Читать книгу Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope - Страница 1

In the great cathedral cities of England, the church and politics go hand in hand. The government appoints the bishop, who is the head of the church in that city, and below him come archdeacons, deans, vicars, parsons, chaplains – all kinds of clergymen, of differing degrees of rank, importance, influence, and income.

All this is complicated enough, but the appointment of Dr Proudie as the new Bishop of Barchester overturns the old established order in that peaceful city, and a struggle for power begins against the new bishop’s wife, the fearsome Mrs Proudie. And when you also add to the mixture the new bishop’s chaplain, the oily and ambitious Obadiah Slope, you have a recipe for war.

And as well as the struggle for power in the church, there is also the game of love, which is played by very different rules, according to the player. Mrs Eleanor Bold, a pretty young widow, believes in honest and truthful ways of dealing with people, but she does not always understand the deceitful ways of men. The Signora Madeline Neroni, on the other hand, understands men only too well, and her beauty and her wit and her charm draw men to her, like flies into a spider’s web …