Search results for ""Author Merchant"

The south London parish of Battersea has roots as a working village, growing produce for London markets, and as a high-class suburb, with merchants’ villas on the elevated ground around Clapham and Wadsworth Commons. Battersea enjoyed spectacular growth during Queen Victoria’s reign, and railroads brought industry and a robust building boom, transforming the parish into another of London’s dense, smoky neighborhoods, though not without its unique and distinguishing features. Among these are Battersea Park, which was created by the Crown in the 1850s; the monumental Battersea Power Station, completed in 1939; and Clapham Junction railway station, which is, by measure of passenger interchanges, the busiest station in the United Kingdom. The two latest volumes of the Survey of London, 49 and 50, trace Battersea’s development from medieval times to the present day. Offering detailed analysis of its streets and buildings both thematically and topographically, and including copious original in-depth research and investigation, the books are a trove of architectural history and British history. Profusely illustrated with new and archival images, architectural drawings and maps, these volumes are welcome additions to the acclaimed Survey of London series.Published for English Heritage by Yale University Press on behalf of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Lays to rest the controversial myth of Jewish involvement in the slave trade In the wake of the civil rights movement, a great divide opened up between African American and Jewish communities. What was historically a harmonious and supportive relationship suffered from a powerful and oft-repeated legend, that Jews controlled and masterminded the slave trade and owned slaves on a large scale, well in excess of their own proportion in the population. In this groundbreaking book, likely to stand as the definitive word on the subject, Eli Faber cuts through this cloud of mystification to recapture an important chapter in both Jewish and African diasporic history. Focusing on the British empire, Faber assesses the extent to which Jews participated in the institution of slavery through investment in slave trading companies, ownership of slave ships, commercial activity as merchants who sold slaves upon their arrival from Africa, and direct ownership of slaves. His unprecedented original research utilizes shipping and tax records, stock-transfer ledgers, censuses, slave registers, and synagogue records. These materials reveal, once and for all, the minimal nature of Jews' involvement in the subjugation of Africans in the Americas. A crucial corrective, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade lays to rest one of the most contested historical controversies of our time.

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'Thaim wi a guid Scots tongue in their heid are fit tae gang ower the warld' In The Scottish World, renowned broadcaster Billy Kay takes us on a global journey of discovery, highlighting the extraordinary influence the Scots have had on communities and cultures on almost every continent. While others have questioned the self-confidence of the Scots, Kay has travelled the world from Bangkok to Brazil, Warsaw to Waikiki and found ringing endorsements for the integrity and intellect, the poetry and passion of the Scottish people in every country he has visited. He expands people's view of Scotland by relating remarkable stories of the wealthy Scottish merchant community in Gdansk; of national geniuses of Scots descent, such as Lermontov in Russia and Grieg in Norway; of an American Civil War blamed on Sir Walter Scott and initiated in the St Andrew's Society of Charleston; of inspirational missionaries in Calabar and Budapest; of Scotch professors establishing football in soccer strongholds such as Barcelona and São Paulo; of pioneers like Sandeman and Cockburn, and the Scottish roots of many of the great wines of Europe; and of their amazing involvement in liberation movements in Malawi, Chile, Peru, Greece, Corsica and India. The Scottish World is a celebration of the enormous contribution the Scots have made to the modern world.

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Set in 15th-century Greece, this young adult novel tells the story of an extraordinary friendship between two boys from different cultural backgrounds. On the surface, Miguel, a refugee from post-Inquisition Spain, and David, the son of a wealthy Greek Jewish fabric merchant, have little in common. As they work together in David’s family shop, they find they share a special connection that goes beyond the divide of rich and poor, Spanish and Greek. Will an argument over David’s sister be more than their friendship can bear? A Shout in the Sunshine sheds light on an often forgotten part of Jewish history - the Greek Jewish experience. Set in tumultuous times for the Greek Jewish community, the book explores what happens when two distinct Jewish communities must learn to live together. In 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled the Jewish community of Spain. Sultan Beyazit II invited these refugees to Thessalonika, a community already home to a diverse Jewish population with deep roots in Greece. The melding of these different Jewish groups created a vibrant Jewish community that was, tragically, almost entirely destroyed during World War II. This book is a testimony to the remarkable nature of this once thriving world.

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How an ancient rubbish dump has given us a unique view of life 2,000 years agoIn 1897 two Oxford archaeologists began digging a mound south of Cairo. Ten years later, they had uncovered 500,000 fragments of papyri. Shipped back to Oxford, the meticulous and scholarly work of deciphering these fragments began. It is still going on today. As well as Christian writings from totally unknown gospels and Greek poems not seen by human eyes since the fall of Rome, there are tax returns, petitions, private letters, sales documents, leases, wills and shopping lists. What they found was the entire life of a flourishing market-town - Oxyrhynchos ( the `city of the sharp-nosed fish' ), - encapsulated in its waste paper. The total lack of rain in this part of Egypt had preserved the papyrus beneath the sand, as nowhere else in the Roman Empire. We hear the voices of barbers, bee-keepers and boat-makers, dyers and donkey-drivers, weavers and wine-merchants, set against the great events of late antiquity: the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of Christianity. The result is an extraordinary and unique picture of everyday life in the Nile Valley between Alexander the Great in 300 BC and the Arab conquest a thousand years later.

