjoyed as a novel, too imaginative to be acceptable as history. I cannot recommend it to any who seek enjoyable, peaceful reading.
Nevertheless, to be entirely fair to its writer, who knows so much about her subject that she passes too quickly from one phase to another to be easily followed. should add that in my despair gave the book to a youthful Anglican seminarist. who devoured it in three days and favoured me with comments. He says:
Opposites
"rfHE authoress has set herself the difficult task of writing a novel in which the key characters are two such opposites as Henry and Simon. This I found the most absorbing part of her book. She has succeeded because she feels a real need to understand Simon the Man. She has tried not to present him as a superman.
"This is definitely the story of Montfort and Henry, despite the many characters. One must understand Simon as a Redeemer of his People and also as the Sinner who marries the King's sister despite her vows to the cloister."
For this offence-he is said to have removed Christ's ring from Eleanor, the King's sister's handhe was excommunicated, but men called him "Sir Simon the Righteous" and even before death he was venerated as a saint. And when he was hacked to pieces in the Battle of Evesham he was found to he wearing a hair-shirt. Willa Gibbs has tried to reconcile the seeming contradictions of. his life. How well she could have written a plain biography.
How greatly I would have preferred the Centaur aforesaid, as enabling me to make head and tail.