剑桥雅思17Test1Passage3阅读原文翻译To catch a king抓捕国王

剑桥雅思17 Test1 Passage3阅读原文翻译

第1段

Charles Spencer’s latest book,To Catch a King,tells us the story of the hunt for King Charles II in the six weeks after his resounding defeat at the Battle of Worcester in September 1651.And what a story it is.After his father was executed by the Parliamentarians in 1649,the young Charles II sacrificed one of the very principles his father had died for and did a deal with the Scots,thereby accepting Presbyterianism*as the national religion in return for being crowned King of Scots.His arrival in Edinburgh prompted the English Parliamentary army to invade Scotland in a pre-emptive strike.This was followed by a Scottish invasion of England.The two sides finally faced one another at Worcester in the west of England in 1651.After being comprehensively defeated on the meadows outside the city by the Parliamentarian army,the 21-year-old king found himself the subject of a national manhunt,with a huge sum offered for his capture.Over the following six weeks he managed,through a series of heart-poundingly close escapes,to evade the Parliamentarians before seeking refuge in France.For the next nine years,the penniless and defeated Charles wandered around Europe with only a small group of loyal supporters.

Charles Spencer最近完成的一本书，《抓捕国王》，向我们讲述了1651年9月在查尔斯二世于伍斯特战役中大败之后抓捕他的故事。这是个精彩非凡的故事。在其父亲于1649年被国会议员处决之后，年轻的查尔斯二世放弃了他父亲为之而死的原则之一，与苏格兰人达成协议，从此接受“长老派”为英国国教，以换取自己加冕为苏格兰国王。他驾临爱丁堡的举动促使英国议会军队采取先发制人的策略，入侵苏格兰。随后，苏格兰也对英格兰发起了进攻。1651年，双方最终在英格兰西部的伍斯特相遇。在城外的草原上被议会军队彻底击败之后，年仅21岁的国王发现他成为全国上下追捕的目标。抓住他的人将获巨额赏金。在接下来的六周里，他经历了一系列惊心动魄的死里逃生，最终摆脱议会军队，前往法国寻求庇护。随后的九年里，身无分文、丢盔卸甲的查尔斯在一小撮忠实支持者的陪伴下，流亡欧洲各地。

第2段

Years later,after his restoration as king,the 50-year-old Charles II requested a meeting with the writer and diarist Samuel Pepys.His intention when asking Pepys to commit his story to paper was to ensure that this most extraordinary episode was never forgotten.Over two three-hour sittings,the king related to him in great detail his personal recollections of the six weeks he had spent as a fugitive.As the king and secretary settled down(a scene that is surely a gift for a future scriptwriter),Charles commenced his story:‘After the battle was so absolutely lost as to be beyond hope of recovery,I began to think of the best way of saving myself.’

多年之后，已重归王位的五十岁的查尔斯要求与作家和日记作者Samuel Pepys会面。他请求Pepys将其故事付诸纸面，以确保这段非同寻常的人生插曲永远都不会被忘记。在两三个小时的会晤中，国王向他详细讲述了自己在六周的时间里作为逃犯的回忆。在国王和记录员坐下之后（未来的剧作家一定会将这一幕视为珍宝），查尔斯开始了他的故事：“战斗彻底失败，毫无任何卷土重来的可能，我开始思考拯救自己的最佳方式”，

第3段

One of the joys of Spencer’s book,a result not least of its use of Charles II’s own narrative as well as those of his supporters,is just how close the reader gets to the action.The day-by-day retelling of the fugitives’doings provides delicious details:the cutting of the king’s long hair with agricultural shears,the use of walnut leaves to dye his pale skin,and the day Charles spent lying on a branch of the great oak tree in Boscobel Wood as the Parliamentary soldiers scoured the forest floor below.Spencer draws out both the humour–such as the preposterous refusal of Charles’s friend Henry Wilmot to adopt disguise on the grounds that it was beneath his dignity–and the emotional tension when the secret of the king’s presence was cautiously revealed to his supporters.