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Many people today have never heard of the Comoros, but these islands were once part of a prosperous economic system that stretched halfway around the world. A key node in the trading networks of the Indian Ocean, the Comoros thrived by exchanging slaves and commodities with African, Arab and Indian merchants. By the seventeenth century, the archipelago had become an important supply point on the route from Europe to Asia, and developed a special relationship with the English. The twentieth century brought French colonial rule and a plantation economy based on perfumes and spices. In 1975, following decades of neglect, the Comoros declared independence from France, only to be blighted by a series of coups, a radical revolutionary government and a mercenary regime. Today, the island nation suffers chronic mismanagement and relies on foreign aid and remittances from a diasporic community in France. Nonetheless, the Comoros are largely peaceful and culturally vibrant--connected to the outside world in the internet age, but, at the same time, still slightly apart. Iain Walker traces the history and unique culture of these enigmatic islands, from their first settlement by Africans, Arabs and Austronesians, through their heyday within the greater Swahili world and their decline as a forgotten outpost of the French colonial empire, to their contemporary status as an independent state in the Indian Ocean​.

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WINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEARNext morning at about 6 o'clock my mother wakened us to say there had been a shipwreck and bodies were being washed ashore. My fatherhad gone with others to look for survivors ... I don't think any survivors came in at Port Ellen but bodies did.The loss of two British ships crammed with American soldiers bound for the trenches of the First World War brought the devastation of war directly to the shores of the Scottish island of Islay.The sinking of the troopship Tuscania by a German U-Boat on 5 February 1918 was the first major loss of US troops in in the war. Eight months after the people of Islay had buried more than 200 Tuscania dead, the armed merchant cruiser Otranto collided with another troopship during a terrible storm. Despite a valiant rescue attempt by HMS Mounsay, the Otranto drifted towards Islay, hit a reef, throwing 600 men into the water. Just 19 survived; the rest were drowned or crushed by the wreckage.Based on the

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For the twentieth anniversary of the start of the Matthew Bartholomew series, Sphere is delighted to reissue all of the medieval monk's cases with beautiful new series-style covers.------------------------------------The seventeenth chronicle in the Matthew Bartholomew series.In 1358 the fledging college of Michaelhouse in Cambridge is in need of extra funds. A legacy from the Archbishop of York of a parish close to that city promises a welcome source of income. However, there has been another claim to its ownership and it seems the only way to settle the dispute is for a deputation from Michaelhouse to travel north.Matthew Bartholomew is among the small party which arrives in the bustling city, where the increasing wealth of the merchants is unsettling the established order, and where a French invasion is an ever-present threat to its port. But soon he and his colleagues learn that many of the Archbishop's executors have died in unexplained circumstances and that the codicil naming Michaelhouse as a beneficiary cannot be found...'A first-rate treat for mystery lovers' (Historical Novels Review)'Susanna Gregory has an extraordinary ability to conjure up a strong sense of time and place' (Choice)

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Italian immigrants to the United States and Argentina hungered for the products of home. Merchants imported Italian cheese, wine, olive oil, and other commodities to meet the demand. The two sides met in migrant marketplaces—urban spaces that linked a mobile people with mobile goods in both real and imagined ways. Elizabeth Zanoni provides a cutting-edge comparative look at Italian people and products on the move between 1880 and 1940. Concentrating on foodstuffs—a trade dominated by Italian entrepreneurs in New York and Buenos Aires—Zanoni reveals how consumption of these increasingly global imports affected consumer habits and identities and sparked changing and competing connections between gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Women in particular—by tradition tasked with buying and preparing food—had complex interactions that influenced both global trade and their community economies. Zanoni conveys the complicated and often fraught values and meanings that surrounded food, meals, and shopping. A groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Migrant Marketplaces offers a new perspective on the linkages between migration and trade that helped define globalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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During the middle of the 19th-Century, Britain and China would twice go to war over trade, and in particular the trade in opium. The Chinese people had progressively become addicted to the narcotic, a habit that British merchants were more than happy to feed from their opium-poppy fields in India. When the Qing dynasty rulers of China attempted to supress this trade--due to the serious social and economic problems it caused--the British Government responded with gunboat diplomacy, and conflict soon ensued. The first conflict, known as the First Anglo-Chinese War or Opium War (1839-42), ended in British victory and the Treaty of Nanking. However, this treaty was heavily biased in favour of the British, and it would not be long before there was a renewal of hostilities, taking the form of what became known as the Second Anglo-Chinese War or Arrow War (1857-60). Again, the second conflict would end with an 'unequal treaty' that was heavily biased towards the victor. 'The Lion and the Dragon: Britain's Opium Wars with China, 1839-1860' examines the causes and ensuing military history of these tragic conflicts, as well as their bitter legacies.

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Indonesia and its more than 17,000 islands are spread out over a surface area equivalent to that of the European Union. As an area of confluences and encounters, the Indonesian archipelago has always been one of the most important crossroads of world trade, where Austronesian ships, Arab dhows, Chinese junks, Iberian caravels, and other ships of the East India Companies berthed long before the container ships and oil tankers of today. The history of this archipelago is that of a multitude of links and connections, where the near and the far intermingle, forced to compete in a ubiquitous maritime world. The sea brings together more than she separates, and the monsoon winds have made this intersection a mandatory stop for merchants, clerics, and foreign diplomats, whose presence has left traces in the myths, monuments, arts, and traditions of contemporary Indonesia. Overlapped, blended, reinterpreted by rich and complex societies, these inflows have forged multiple worlds that the relationship with the sea has finely coloured and chiselled. Archipel invites us to discover this world, with the sea as the common thread, and an exceptional collection of major artworks as markers of a history to be discovered and admired.

