Thomas Becket: His Last Days Essay

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There are very few moments and people from that past the resonate throughout all of history. When moments are remembered, it is usually because the moment was an important one that created an enormous change. People are normally remembered because they did something of significance in their lives that brought about change. The murder of Thomas Becket is one of the rare instances of the past, where a moment and a person are remembered together. Many notable authors have written about the murder of Thomas Becket, and William Urry deserves to be one such author. He writes his book, entitled Thomas Becket: His Last Days, because he believed it was time to write a full account of Becket’s death that would appeal to a wide audience. To appeal to a wide audience, Urry makes many points about Becket’s personality, …show more content…

William Urry was born in Canterbury, worked as an archivist at Canterbury Cathedral, and was the archivist for the city of Canterbury during his lifetime. Throughout his life he published many books on the city of Canterbury, and its Cathedral. He did not, however, publish Thomas Becket: His Last Days. Urry died in 1981, and left a manuscript on Thomas Becket’s murder unpublished. Peter Rowe, after reading John Butler’s The Quest for Becket’s Bones, learned that Urry was never able to publish his manuscript on Becket. Rowe then contacted Urry’s widow and asked if he could look at the manuscript and potentially publish it, and she allowed him. Rowe published Urry’s manuscript almost in its entirety. The only major change Rowe made to Urry’s work was condensing his first four chapters into one chapter, which Rowe then titled the prologue. The rest of the book was published just as Urry would have published it if he had been alive to do so. The writing of William Urry, and the minor editing of Peter Rowe, create a gripping account of Becket’s

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