Sarum: The Novel of England

A masterpiece of breathtaking scope—a brilliantly conceived epic novel that traces the entire turbulent course of English history

This ebook edition features a new introduction by the author in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of Sarum .

This rich tapestry weaves a compelling saga of five families—the Wilsons, the Masons, the family of Porteus, the Shockleys, and the Godfreys—who reflect the changing character of Britain. As their fates and fortunes intertwine over the course of the centuries, their greater destinies offer a fascinating glimpse into the future. An absorbing historical chronicle, Sarum is a keen tale of struggle and adventure, a profound human drama, and a magnificent work of sheer storytelling.

Praise for Sarum

“Bursts with action, encyclopedic in historic detail . . . supremely well crafted and a delight to read.” — Chicago Tribune

“A fascinating journey . . . a clear yet sparkling window upon history with a superb narrative, so perfectly balanced between history and fiction that it clears away the mists of time from antiquity, giving the reader the impression that events over a span of ten centuries occurred only yesterday.” — Fort Worth **** Star-Telegram

“Strong . . . appealing . . . I haven’t read so satisfactory a saga in years . . . in fact, perhaps not ever before. . . . It gives you not only history but comfort.” — Chicago Sun-Times

“[Edward] Rutherfurd holds us all consistently intrigued. In Sarum he has created a splendid novel that will bring many hours of diversified reading pleasure.” — The **** Plain Dealer

“A richly imagined vision of history, written with genuine delight.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Rutherfurd is at his best. . . . His storytelling skills are substantial. . . . One of the best books of the season.” — Kansas City Star

“Absorbing . . . a superior historical novel . . . This blockbuster saga should appeal to discriminating readers, since Rutherfurd has an excellent grasp of his subject and a compelling story to tell.” — Publishers Weekly

Review

“Bursts with action, encyclopedic in historic detail . . . supremely well crafted and a delight to read.” — Chicago Tribune

“A fascinating journey . . . a clear yet sparkling window upon history with a superb narrative, so perfectly balanced between history and fiction that it clears away the mists of time from antiquity, giving the reader the impression that events over a span of ten centuries occurred only yesterday.” — Fort Worth **** Star-Telegram

“Strong . . . appealing . . . I haven’t read so satisfactory a saga in years . . . in fact, perhaps not ever before. . . . It gives you not only history but comfort.” — Chicago Sun-Times

“[Edward] Rutherfurd holds us all consistently intrigued. In Sarum he has created a splendid novel that will bring many hours of diversified reading pleasure.” — The Plain Dealer

“A richly imagined vision of history, written with genuine delight.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“Rutherfurd is at his best. . . . His storytelling skills are substantial. . . . One of the best books of the season.” — Kansas City Star

“Absorbing . . . a superior historical novel . . . This blockbuster saga should appeal to discriminating readers, since Rutherfurd has an excellent grasp of his subject and a compelling story to tell.” — Publishers Weekly

About the Author

EDWARD RUTHERFURD is one of the most renowned writers of historical fiction. He was born in Salisbury, christened in Salisbury Cathedral, and spent his early childhood in Salisbury Close. He was educated at Cambridge University and Stanford University in California. He has written six best-selling books, including Sarum, Russka , and London. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA This sprawling novel follows the fortunes and losses of five families from the Stone Age through the present time. Each of the families can be identified through genetic characteristics handed down through the agesnot simply physical characteristics, but attitudes and morals, too. There is plenty of action to keep readers motivated to finish the book. Rutherford has a style and energy all his own that should appeal to young readers of historical fiction. This book will be a hit with young adults who have the time and attention for longer works. Mary A. Williams, Harris County Public LibraryCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Journey to Sarum

FIRST, BEFORE THE beginning of Sarum, came a time when the world was a colder and darker place.

Over a huge area of the northern hemisphere – perhaps a sixth of the whole globe – stretched a mighty covering of ice. It lay over all of northern Asia; it covered Canada, Scandinavia and about two thirds of the future land of Britain. Had it been possible to cross this gigantic continent of ice, the journey would have been some five thousand miles from whichever direction it was approached. The volume of the ice was stupendous; even at its outer edge it was thirty feet high.

In a desolate, dark belt to the south of the ice lay a vast subarctic wasteland of empty tundra, several hundred miles across.

This was the colder, darker world, some twenty thousand years before the birth of Christ.