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In the 1630s, the Netherlands was gripped by tulipmania: a speculative fever unprecedented in scale and, as popular history would have it, folly. We all know the outline of the story - how otherwise sensible merchants, nobles, and artisans spent all they had (and much that they didn't) on tulip bulbs. We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation.But it wasn't like that. As Anne Goldgar reveals in "Tulipmania", not one of these stories is true. Making use of extensive archival research, she lays waste to the legends, revealing that while the 1630s did see a speculative bubble in tulip prices, neither the height of the bubble nor its bursting were anywhere near as dramatic as we tend to think. By clearing away the accumulated myths, Goldgar is able to show us instead the far more interesting reality: the ways in which tulipmania reflected deep anxieties about the transformation of Dutch society in the Golden Age.

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In Old Regime France credit was both a central part of economic exchange and a crucial concept for explaining dynamics of influence and power in all spheres of life. Contemporaries used the term credit to describe reputation and the currency it provided in court politics, literary production, religion, and commerce. Moving beyond Pierre Bourdieu's theorization of capital, this book establishes credit as a key matrix through which French men and women perceived their world. As Clare Haru Crowston demonstrates, credit unveils the personal character of market transactions, the unequal yet reciprocal ties binding society, and the hidden mechanisms of political power. Credit economies constituted "economies of regard" in which reputation depended on embodied performances of credibility. Crowston explores the role of fashionable appearances and sexual desire in leveraging credit and reconstructs women's vigorous participation in its gray markets. The scandalous relationship between Queen Marie Antoinette and fashion merchant Rose Bertin epitomizes the vertical loyalties and deep social divides of the credit regime and its increasingly urgent political stakes.

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In the summer of 1915 the Royal Naval Air Service found itself engaged in an unexpected war at sea, the fight to prevent the German submarine fleet from disrupting the flow of vital supplies to the British Isles, necessary for the conduct of the war. It was a war that had to be won because by the spring of 1917 the U-boat campaign against Allied merchant shipping was close to bringing the British war effort to the point of collapse. Airships of the RNAS played a vital part in this new war at sea. This book tells the story of the young men who ventured out over the often hostile waters around the British Isles in airships, who were expected to hunt down the German submarines and to attack them with the hopelessly inadequate weapons at their disposal. The story is told by those who took part in this new form of warfare, through pieces written by them or via interviews with veterans. It covers the entire experience of being an airship pilot, from initial training, through their numerous adventures while flying these frail craft over the coastal waters of the British Isles, to the final victory in 1918.

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Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare is a delightful comical love story. The play begins with a shipwreck, during which Viola, a young aristocratic-born woman, is separated from her identical twin brother, Sebastian – only to be swept onto the shores of the Kingdom of Illyria where she disguises herself as a man and falls in Love with the Kingdoms Duke. Thus begins this entertaining tale of mistaken identities and thwarted love.Also available as part of a 20 book set, including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Tragedy of Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Winter’s Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Timon of Athens, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Cymbeline, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Anthony and Cleopatra and All’s Well That Ends Well. About Sweet Cherry Easy Classics:Sweet Cherry Easy Classics adapts classic literature into stories for children, introducing these timeless tales to a new generation.

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Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare is a delightful comical love story. The play begins with a shipwreck, during which Viola, a young aristocratic-born woman, is separated from her identical twin brother, Sebastian – only to be swept onto the shores of the Kingdom of Illyria where she disguises herself as a man and falls in Love with the Kingdoms Duke. Thus begins this entertaining tale of mistaken identities and thwarted love.Also available as part of a 20 book set, including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Tragedy of Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Winter’s Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Timon of Athens, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Cymbeline, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Anthony and Cleopatra and All’s Well That Ends Well. About Sweet Cherry Easy Classics:Sweet Cherry Easy Classics adapts classic literature into stories for children, introducing these timeless tales to a new generation.

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In Burmese Days, George Orwell, one of the most famous writers in the English language, draws on his own experience of living and working in Burma to write an unflinching novel about the dark side of imperialism. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an introduction by journalist and writer David Eimer.John Flory is a disillusioned timber merchant based in the remote town of Kyauktada in 1920s Burma. Whilst his English peers gather night after night to drink and gossip in their exclusive club, Flory has embraced local life – his best friend is Dr Veraswami and his mistress is Ma Hla May. The slow, sticky, hot days are interrupted by the arrival of the young and beautiful Elizabeth. And when the club is forced to elect a non-white member, Flory is caught up in an increasingly hostile and dangerous feud.

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Over the last 20 years, the concept of 'economic' activity has come to seem inseparable from psychological, semiotic and ideological experiences. In fact, the notion of the 'economy' as a discrete area of life seems increasingly implausible. This returns us to the situation of Shakespeare's England, where the financial had yet to be differentiated from other forms of representation. This book shows how concepts and concerns that were until recently considered purely economic affected the entire range of sixteenth and seventeenth century life. Using the work of such critics as Jean-Christophe Agnew, Douglas Bruster, Hugh Grady and many others, Shakespeare and Economic Theory traces economic literary criticism to its cultural and historical roots, and discusses its main practitioners. Providing new readings of Timon of Athens, King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and The Tempest, David Hawkes shows how it can reveal previously unappreciated qualities of Shakespeare’s work.

