Search results for ""Author Robert Hardy""

The Mary Rose was one of King Henry VIII's favourite warships until she sank during an engagement with the French fleet on 19 July 1545. Her rediscovery and raising were seminal events in the history of nautical archaeology. Apart from the Captain and the Vice Admiral, nothing is known about the crew of the Mary Rose - the only evidence about her complement of 415 men rests with their skeletal remains. In The Men of the Mary Rose A.J. Stirland uses archaeological and skeletal evidence to give the reader a welcome insight into the soldiers of the Mary Rose, from their ages and height to their health, diet and physical condition.This book examines the building, sinking and raising of the Mary Rose and her historical context, before moving on to the examination of what the remain of the crew can reveal to us about the fighting men of that period. Many new findings have been made through analysis of their bones, including the effects of some activities and occupations on the skeletons of the men. This is the first book to deal with the men who made up the crew of the Mary Rose. It provides an exciting glimpse of Tudor life and the Tudor navy, relating archaeological findings to existing documentary evidence, opening a fascinating window into one of Henry VIII's great ships and a frozen moment of sixteenth-century time. This book will appeal both to professionals in the area, and to those for whom Tudor history holds a general fascination.

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Beasts Royal is the second book written by Patrick O’Brian – made available, at last, for the first time since the 1930s and beautifully repackaged. Published when Patrick O’Brian was just nineteen, this is the enchanting, often bloodthirsty collection of twelve tales of animal adventure that would be published in 1934 as the author’s second book. His first, Caesar, had been published in 1930 and was an instant success, seeing O’Brian hailed as the ‘boy-Thoreau’. As with Caesar, Beasts Royal sheds fascinating light on the formation of the literary genius behind the Aubrey-Maturin series of historical adventure tales. With the dry wit and unsentimental precision O’Brian would come to be loved for, we see the tragedies of …

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The yew is one of the most fascinating and versatile life forms on Earth, botanically rich and intriguing, and culturally almost without comparison. In history, mythology, religion, folklore, medicine and warfare, this tree bears timeless witness to a deep relationship with mankind. Yew was the wood chosen to make some of mankind's oldest artefacts: spears, bows and musical instruments. These include items like the prehistoric spear found near Clacton, the 2,000-year-old wooden pipes from Greystones, County Wicklow and, of course, the famous medieval English longbow. In modern medicine, too, yew has proved a boon. Since 1992 taxol/paclitaxel has helped revolutionise the treatment of certain types of cancer. In botanical terms, yew is a mass of contradictions. It is a conifer which bears scarlet 'berries' with sweet juicy pulp instead of cones. It is highly poisonous in all its parts except the red fruit pulp, and yet both wild and domesticated animals feed upon it. It can live for thousands of years with the potential to renew itself. A new tree from an interior root can grow slowly within the hollow trunk of an ancient yew and centuries later 'take over' the older tree.When it comes to habitat, the yew tree is nothing if not versatile. It can grown on different continents at a wide range of altitudes: from rainy Edinburgh to sultry Istanbul, from Canada to Mexico, Scandinavia to North Africa and Sumatra, Japan and the Himalayas. Fred Hageneder's fascinating book is the first to cover all aspects of the botany as well as the cultural history and mythology of the genus Taxus. This is the remarkable story of the oldest living things in Europe.

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For many commentators then and now, it was the English archers who won the day for Henry V. This lavishly illustrated history re-tells the story of the battle and Henry V's Normandy campaign from the perspective of the commander of the English archers, Sir Thomas Erpingham. Sir Thomas, an experienced warrior with military experience dating back 40 years is known for his brief but pivotal appearances in Shakespeare's Henry V, where he is correctly portrayed as an elderly, white haired veteran. At 57 he was one of the oldest there and a close personal confident of the King. But what was his background? How did he command his archers to such a place in history? And what role did the longbow and battlefield tactics play in the final analysis of victory?

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