阅读Spencer作品的乐趣之一就在于读者能够无限接近当时的情景，尤其是在使用查尔斯二世自己和其支持者的口吻之后。对逃亡者每日举动的复述提供了宝贵的细节。例如，用农家羊毛剪剪去了国王的长发，用核桃树的树叶对其苍白的皮肤进行染色，以及当议会士兵在Boscobel树林里四处搜索的时候，查尔斯就躺在上面一颗大橡树的枝杈上。Spencer不但描绘出了幽默感–比如查尔斯的朋友Henry Wilmot荒谬地拒绝在地上进行伪装，因为这有损其尊严–而且还写出了当国王藏身之处的秘密被小心翼翼地透露给其支持者时的紧张情绪。

第4段

Charles’s adventures after losing the Battle of Worcester hide the uncomfortable truth that whilst almost everyone in England had been appalled by the execution of his father,they had not welcomed the arrival of his son with the Scots army,but had instead firmly bolted their doors.This was partly because he rode at the head of what looked like a foreign invasion force and partly because,after almost a decade of civil war,people were desperate to avoid it beginning again.This makes it all the more interesting that Charles II himself loved the story so much ever after.As well as retelling it to anyone who would listen,causing eye-rolling among courtiers,he set in train a series of initiatives to memorialise it.There was to be a new order of chivalry,the Knights of the Royal Oak.A series of enormous oil paintings depicting the episode were produced,including a two-metre-wide canvas of Boscobel Wood and a set of six similarly enormous paintings of the king on the run.In 1660,Charles II commissioned the artist John Michael Wright to paint a flying squadron of cherubs carrying an oak tree to the heavens on the ceiling of his bedchamber.It is hard to imagine many other kings marking the lowest point in their life so enthusiastically,or indeed pulling off such an escape in the first place.

查尔斯在伍斯特战役失败之后的冒险掩盖了令人不快的事实，虽然每个英格兰人都为其父亲的处决感到震惊，但他们并不欢迎他的儿子带着苏格兰军队的到来，反而牢牢锁住了自家大门。这部分是由于他率领着一支看起来像外国入侵者的武装力量，另一部分原因则在于，在将近十年的内战之后，人们迫切想要避免重启战争。查尔斯二世在此之后如此喜欢这段经历就更加耐人寻味。除了向任何愿意倾听的人复述之外（这引发朝臣的不快），他还启动了一系列的举措来纪念它。他建立了一支新的、名为皇家橡树的骑士团。一系列描述这一经历的巨幅油画被创作出来。其中包括一幅以Boscobel树林为主题的、两米宽的画作，以及一套六幅类似尺寸的展现在逃国王的大幅绘画。1660年，查尔斯二世命令艺术家John Michael Wright在自己卧室的天花板上创作了这样一幅画：一队小天使扛着橡树飞向天堂。很难想象其他国王会如此热衷于纪念自己人生的最低点，或者首先就不会有很多国王能够完成这样一场逃亡。

第5段

Charles Spencer is the perfect person to pass the story on to a new generation.His pacey,readable prose steers deftly clear of modern idioms and elegantly brings to life the details of the great tale.He has even-handed sympathy for both the fugitive king and the fierce republican regime that hunted him,and he succeeds in his desire to explore far more of the background of the story than previous books on the subject have done.Indeed,the opening third of the book is about how Charles II found himself at Worcester in the first place,which for some will be reason alone to read To Catch a King.

Charles Spencer是将这一故事传递给下一代的绝佳人选。他笔下节奏紧凑，颇为可读的散文熟练地避开了现代习语，优雅地为这一传奇故事的细节赋予了鲜活的生命。他对逃亡的国王和追捕他的凶猛的共和派政权给予了一视同仁的共情。他也成功实现了自己的愿望，相比于之前同一主题的图书而言，更进一步探索故事的背景。确实，书的前三分之一用于描述查尔斯二世如何一路走到了伍斯特。对于一些人来说，单单这一点就足以成为他们阅读《抓捕国王》的原因。

第6段

The tantalising question left,in the end,is that of what it all meant.Would Charles II have been a different king had these six weeks never happened?The days and nights spent in hiding must have affected him in some way.Did the need to assume disguises,to survive on wit and charm alone,to use trickery and subterfuge to escape from tight corners help form him?This is the one area where the book doesn’t quite hit the mark.Instead its depiction of Charles II in his final years as an ineffective,pleasure-loving monarch doesn’t do justice to the man(neither is it accurate),or to the complexity of his character.But this one niggle aside,To Catch a King is an excellent read,and those who come to it knowing little of the famous tale will find they have a treat in store.

最终只剩下了这样一个撩人心弦的问题，这一切到底是为了什么。如果这六周的故事从来都没有发生过的话，查尔斯二世会是一个不一样的国王吗？那些东躲西藏的日日夜夜一定以某种形式影响了他。需要披上伪装，只能依靠智慧和魅力生存下去，利用诡计和权谋来死里逃生的经历是否帮助塑造了他？本书恰恰在这一领域未能一语中的。相反，它对查尔斯二世晚年无所作为，热衷享乐的描述并不公正（也不准确），也没能真实地反映出其性格的复杂性。但瑕不掩瑜，《抓捕国王》是本精彩的读物。那些对这段著名的故事知之甚少的人们在商店里打开它时，会发现自己即将享受一场阅读盛宴。