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This is the first comprehensive book on the Arthurian legend in medieval and Renaissance Italy since Edmund Gardner’s 1930 The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature. Arthurian material reached all levels of Italian society, from princely courts with their luxury books and frescoed palaces, to the merchant classes and even popular audiences in the piazza, which enjoyed shorter retellings in verse and prose. Unique assemblages emerge on Italian soil, such as the Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa or the innovative Tavola Ritonda, in versions made for both Tuscany and the Po Valley. Chapters examine the transmission of the French romances across Italy; reworkings in various Italian regional dialects; the textual relations of the prose Tristan; narrative structures employed by Italian writers; later ottava rima poetic versions in the new medium of printed books; the Arthurian-themed art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; and more. The Arthur of the Italians offers a rich corpus of new criticism by scholars who have brought the Italian Arthurian material back into critical conversation.

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Given the fundamental changes that transformed American society in the years between Benjamin Franklin's apprenticeship in a printer's shop and mid-19th-century efforts to organize labouring men and women, no social group offers a more interesting spectacle than skilled tradesmen or artisans. They came from various ethnic backgrounds (some worked in slavery), took their religion and politics seriously, lived mostly in cities but also in the countryside, and in many cases became pillars of their communities. This book examines the role of artisans in the American economy and society in the 18th and 19th centuries. Going beyond the traditional story of the decline of journeyman status, it explores a variety of themes loosely centred around opportunities in the developing economy. Indeed, many of these essays explore entrepreneurial ideals among many artisans competing in the marketplace. This collection also examines the interaction of race and the artisan economy in southern cities. It traces the economic relationships from father to son or between merchant and artisan, and explores the culture and politics of artisans, including religion, third-party politics, and the interaction of gender and reform.

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Chief of Police Samuel Craddock faces a race against time to solve a perplexing murder at a motorcycle rally before the event comes to an end.With the annual Jubilee Motorcycle Rally approaching, Jarrett Creek residents are divided. Some despise the rowdy, unsavory behaviour of the bikers, but they bring welcome money to local merchants. What''s to be done?At a town meeting to find a solution, temperatures flare as Amber Johnson and Lily Deverell - family women on opposing sides of the debate - throw accusations at each other. Attempting to appease both camps, Chief of Police Samuel Craddock enacts a curfew to dissuade late-night revellers.Nevertheless, trouble strikes. With the rally in full swing, Amber is found murdered at the event. Why did Amber leave her home that night? What secrets was she hiding from her family? Craddock quickly faces more challenges as he offers to take in his rebellious teenaged niece, Hailey, whose parents a

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Naráyana’s best-seller gives its reader much more than “Friendly Advice.” In one handy collection—closely related to the world-famous Pañcatantra or Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom —numerous animal fables are interwoven with human stories, all designed to instruct wayward princes. Tales of canny procuresses compete with those of cunning crows and tigers. An intrusive ass is simply thrashed by his master, but the meddlesome monkey ends up with his testicles crushed. One prince manages to enjoy himself with a merchant’s wife with her husband’s consent, while another is kicked out of paradise by a painted image. This volume also contains the compact version of King Víkrama’s Adventures, thirty-two popular tales about a generous emperor, told by thirty-two statuettes adorning his lion-throne. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

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Since his first public appearance in the late 1590s, Shylock has been synonymous with antisemitism. Many of his bon mots remain common currency among Jew-haters; among them "3000 ducats" and the immortal "pound of flesh". But Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, was incapable of inventing anyone so uninteresting; instead he affords Shylock such ambiguity that some of his other lines have become keynotes for believers in shared humanity and tolerance. Following Shakespeare's example these stories - all inspired by The Merchant of Venice - range from the comic to the melancholic. Many pivot on significant productions of the play: Stockholm in 1944, London in 2012, and Venice in 2016. Some are concerned with domestic matters, others with the political, including one - more outrageous than the others - that links Shylock via Israel with the American presidency; most combine both. Running through these linked stories - of which there are seven, like the ages of man - is the cycle of family life, with all its comedy and tragedy.

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Superb. . .a fast-moving and gripping plot Publishers Weekly Starred Review of The Merchant MurderersMarch, 1557. Jack Blackjack is back in London and enjoying a sedentary life - after his treacherous voyage back to his beloved city the previous year, he desires nothing more than the simple pleasures - women, wine, beer and more women.But his new parish of St Helen''s has different ideas for him. . . a week after first laying eyes on the tempting Miss Rachel Nailor, she turns up horribly dead on the church vestry floor. . . and someone is trying to frame him for her murder!A fellow Lady Elizabeth sympathiser, it appears Rachel Nailor was a woman with many secrets. But was she murdered in a fit of lustful rage, or was it part of a wider political play? Who would want Rachel dead - and Jack hanged for it? The suspects are plenty and Jack is running out of time. With his master breathing down his neck, and old foes crawling o

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Exeter possesses the best series of local customs accounts from medieval England, beginning in 1266 and surviving for almost 70 per cent of the years up to 1498. They are also far more complete than other local accounts: listing ships' names, home ports, shipmasters and dates of arrival, as well as the importers and their cargoes. Equally remarkable is their focus on coastal as well as overseas traffic, unlike the better known national customs accounts which recorded only overseas trade. From the Exeter accounts we can follow the movements of foreign and domestic shipping, grain imports during the great Famine of 1315-17, and the identity of the merchants, shipmasters and marinerswho carried on the various kinds of trade. Dr Kowaleski's introduction provides the first detailed account of the port of Exeter and its activities during this period, followed by a complete translation of the surviving accounts from 1266 to 1321. The book also includes a specimen Latin account, a glossary of weights and measures, map, and full indexes.

