Q's Historical Legacy - 9 - Christmas Tales

Q thoroughly enjoyed his annual routines but none more than Christmas. This volume contains five stories all related to Christmas. I Saw Three Ships which tells the tale of three wrecks at Christmas and the appearance of a mysterious sailor who disrupts the routine of a coastal community. Shakespeare's Christmas recounts the astonishing solution devised by Shakespeare to the demands of the puritanical landlord of The Theatre in Elizabethan London. The remaining three stories are quaint and gentle tales of a Christmas burglar,an Indian army officer returning to Winchester,the city of his childhood,at Christmasand the adventures of a Cornish fisherman and crew desperate to get home for Christmas. Now surpassed in fame as a writer by his daughter's best friend,Daphne du Maurier,Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch was the pre-eminent Cornish writer of Victorian & Edwardian times He is of particular interest since his fiction was very often based on factual events long passed from memory.