Useless on Amazon

I’m useless on social media.  I’m never quite sure why it works the way it does.  Or how.

The reason it’s making me tear my  hair just now is because Amazon have posted a really boring summary of Murder at Whitby Abbey AND THERE IS NO WAY TO CORRECT IT!!!

They seem to have dug an old paragraph from somewhere which was junked months ago and not meant for publication and now it won’t go away.

How annoying!

It should read something like the following:

December 1389.  As penance for her sexual misconduct earlier that year, Hildegard is sent by Abbot de Courcy to the poweful Whitby Abbey on a difficult quest – to obtain a Holy Relic, a lock of St Hild’s hair, kept secretly by the monks for over 600 years.

Accompanied by two monks militant and a young priest from the Abbey of  Meaux, Hildegard finds the Whitby guest house teeming with visitors intent on celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas before the austere days of Lent set in.

To her dismay she finds that others, too, are desperate to obtain the Relic and she has no choice but to enter a bidding war if she wants to fulfil Abbot de Courcy’s request.

When the body  of a young monk is discovered dangerous secrets emerge and, with tensions between town and abbey erupting into violence, Hildegard finds the holy precinct full of menace as she tracks down the killer.

Well, something along those lines will not be too far away from the facts.

As I’ve just finished The Hour of the Fox I’m thinking a lot about historical truth.  It’s elusive even with good will and careful reading of primary sources but I’m saddened by the Lancastrian propaganda that still dominates, based on their concerted efforts to win the propaganda war against King Richard II.  People are still trotting out the old smears without stopping to think where they come from.  They even omit known facts in order to cling to their prejudices.  I don’t know why something that happened so long ago should sadden me with its obvious distortions but it does.  Oh well.  There it is.  As Chairman Mao said in his little Red Book:  let a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand schools of thought contend.   What is history but a collection of unsubstantiated stories?  What is truth?