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Anthony Cotterell wrote a unique form of war journalism – witty, sharp,engaging, and so vivid it was almost cinematic. As an official British Army journalist during the Second World War, he flew on bombing raids, sailed with merchant shipping convoys, crossed to France on D-Day, and took part in the Normandy Campaign. During this time he kept a diary, a hilarious and caustic record of his role in the war, a diary which abruptly ended after he vanished in mysterious circumstances after the battle of Arnhem bridge in 1944. Cotterell’s diary and selected war journalism, illustrated with previously unpublished photographs, are presented together here to shed new light not only on the everyday life of the British Army in the Second World War but also on the role of the press during times of conflict. The quality of his writing is truly captivating and his account of the Normandy campaign is surely the nearest that a modern reader will ever get to experiencing what it was like to be in the thick of a Normandy tank battle.

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Spanish-born photographer Fadia Ahma (b.1975) lives and works in Lebanon. Her poetic series of photographs of Beirut eloquently captures the street life of that resilient city; merchants on street corners, grocers, fishermen, bathers, street artists, collapsed buildings, new construction. She presents fragments of life through fragments of the city itself. This is the first monograph of her vibrant and intuitive work on the people and places of Beirut. She has been crisscrossing her city with a camera since 2003. District after district, house after house, she explores the complexity and humanity of Beirut and the Lebanese people. "I decided," she explains, "to follow an itinerary, which is always the same, so that I wouldn't disperse myself. It is my constancy that allows me to discover, to meld with this city." Fadia Ahmad's imagines her photographs as paintings, which mirror Beirut and capture the poetry of place and people which are nestled in the slightest details. Text in English and French.

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Like so much of Middlesex, Chelsea was swallowed up by Greater London. Here its history restores its lost identity. Chelsea was a desirable riverside residence for wealthy merchants, lawyers, and courtiers from the fifteenth century, and a pleasure resort for all ranks of society from the eighteenth; it is now one of the most expensive and desirable places to live in London. This new volume relates all this and more, including a re-examination of the location of Sir Thomas More's house, a reassessment of Henry VIII's relationship with the manor house, the history of a major estate not previously identified, and a survey of the farm-gardening which gave prosperity to some local inhabitants. Facets of Chelsea's more recent history covered include the rebuilding of eastern Chelsea, which removed alarge lower middle- and working-class population and replaced their accommodation with houses for the well-off; the artistic community which grew up in the late nineteenth century from which Chelsea derived its bohemian reputation; and the cultural and commercial changes of the Swinging Sixties.

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Professor Dick Hobbs is a leading commentator on the culture of crime and criminality. East End born and bred, he is a fascinating dichotomy of the criminal and the intellectual world, allowing him a unique insight into a subject that holds fascination for so many. When he was growing up, the East End was rocking with dock strikes, thievery and the kind of family values practiced by the Krays the Tibbs and a few dozen other outlaw clans. Violence was everywhere Crime was an unavoidable fact of life. However, his real education in Plaistow taught him that the real essence of illegal capitalism is to be found amongst the poor bloody infantry of the crime world; the jump up merchants, lorry highjackers, warehouse thieves, and middle-market drug dealers. These are the people with whom he has spent most of his professional life, and along with more exalted villains such as Mad Frankie Frazer and Charlie Richardson, these are the characters who will feature in the book, weaving the stories of these fearsome gangsters with the history and evolution of the UK underworld.

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This book provides a thoroughly researched and richly illustrated account of a key element of the early modern Atlantic world: the sugar trade linking Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands. The study seeks to illuminate the economic, social, political, and cultural dimensions of this commerce. Indeed, trade supported Brazil's rise as the world's leading producer of sugar and the first great plantation colony. Likewise, the sugar trade boosted the economy of Portugal and contributed to the upsurge of the Dutch market. The increasing availability of sugar transformed the European diet (along with some medical theories); and sweets came to play an important part in a variety of social practices. In the political arena, sugar and sugar-producing areas became strategic targets in global conflicts. Furthermore, as this trade expanded, it figured centrally in the evolution of a wide range of financial techniques, business strategies, and institutions of governance—which merchants exploited in order to make their transactions more efficient. The book provides a clear examination of these increasingly sophisticated practices, and shows how they had much in common with today's business operations.

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"Fans of medieval mysteries will revel in Starr's lively blending of intriguing suspense and telling historical detail." - Library Journal It is the autumn of 1367. Master Hugh is enjoying the peaceful life of Bampton, when a badly beaten man is found under the porch of St. Andrew's Chapel. The dying man is a chapman - a traveling merchant. Before he is buried in the chapel grounds, an ancient, corroded coin is found in the man's mouth. Master Hugh's quest for the chapman's assailants, and his search for the origin of the coin, makes steady progress - but there are men of wealth and power who wish to halt his search, and an old nemesis, Sir Simon Trillowe, is in league with them. But Master Hugh, and his assistant, the groom Arthur, are determined to uncover the thieves and murderers, and the source of the chapman's coin. They do, but not before they become involved with a kidnapped maiden, a tyrannical abbot, and a suffering monk - who needs Master Hugh's surgical skills and in return provides clues which assist Hugh in solving the mystery of the tainted coin.

