剑雅17 阅读真题Test1 Passage3题目原文

剑桥雅思17共收集了雅思真题4套，以下是羊驼小编整理了第一套雅思阅读真题、答案及解析，以下是阅读第3篇文章Test1 Passage3的原文及参考译文，供小伙伴们复习参考。供小伙伴们复习参考。想要了解更多关于剑雅17听力和阅读真题答案及解析的考生可查看剑桥雅思17听力阅读真题答案及解析汇总。

剑雅17 Test 1 Passage3阅读题解析请查看剑雅17 Test 1 Passage3阅读27–29题答案解析。

READING PASSAGE  3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

To catch a king

Anna Keay reviews Charles Spencer’s book about the hunt for King Charles II during the English Civil War of the seventeenth century

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.

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.’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.

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 herodeat  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.

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.

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’tquite 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.

参考译文

抓捕国王

安娜凯伊(AnnaKeay)   对查尔斯斯宾塞 (CharlesSpencer)   关于17世纪英国内 战期间追捕国王查理二世一书的评论

查尔斯·斯宾塞 (Charles   Spencer) 的最新著作《抓捕国王》 (To  Catch  aKing)    向我们讲述了1651年9月伍斯特战役 (Battle  of Worcester) 中大败后六周内追 捕国王查尔斯二世的故事。多么精彩的故事啊。1649年，他的父亲被国会议员 处决后，年轻的查理二世牺牲了他父亲为之而死的原则之一，与苏格兰人达成协 议，接受长老会为国家国教，以换取加冕为苏格兰国王。他抵达爱丁堡，促使英 国议会军先发制人地入侵苏格兰。随后，苏格兰入侵英国。双方最终于1651年 在英格兰西部的伍斯特交锋。在城外草地上被议会军全面击败后，这位21岁的 国王发现自己成了全国搜捕的目标，并被悬赏重金捉拿。在接下来的六个星期里， 他成功地通过一系列惊心动魄的近距离逃脱，最终在法国庇护。在接下来的九年 里，身无分文、战败的查尔斯在欧洲四处游荡，只有一小部分忠实的支持者。

几年后，复辟王位后，50岁的查理二世要求与作家兼日记作家塞缪尔 ·佩皮斯会 面。他要求佩皮斯把他的故事写在纸上，以确保这一最不寻常的插曲永远不会被 忘记。在长达三小时的两次谈话中，国王详细地讲述了他作为逃犯度过六个星期 的个人回忆。当国王和大臣安顿下来(这一幕对于未来的编剧来说无疑是一种礼 物)时，查尔斯开始讲述自己的故事：“在这场战斗彻底失败到无法挽回的地步 之后，我开始思考拯救自己的最佳方式。”

斯宾塞这本书的趣味之一，不仅仅是因为它使用了查理二世自己和他的支持者的  叙述，也是读者离现实有多近。逐日复述逃犯的所作所为提供了精彩的细节：用  农用剪刀剪下国王的长发，用胡桃叶染他苍白的皮肤，当议会的士兵在森林下面  搜寻地面时，查理躺在博斯科贝尔森林一棵大橡树的树枝上。斯宾塞引出了幽默    例如查尔斯的朋友亨利 ·威尔莫特荒谬地拒绝采取伪装，理由是这有损他的 尊严  —以及当国王出现的秘密被谨慎地透露给他的支持者时的情绪紧张。

查尔斯在伍斯特战役中失利后的历险隐藏了一个令人不安的事实，即虽然几乎所 有英国人都对他父亲的处决感到震惊，但他们并没有欢迎他儿子随苏格兰军队的 到来，而是坚定地关上了大门。这部分是因为他领导着一支看起来像外国侵略军 的军队，部分是因为在近十年的内战之后，人们不顾一切地避免战争再次爆发。 更有趣的是，查理二世从那以后就非常喜欢这个故事。除了把它复述给任何愿意 听的人听，引起朝臣们的侧目，他还发起了一系列纪念活动。于是出现了一种新 的骑士制度，皇家橡树骑士团。制作了一系列描绘这一事件的大型油画，包括一 幅两米宽的博斯科贝尔森林的画布和六幅同样巨大的国王在逃油画。1660年，

查理二世委托艺术家约翰 ·迈克尔 ·赖特在他卧室的天花板上画了一群小天使，他 们将一棵橡树带到了天堂。很难想象许多其他国王会如此热情地度过人生的最低 谷，或者从一开始就成功逃脱。

查尔斯 ·斯宾塞是将这个故事传给新一代的完美人选。他节奏明快、可读性强的 散文巧妙地避开了现代习语，优雅地将这个伟大故事的细节生动的呈现出来。他 对这位逃亡的国王和追捕他的凶猛共和政权都表示了同情，他成功地实现了对故 事背景的探索，这一点远远超过了以往有关这一主题的书籍。事实上，这本书的 开头三分之一讲的是查理二世如何在伍斯特找到自己的，对于一些人来说，这是 阅读《抓捕国王》的唯一理由。

最后剩下的一个诱人的问题是，这一切意味着什么。如果这六个星期没有发生， 查理二世会成为另外一个国王吗?躲起来的日日夜夜一定在某种程度上影响了 他。需要伪装，需要靠智慧和魅力生存，需要用诡计逃离困境，这对他有帮助吗?  这是这本书不太切中要害的地方。取而代之的是，它将查理二世晚年描绘成一个 无能、爱好享乐的君主，这对这个人来说并不公平(也不准确),也不符合他性 格的复杂性。但撇开这一点不谈，《抓捕国王》是一本极好的读物，那些对这个 著名的故事知之甚少的人会发现他们有一份礼物。