Since the huge casing of ice contained a considerable portion of the earth’s water, the seas were lower than those in later times – some did not exist at all – and so the lands to the south stood higher, their sheer cliffs frowning upon empty chasms that have long since vanished under the waters.

The northern world was a quieter place too. Over the ice, and the tundra, there reigned a silence that seemed to have no end. True, there were terrible winds, huge blizzards that howled across the land of ice; true, in the arctic tundra there were sparse forms of life – a meagre vegetation, small groups of hardy animals – which eked out a bleak existence in the freezing wastes; but to all intents the land was empty: thousands upon thousands of miles of desert; and in the vast glacial cap itself, all forms of life and the seas which might have spawned them were locked up in the great stasis of the ice.

Such was the last Ice Age. Before, there had been many like it; after it, there will be many more. And in the gaps between these ages, men have come and gone upon the northern lands.

Centuries passed; thousands of years passed, and nothing changed, nor seemed likely to. Then, at some time around 10,000 B.C., a change began to occur: at the outer edge of the frozen wastes, the temperature began to rise. It was not enough to be noticed in a decade, hardly in a century, and it did not yet have any effect upon the ice; but it rose nonetheless. Centuries passed. It rose a little more. And then the ice cap began to melt. Still the process was gradual: a stream here, a small river there; blocks of ice a few yards across in one place, half a mile in another, breaking away from the edge of the ice cap, a process hardly noticeable against the thousands of miles of the vast continent of ice that remained. But slowly this melting gathered pace. New land, tundra, emerged from under the ice; new rivers were born; ice floes moved southwards into the seas, which began to rise. A new ferment was in progress upon the surface of the earth. Century after century, the face of the continents changed as new lands began to define themselves and new life began, cautiously, to spread across the earth.

The last Ice Age was in retreat.

For several thousand years this process continued.

About seven thousand five hundred years before the birth of Christ, in the still bleak and uninviting season that was summer in those northern lands, a single hunter undertook a journey that was impossible. His name, as nearly as it can be written, was Hwll.

When she heard the plan, his woman Akun first looked at him in disbelief and then protested.

“No one will go with us,” she argued. “How shall we find food without help?”

“I can hunt alone,” he replied. “We shall eat.”

She shook her head vigorously in disbelief.

“This place that you speak of; it does not exist.”

“It does.” Hwll knew that it did. His father had told him, and his father’s father before that. Though he did not know it, the information was already several centuries old.

“We shall die,” Akun said simply.

They were standing on the ridge above their camp: a pitiful little cluster of wigwams made of reindeer skins and supported on long poles, which the five families that comprised their hunting group had set up when the winter snows departed. Across the ridge, as far as the eye could’ see, stretched the empty expanse of coarse grey-brown grass, dotted with the occasional bush, dwarf birch or clump of rocks, to which ragged lichen and stringy moss had attached themselves. Grey clouds scudded over the brown land, driven by a chill north east wind.

This was the tundra. For when the ice of the last glacial age began to retreat, it laid bare a desolate region that extended uninterrupted across the entire northern Eurasian land mass. From Scotland to China, in these vast, empty spaces similar in climate to Siberia today, small bands of hunters known to archaeologists as Upper Paleolithic, followed by Mesolithic man, had followed the sparse game that roamed the barren wastes. Stocky bison, reindeer, wild horse and the stately elk would appear on the horizon, then disappear again, and the hunters would follow, often for many days, in order to make their kill and survive another season. It was a cold, precarious life that continued for hundreds of generations.

“It was in the extreme north west corner of this gigantic tundra region that Hwll and his woman found themselves.He was typical of these wanderers, who were of no single racial type. He was five foot seven, just above average height, with high cheekbones, coal black eyes, a deeply rutted and weatherbeaten face with skin that seemed to have been worn like the landscape into innumerable valleys, creeks and gullies; he had half his teeth, which were yellow, and a full black beard now flecked with grey. He was twenty-eight: ripe middle age in that region and at that time. The crude jerkin and leggings that he wore were made of reindeer skin and fox fur, held together with toggles made of bone; for the art of stitching clothes together had not yet reached his people. On his feet were soft moccasin boots. He wore no ornaments. Thus naturally camouflaged in the tundra, he resembled a shaggy brown plant of some indeterminate kind, from the top of which hung the thickly tangled mass of his hair. When he stood stock still, his spear raised ready to throw, he could be mistaken at twenty yards for a stunted tree. The broad-set eyes under his deeply scored forehead and bushy brows were cautious and intelligent.