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In 1300, an English privateer named 'The Waxman' was trapped and overrun by two powerful war cogs flying the streamers of the powerful Hanseatic League of North Germany. The ship was carrying a casket containing the 'Carta Mysteriosa', a collection of valuable and detailed maps and sea charts. The rulers of Europe, not to mention their merchant princes, would wade through a sea of blood to obtain them.Three years later Wilhelm Von Paulents, a representative of the Hanseatic League, comes to England. Rumours have it that he owns the sea charts and Sir Hugh Corbett is sent to negotiate with Von Paulents. But the German visitors fall ill of some mysterious ailment and then, on the morning of the fourth Sunday in Advent, Corbett is summoned to a scene of bloody mayhem and murder: Von Paulents, his wife, son and clerk have been barbarously assassinated. The 'Carta Mysteriosa' have not been stolen. So why were the murders committed and by whom? Corbett investigates and, once again, he enters the world of shadows to confront the Seed of Cain.

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Fedor Chizhov built the first railroad owned entirely by Russian stockholders, created Moscow’s first bank and mutual credit society, and launched the first profitable steamship line based in Archangel. In this valuable book, Thomas Owen vividly illuminates the life and world of this seminal figure in early Russian capitalism.Chizhov condemned European capitalism as detrimental to the ideal of community and the well-being of workers and peasants. In his strategy of economic nationalism, Chizhov sought to motivate merchants to undertake new forms of corporate enterprise without undermining ethnic Russian culture. He faced numerous obstacles, from the lack of domestic investment capital to the shortage of enlightened entrepreneurial talent. But he reserved his harshest criticism for the tsarist ministers, whose incompetence and prejudice against private entrepreneurship proved his greatest hindrance.Richly documented from Chizhov’s detailed diary, this work offers an insightful exploration of the institutional impediments to capitalism and the rule of law that plagued the tsarist empire and continue to bedevil post-Soviet Russia.

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Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn, we are set up for a grisly excursion through London as a city of ne'er do wells, taking in beheadings and brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street crime, cutpurses and con-men, through to the Gordon Riots and Highway robbery of the 18thcentury and the rise of prisons, the police and the Victorian era of incarceration. As well as the crimes, Arnold also looks at the grotesque punishments meted out to those who transgressed the law throughout London's history - from the hangings, drawings and quarterings at Tyburn over 500 years to being boiled in oil at Smithfield. This popular historian also investigates the influence of London's criminal classes on the literature of the 19thand 20thcenturies, and ends up with our old favourites, the Krays and Soho gangs of the 50s and 60s.London's crimes have changed over the centuries, both in method and execution. Underworld London traces these developments, from the highway robberies of the eighteenth century, made possible by the constant traffic of wealthy merchants in and out of the city, to the beatings, slashings and poisonings of the Victorian era.

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From the mid 18th century up till after memories of the Napoleonic wars and the glories of 'Nelson's navy' had faded, the Royal Navy was the bulwark of Britain's defence and the safeguard of trade and imperial expansion. While there have been political and military histories of the Navy in this period, looking at battles and personalities, and studies of its administration and the life below decks, this book is the first study of the Navy in a cultural context, exploring contemporary attitudes to war and peace and to ideologies of race and gender. As well as literary sources, Dr Lincoln draws on the vast collections of the National Maritime Museum, in paintings, cartoons, and ceramics, amongst others, to focus attention on material that has hitherto been little used - even research into the general culture of the late-Georgian age has, curiously, neglected perceptions of the Navy, which was one of its major institutions. Individual chapters discuss the attitudes of particular groups towards the Navy - merchants, politicians, churchmen, women, scientists, and the seamen themselves - and how these attitudes changed over the course of the period.

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The unlikely beginnings of the East India Company—from Tudor origins and rivalry with the superior Dutch—to laying the groundwork for future British expansion The East India Company was the largest commercial enterprise in British history, yet its roots in Tudor England are often overlooked. The Tudor revolution in commerce led ambitious merchants to search for new forms of investment, not least in risky overseas enterprises—and for these “adventurers” the most profitable bet of all would be on the Company. Through a host of stories and fascinating details, David Howarth brings to life the Company’s way of doing business—from the leaky ships and petty seafarers of its embattled early days to later sweeping commercial success. While the Company’s efforts met with disappointment in Japan, they sowed the seeds of success in India, setting the outline for what would later become the Raj. Drawing on an abundance of sources, Howarth shows how competition from European powers was vital to success—and considers whether the Company was truly “English” at all, or rather part of a Europe-wide movement.

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The Human Tradition in Premodern China is a collection of biographical essays revealing the variety and complexity of human experience in China from the earliest historical times to the dawn of the modern age. China is a vast country with a long history, and one which is by itself as complex as the history of Europe. This broad expanse of time and space in Chinese history has largely been approached in terms of narrative political and cultural history in most books. The reigns of emperors and the thoughts of the great masters such as Confucius or Laozi have been the principal focus. Yet the history of the Chinese, as with any great people, is built up from the lives of individuals, families, groups, and movements. By presenting life stories of individuals ranging from ancient court diviners to late imperial merchants to women in various periods, this engaging anthology highlights aspects of Chinese social, political and intellectual history not usually addressed. Additionally, The Human Tradition in Premodern China broadens the common image and understanding of society based on the dominant elite male discourse. Rich in new perspective and new scholarship, The Human Tradition in Premodern China is an ideal introduction to Chinese history, East Asian history, and world history.

