Search results for ""Haus Publishing""
Haus Publishing The View from the Hill: Four Seasons in a Walker's Britain
In Christopher Somerville's workroom is a case of shelves that holds 450 notebooks. Their pages are creased and stained with mud, blood, flattened insect corpses, beer glass rings, smears of plant juice and gallons of sweat. Everything Somerville has written about walking the British countryside has had its origin among these little black-and-red books. During the lockdowns and enforced idleness of the Covid-19 pandemic, Somerville began to revisit this rough treasury of notes, spanning forty years of exploring these islands on foot. The View from the Hill pulls together the cream of this unique crop, following the cycle of the seasons from a freezing January on the Severn Estuary to the sight of sunrise on Christmas morning from inside a prehistoric burial mound. In between are hundreds of walks to discover randy natterjack toads in a Cumbrian spring, trout in a Hampshire chalk stream in lazy midsummer, a lordly red stag at the autumn rut on the Isle of Mull, and three thousand geese at full gabble in the wintry Norfolk sky. Best of all, you don't have to stir out of your chair to enjoy these walks. Just stir up the fire, fill your glass, and let Christopher Somerville take you out of here and far away.
£16.99
Haus Publishing Letters from Lockdown: Sustaining Public Service Values during the COVID-19 Pandemic: 2020
Letters from Lockdown comprises 12 weekly letters written by the Director of Westminster Abbey Institute during the Coronavirus lockdown, and three accompanying essays that give the deeply personal perspectives of a politician, a civil servant and a police officer as the crisis unfolds. The letters are addressed to the public servants trying to carry the nation through the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and were written to be a source of strength and support. As she wrote them, the author was unaware how events would unfold. Nevertheless, the 12-week period formed a narrative arc not unlike a classic 'hero's journey' and the letters show some similarities and differences between the classic plot and what the nation and its public servants had actually been through. The letters offer ways of strengthening public servants to make them ready, constant and enduring in their response to the needs of the nation. They speak of strengthening not just the soul of individual public servants but also of their institutions. The essays address not only the private and public struggles of public servants during the crisis but ask what, if anything, will change in our world as a result of the pandemic. They seek to equip public servants to respond to and shape emerging worlds and new needs.
£9.31
Haus Publishing Churchill's Britain: From the Antrim Coast to the Isle of Wight
More than half a century after his death, Winston Churchill, the most significant British statesman of the twentieth century, continues to intrigue us. Peter Clark's book, however, is not merely another Churchill biography. Churchill's Britain takes us on a geographical journey through Churchill's life, leading us in Churchill's footsteps through locations in Britain and Ireland that are tied to key aspects of his biography. Some are familiar-Blenheim Palace, where he was born; Chartwell, his beloved house in the country; and the Cabinet War Rooms, where he planned the campaigns of World War II. But we also are taken to his schools, his parliamentary constituencies, locations of famous speeches, the place where he started to paint, the tobacco shop where he bought his cigars, and the graves of his family and close friends. Clark brings us close to the statesman Churchill by visiting sites that were important to the story of his long life, from the site where his father proposed to his American mother on the Isle of Wight to his grave in a country churchyard in Oxfordshire. Designed as a gazetteer with helpful regional maps, Churchill's Britain can be dipped into, consulted by the traveler on a Churchill tour of Britain, or read straight through--and no matter how it's read, it will deliver fresh insights into this extraordinary man.
£20.00
Haus Publishing My Palestine
My Palestine is a poignant personal memoir and an incisive political and economic commentary on the tumultuous events that have shaped the history of Palestine, Israel and the modern Middle East.
£19.80
Haus Publishing The Bonfire of the Decencies: Repairing and Restoring the British Constitution
The British constitution matters. Its observance is crucial to the well-being of all our people, to every state activity and deployment of government power. It is crucial to the face our society presents to itself as well as to those who observe us from overseas. For all its importance, however, the British constitution is a thing of considerable mystery and elusiveness. It does not reside inside any set of hard covers. But the decency of government and the constitution from which they draw (or should draw) their sap and vitality, find themselves at a low ebb in the wake of the Boris Johnson premiership. There has been a serious seepage of trust, which has generated a pessimism of the spirit. The Bonfire of the Decencies offers a range of suggestions about what might be done to repair and restore the British constitution. Time is pressing for what needs to be a shared national endeavour; a story of restoration, revival, and creative purpose. Andrew Blick and Peter Hennessy compel us to look anew at our constitutional procedures. The last three years have shown us we cannot keep muddling through. Only by repairing and restoring our constitution can we keep the United Kingdom safely in the highest ranks of the rule-of-law nations - a gift we assumed was so securely banked that, until recently, we did not have to worry about it.
