Search results for ""CONNELL PUBLISHING LTD""

In his day Winston Churchill was one of the most famous human beings who ever lived. In 1945 most people in the world would have seen his name in the headlines,  heard the latest news of him on the radio or seen his face beaming or glowering in the newsreels. His funeral in 1965 is said to have been watched on television by 350 million people around the globe. Those days are long gone, and the massed ranks of his  contemporaries have been scythed away leaving only a few who remember him as a living presence. But of all the politicians of the 20th century, he is the only one to have inspired an apparently never-ending cascade of books, articles and documentaries. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that his place in our past is still in dispute.  He is as controversial today as he was for much of his lifetime, and most of those who study him fall into one of two camps: pro or ante. Neutrality and indifference are rare.  In this book Paul Addison, who has be

Read more less

In his first tetralogy of history plays (Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, and Richard III), Shakespeare offered the most extensive dramatic sequence since the great days of ancient Greek drama in Athens.                  Critics have sometimes disparaged this first tetralogy as episodic and amateurish. There are various lively scenes, and some characters radiate vitality – in Richard III, Shakespeare (defying historical fact) created a superbly memorable monster, the grotesque and arrogant villain whom audiences love to hate. But if the Shakespeare of the first tetralogy blithely embarrasses his modern fans by the abundance of jingoistic propaganda, his second tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two and Henry V) is much more sophisticated and ambiguous. Indeed, in view of the problems of censorship which he faced, Shakespeare provides remarkably incisive insights into the beh

Read more less

Ignorance about Islam runs deep in the West – ignorance of its rites, its beliefs, and above all its prophet.  Who was Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and the man Muslims believe was God’s last prophet on earth? In this concise and colourful account, the acclaimed writer and broadcaster Barnaby Rogerson tells the story of the illiterate orphan who was raised in the desert and trained as a merchant on the camel trade routes that criss-crossed Arabia, before defying his tribe to found a new religion, establish a world language, and create an almost unstoppable force that only 100 years after his death has conquered an empire stretching from the Pyrenees to the Hindu Kush. It was when he was 40 that Muhammad experienced his first revelation on a mountainside outside Mecca, hearing the divine order: 'Recite!'  From then until his flight from Mecca his tale is one of rejection and persecution, but it is also one of puzzling contradictions: why did he order the mur

Read more less