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Dana Gioia has been hailed for decades as a master of traditional lyric forms, whose expansive and accessible poems are offerings of rare poignancy and insight. In Meet Me at the Lighthouse, he invites us back to old Los Angeles, where the shabby nightclub of the title beckons us into its noirish immortality. Elsewhere, he laments the once-vibrant neighborhood where he grew up, now bulldozed, and recalls his working-class family of immigrants. Gioia describes a haunting from his mother on his birthday, Christmas Eve. Another poem remembers his uncle, a US Merchant Marine. And "The Ballad of Jesús Ortiz" tells the story of his great-grandfather, a Mexican vaquero who was shot dead at a tavern in Wyoming during a dispute over a bar tab. "I praise my ancestors, the unkillable poor," Gioia writes. This book is dedicated to their memory. Including poems, song lyrics, translations, and concluding with an unsettling train ride to the underworld, Meet Me at the Lighthouse is a luminous exploration of nostalgia, mortality, and what makes a life worth living and remembering.

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A Man of All Talents is the remarkable story of rugby and wrestling legend Douglas 'Duggy' Clark. Born in 1891 in the sleepy Cumbrian village of Maryport, at 14 he left school to work for his father's coal merchant business. Duggy grew into an exceptionally strong but quiet and reserved young man. His two great passions were rugby and Cumberland and Westmorland-style wrestling, and he excelled at both. By 24 he was already a rugby league great and a key member of Huddersfield's 'Team of All Talents', winning every honour the sport could offer. He represented Britain in the infamous 1914 'Rorke's Drift' tour of Australia before being called up to serve in the Great War. He was awarded the Military Medal for bravery, but his war injuries were so severe he was discharged with a 20% disability certificate. Doctors gave Duggy an ultimatum: either he could stay home and live a long but sedate and ordinary life or risk his health by returning to sport. He chose the latter and went on to achieve more extraordinary and pioneering feats.

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In That Way Madness Lies, fifteen acclaimed writers put their modern spin on William Shakespeare's celebrated classics! "From comedy to tragedy to sonnet, from texts to storms to prom, this collection is a knockout." -BuzzFeed.com West Side Story. 10 Things I Hate About You. Kiss Me, Kate. Contemporary audiences have always craved reimaginings of Shakespeare's most beloved works. Now, some of today's best writers for teens take on the Bard in these 15 whip-smart and original retellings! Contributors include Dahlia Adler (reimagining The Merchant of Venice), Kayla Ancrum (The Taming of the Shrew), Lily Anderson (As You Like It), Melissa Bashardoust (A Winter's Tale), Patrice Caldwell (Hamlet), A. R. Capetta and Cori McCarthy (Much Ado About Nothing), Brittany Cavallaro (Sonnet 147), Joy McCullough (King Lear), Anna-Marie McLemore (Midsummer Night's Dream), Samantha Mabry (Macbeth), Tochi Onyebuchi (Coriolanus), Mark Oshiro (Twelfth Night), Lindsay Smith (Julius Caesar), Kiersten White (Romeo and Juliet), and Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka (The Tempest).

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A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 'An extraordinary achievement . . . gripping, grim and witty' Robert MacFarlane 'Unputdown-able ... No book could be more timely' Richard J Evans Today, the bunker has become the extreme expression of our greatest fears: from pandemics to climate change and nuclear war. And once you look, it doesn't take long to start seeing bunkers everywhere. In Bunker, acclaimed urban explorer and cultural geographer Bradley Garrett explores the global and rapidly growing movement of 'prepping' for social and environmental collapse, or 'Doomsday'. From the 'dread merchants' hustling safe spaces in the American mid-West to eco-fortresses in Thailand, from geoscrapers to armoured mobile bunkers, Bunker is a brilliant, original and never less than deeply disturbing story from the frontlines of the way we live now: an illuminating reflection on our age of disquiet and dread that brings it into new, sharp focus. The bunker, Garrett shows, is all around us: in malls, airports, gated communities, the vehicles we drive. Most of all, he shows, it's in our minds.

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* Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction* New York Times Bestseller * A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2017* Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction* Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, The Guardian, Vogue, Esquire, Kirkus Reviews, Philadelphia Inquirer, BookPage, Bustle, Southern Living, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch"Immensely satisfying...an old-fashioned page-turner, tweaked by this witty and sophisticated writer...Egan is masterly at displaying mastery...she works a formidable kind of magic." -Dwight Garner, The New York TimesThe long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career as a Ziegfield folly, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have been murdered. Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller and a wealth of detail about organized crime, the merchant marine and the clash of classes in New York, Egan's first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America and the world. Manhattan Beach is a magnificent novel by one of the greatest writers of our time.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------***Jennifer Egan's latest novel THE CANDY HOUSE is coming April 2022, the long-awaited sibling novel to A Visit from the Goon Squad***

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Engrossing and memorable, The Sins of the Father is the second novel in international bestseller Jeffrey Archer’s celebrated the Clifton Chronicles. It takes us to New York in 1939 where our hero Harry Clifton is in desperate need of help.Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry joins the Merchant Navy, unable to face long-held family secrets and the fact he will never be able to marry his true love Emma Barrington. But when his ship is sunk mid-Atlantic, Harry takes the opportunity to assume the identity of one his deceased rescuers and begin a new life.Landing in America, he quickly discovers he has made a mistake and without any way to prove his true identity, Harry is now chained to a past that could be far worse than the one he had hoped to escape . . .Brimming with intrigue, the Clifton Chronicles continues its powerful journey with family loyalties stretched to their limits and fates decided.Continue the bestselling series with Best Kept Secret and Be Careful What You Wish For.