He was a good provider, known amongst the other hunters as a skilful tracker, and for many years the little group had lived and hunted undisturbed in a region approximately fifty miles east to west and forty north to south. They followed game, they fished, and it was the moon goddess who watched over all hunters that they trusted to protect their precarious way of life. In summer they lived in tents; in winter they built semi-subterranean houses, cutting them into the side of a hill and facing them with brushwood: crude shelters, but well designed to conserve precious body heat. He had taken Akun as his woman ten years before and in that time he had fathered five children, two of whom had survived: a boy of five and a girl of eight.

And now he was preparing to embark on an immense trek to an unknown place! Akun shook her head in despair.

The reasons for Hwll’s extraordinary plan were simple. For three years now, the hunting had been poor, and that last winter the little group had nearly ceased to exist. In vain he had searched in the snow, day after day, for the tell-tale tracks that might lead him to food. Day after day he had come back disappointed, having found only the trail of a single arctic fox, or the minute scuffling patterns of the lemmings which then inhabited the region. The little band had subsisted on a store of nuts and roots that they had gathered in the preceding months, and even that store had been nearly exhausted. He had watched the women and children grow wasted, and almost despaired. Nor had the weather given them any respite, for it had been bitterly cold, with continuous icy winds from the north. Then at last, he saw a party of reindeer, and the hunters, calling on their last reserves of strength, had managed to separate one from the group and kill it. This single lucky find had saved them from starvation: the flesh of the animal gave them meat and its precious blood gave them the salt which they would otherwise have lacked. Despite this kill, the end of the winter saw one of the women and three of the children dead.--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

Francis Edward Wintle (penname: Edward Rutherfurd) has made a name writing huge, meticulously detailed historical novels, this one and the Russka. In Sarum he traces the ten-thousand-year history of five families on the Salisbury Plain in southern England. The vignettes are not for the squeamish although Wintle avoids elaborate detail in the violence. Nadia May is ideal; her British accents fit the locale, and her pacing and characterizations are smooth, unobtrusive and compelling. The ease of her reading leads the listener to forget she is there, the sign of the perfect narrator. D.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

A masterpiece that is breathtaking in its scope, SARUM is an epic novel that traces the entire turbulent course of English history. This rich tapesty weaves a compelling saga of five families who preserve their own particular characteristics over the centuries, and offer a fascinating glimpse into the future.

"From the Paperback edition.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Publisher

I was eight months pregnant and had just been told that I had to stay in bed until it was time to deliver. I was bored out of my mind. Reading was my therapy. Sarum was one of those books that I don't think I would have read unless confined to stay put. I am so glad that the timing was such that I got a chance to experience Rutherford's storytelling. The beginning of the book which is set in primitive England really hooked me and took me into the history of England gently by using the characters and families from generation to generation. While I am not a fan of English history, I am a lover of family sagas. Sarum taped right into my love of family sagas, capturing my attention with its interesting stories of people in therespective time period.

-Ceneta Lee Williams, Ballantine National Account Manager --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

''Mammoth, sweeping (7500 BC to World War II) story of the English city of Salisbury, its environs and its people, told through the experiences of five rival families. From the ice-age to the present day, Rutherford's scope is vast. Both historical novel and adventure epic, this is a work of universal appeal.'' -- Kirkus UK

''(Narrator) Nadia May is ideal; her British accents fit the locale, and her pacing and characterizations are smooth, unobtrusive and compelling. The ease of her reading leads the listener to forget she is there, the sign of the perfect narrator.'' -- AudioFile --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

A first novel, Rutherfurd's sweeping saga of the area surrounding Stonehenge and Salisbury, England, covers 10,000 years and includes many generations of five families. Each family has one or more characteristic types who appear in successive centuries: the round-headed balding man who is good with his hands; the blue-eyed blonde woman who insists on having her independence; the dark, narrow-faced fisher of river waters and secrets. Their fortunes rise and fall both economically and politically, but the land triumphs over the passage of time and the ravages of humans. Rutherfurd has told the story of the land he was born in and has told it well. The verbosity of a Michener is missing, but all the other elements are present, from geology and archaeology to a rich story of human life. Highly recommended. BOMC alternate. Andrea Lee Shuey, Dallas P.L.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.