Search results for ""Author Mark Freeman""

Mark Freeman’s classic history of St Albans, first published in 2008, has been substantially rewritten by the author and brought fully up to date, making it an invaluable guide to more than two thousand years of St Albans’s history. From the late Iron Age, when the new oppidum of Verlamion emerged at the site of modern St Albans, to plans to develop the city’s unique ‘brand’ in the 2010s, this is a scholarly yet highly readable account of St Albans from pre-Roman times to the present day. The Roman settlement of Verulamium grew out of Verlamion soon after the Roman invasion; in 60 CE it was attacked during Boudica’s great uprising against Roman rule, along with Colchester and London. Becoming one of the most important towns in Roman Britain and the site of Britain’s first Christian martyrdom, Verulamium later took the martyr’s name as its own, the abbey dedicated to the saint among the most significant religious houses of medieval England. For many in St Albans, the long period of conflict between the abbey and the civic authorities would have cast a shadow over their lives, but the history of St Albans is also the story of political upheavals that beset all England through the centuries, as experienced by the citizens of a rapidly evolving town. Like many other places, it was touched by the Norman conquest, the Wars of the Roses and the civil wars. The emergence of urban self-government in early modern St Albans provides a case study of a process that happened throughout the country. The same is true for the account of St Albans’s suburbanisation and the emergence of a commuter population fostered by the railways in the nineteenth century, the growth and decline of the local manufacturing economy, and its participation in the growth of mass education, consumerism and democratic politics. At every point in St Albans’s history, two key themes play out: the proximity of London, and an awareness of the significance of its own history. The past is a powerful resource, helping a community to understand the events that have made it what it is. That process is exemplified in this masterful volume.

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Do I Look at You with Love? were the words uttered by Mark Freeman’s mother when she learned, once again, that he was her son. This book explores the experience of dementia as it transpired during the course of the final twelve years of her life, from the time of her diagnosis until her death in 2016 at age 93. As a longtime student of memory, identity, and narrative, as well as the son of a woman with dementia, he had a remarkable opportunity to try to understand and tell her story. Much of the story is tragic. But there were other periods and other dimensions of relationship that were beautiful and that could not have emerged without her very affliction. In the midst of affliction there were gifts, arriving unbidden, that served to alert Freeman and his family to what is most precious and real. These are part of the story too. Part narrative psychology, part memoir, part meditation on the beauty and light that might be found amidst the ravages of time and memory, Freeman’s moving story is emblematic of nothing less than the bittersweet reality of life itself.

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