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The Collapsing Empire is an exciting space opera from John Scalzi, the first in the award-winning Interdependency series.Does the biggest threat lie within?In the far future, humanity has left Earth to create a glorious empire. Now this interstellar network of worlds faces disaster – but can three individuals save their people?The empire's outposts are utterly dependent on each other for resources, a safeguard against war, and a way its rulers can exert control. This relies on extra-dimensional pathways between the stars, connecting worlds. But 'The Flow' is changing course, which could plunge every colony into fatal isolation.A scientist will risk his life to inform the empire's ruler. A scion of a Merchant House stumbles upon conspirators seeking power. And the new Empress of the Interdependency must battle lies, rebellion and treason. Yet as they work to save a civilization on the brink of collapse, others have very different plans . . .Continue the space adventure trilogy with The Consuming Fire.'Rousing storytelling and satisfying intrigue . . . an engaging, well-crafted sci-fi drama.' - SFX

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The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. This year's volume focuses largely on the British Isles, with papers on dress terms in the Middle English Pearl; a study of a thirteenth-century royal bride's trousseau, based on unpublished documents concerning King HenryIII's Wardrobe; an investigation into the "open surcoat" referenced in the multilingual texts of late medieval England; and, based on customs accounts, a survey of cloth exports from late medieval London and the merchants who profited from them. Commercial trading of cloth is also the subject of a study of fifteenth-century brokers' books, revealing details of types, designs, and regulation of the famous silks from Lucca, Italy. Another paper focuseson art, reconsidering the incidence of frilled veils in the Low Countries and adopting an innovative means of analysis to question the chronology, geographical diversity, and social context of this style. Robin Netherton is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress; Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Benjamin L.Wild, Isis Sturtewagen, Kimberly Jack, Mark Chambers, Eleanor Quinton, John Oldland, Christine Meek

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When we speak of the English Renaissance, what is it that we are naming, what are we recognizing reborn? As the essays in this latest collection from the English Institute demonstrate, our basic notions of the period have themselves been reconceived. In Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce, seven critics defamiliarize the images of the Renaissance "to permit the repressed to return, to acknowledge the presence of the unassimilable ghost the mark of difference of an age that is at once self and 'other'." John Hollander discovers a "hidden undersong" in the Spenserian lyric, while Patricia Parker examines the question of feminine dominance and male resistance in the Bower of Bliss. Stephen Orgel and Steven Mullaney document the Renaissance encounter with the alien "other" in essays on The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. Macbeth, in Janet Adelman's reading, encodes the fantasy of an absolute and destructive maternal figure. Marjorie Garber addresses the Shakespearean authorship controversy in the context of the subversive uncanniness of the texts themselves; Mary Nyquist discusses Milton's Eve, his divorce tracts, and the exegetical tradition as recently examined by feminist biblical scholars. Together, these essays explore Renaissance discourses of estrangement as strategies for the construction of the self and the world.

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Vikings, those ancient Norse seafarers, have inspired plenty of pop culture phenomena, from the A&E hit show Vikings to Thor Ragnarok to the ever-expanding world of Viking larp. Known for being skilled craftspeople, accomplished merchants, hardworking farmers, and masters of the sea, the Vikings were a complex and captivating people.The Viking Hondb?k is an engaging, compelling guide -- with a sense of humor -- exploring who the Vikings were and how they lived, from ancient Norse daily life to battles and adventuring. Readers will learn how Vikings ate, dressed, and fought, and even how they weaved the perfect beard braid and built warships and weapons. Interspersed throughout the book are revealing historical anecdotes about Viking conquests, daily life, and relationships, with sections covering personal style, family structure and household, tools and metalwork, sailing and raiding, fishing and hunting, family and neighbors, swordmaking and boatbuilding, famous warriors, myths and afterlife, and more. A two-color design and fifty black-and-white line drawings will bring the style and details of the Vikings world to life.

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A spellbinding, spirited tale of two men exploring masculinity, race, and belonging in a desperate search to feel at home in their own skins. An enthralling nautical epic, River Meets the Sea traces the dual timelines of a white-passing Indigenous foster child in 1940s Vancouver and a teenage immigrant in the suburbs of Nanaimo in the 1970s. A natural-born storyteller, Ronny is a left-handed “alley mutt” without a birth certificate who searches for his mother everywhere — most powerfully, he hears her voice in the surging Stó:lō River. Born in the middle of the ocean on a merchant ship departing Sri Lanka, Chandra is a Tamil boy with “skin like a charred eggplant” who finds his haven from the pressure to assimilate by swimming and surfing in the Salish Sea. Moving gracefully between these parallel stories like a wave, the novel traces the seemingly separate lives of these sensitive young men and their everlasting connections to water. When their troubled paths inevitably cross, they form a sacred bond based on the mutual understanding of what it means to be othered, illuminating the interconnectedness of humanity and our innate relationship with the natural world.

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