£15.29
Haus Publishing Leadership: Lessons from a Life in Diplomacy
When Abraham Lincoln said, 'You can be anything you want to be,' Americans, and eventually everybody everywhere, lifted their sights. Nowadays anybody can aspire to be a leader, and nearly everybody has to lead sometimes. In his first book, Simon McDonald assumes that thinking about leadership before you lead helps you to lead better. No matter the circumstances in which we might be called to lead - be it at work, on the sports field, or in the community - the example of top leaders in politics and public service (both their successes and shortcomings) can help you figure out your own approach. Over nearly four decades in HM Diplomatic Service, Simon worked for four permanent under-secretaries and a dozen senior ambassadors before becoming permanent under-secretary himself and leading the Service (which has over 14,000 staff in 270 countries worldwide) for five years. He also worked directly for six foreign secretaries and saw five prime ministers work at close quarters. Observing these people undertaking the most important and often the most difficult work in the country, Simon saw the behaviours which helped them achieve their objectives, and those which hindered them. He then had the chance to try to apply that learning. In a closing chapter that considers the future of leadership in the UK, Simon McDonald makes a compelling case for the reform of the monarchy, the cabinet, civil service and, in particular, the House of Lords, of which he has been a member since 2021. Leadership of the United Kingdom is being debated as never before. This book is a clear-sighted and insightful contribution to that debate.
£18.00
Haus Publishing A Short History of Beijing
Before China's capital became a sprawling megacity and international centre of business and culture, its fortunes fluctuated under a dozen dynasties. It has been a capital for several states, including those headed by Mongolian chiefs and the glorious Ming emperors, whose tombs can still be found on its outskirts. And before all that, it was a campsite for primitive hominids, known as the Peking Man. A Short History of Beijing tells the story of this remarkable city, from its more famous residents - Khubilai Khan, Mulan, and Marco Polo - right up to the twenty-first century, as modern construction wipes out so much of the old city to make way for its twenty-million-strong population. Through his timely and intimate portrait of the world's most populous capital city, Jonathan Clements reveals the history of China itself. This first paperback edition includes a new final chapter, taking the history of Beijing up to the 2022 Winter Olympics and beyond.
£9.99
Haus Publishing The Hidden Perspective: The Military Conversations 1906-1914
December 1905: Foreign Minister Edward Grey enters into secret talks with the French about sending British forces to their aid in the event of a German attack. The details were only revealed to the Cabinet and Prime Minister in 1911, by which point the 'hidden perspective' was firmly entrenched, and Britain all but obliged to stand by France in the event of a war. Yet dissenting voices remained, and diplomatic missions to Germany were still underway as late as August 1914. In this scholarly and eloquent work, former Foreign Secretary David Owen argues that the outbreak of war in 1914 was far from inevitable, instead representing eight years of failed diplomacy. The importance of transparent government is particularly relevant in a year in which Sir John Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry is published.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Benes & Masaryk: Czechoslovakia
Of even greater importance for Hungary's future were the activities of the champions of an independent state of Czechs and Slovaks. Tomas Masaryk, a Czech professor of philosophy and a future leader of his people, was hard at work within a month of the outbreak of war lobbying in Paris and London for an independent Bohemia, still a major component of the Austrian Empire within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which would incorporate the predominantly Slovak regions of northern Hungary. Masaryk, who was assisted in his efforts by Eduard Benes, a bitter enemy of the Habsburgs. Thus the new state was effectively shaped before the Paris Peace Conference. But the Conference laid down the seeds of Czechoslovakia's later destruction. Only nine million Czechoslovaks lived in the state out of a population of fourteen million. A large discontented Hungarian minority lived in Slovakia, and the Polish majority area of Teschen poisoned Czech-Polish relations. Yet the greatest challenge came from the rise of the Nazis in Germany in 1930s: Masaryk always claimed that he did not want three and half million ethnic Germans, but he and Benes accepted them nonetheless. Masaryk died in 1937, and Britain and France would not support the Czechs over the Sudetenland, the infamous deal struck in Munich by Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler.
£12.99
Haus Publishing The Serpent Coiled in Naples
In recent years Naples has become, for better or worse, the new ‘destination’ in Italy. While many of its more esoteric features are on display for all to see the stories behind them remain largely hidden. In Marius Kociejowski’s portrait of this baffling city, the serpent can be many things ― Vesuvius, the mafia-like camorra, the outlying Phlegrean Fields (which, geologically speaking, constitute the second most dangerous area on the planet). It is all these things that have, at one time or another, put paid to the higher aspirations of Neapolitans themselves.Naples is simultaneously the city of light, sometimes blindingly so, and the city of darkness, although often the stuff of cliché. The boundary that separates death from life is porous in the extreme: the dead inhabit the world of the living and vice versa. The Serpent Coiled in Naples is a travelogue, a meditation on mortality, and much else besides.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Afghan Napoleon - The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud
When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the forces of resistance were disparate and divided mujahideen groups, as interested in fighting each other and competing for Western arms as opposing the Russians. The exception was Ahmed Shah Massoud, the military strategist and political operator who solidified the resistance and undermined the Russian occupation by leading its members to a series of defensive victories. Sandy Gall was embedded with Massoud during Soviet offences and reported on the war in Afghanistan for a number of years. He has now written an illuminating biography of this charismatic guerrilla commander, which contains excerpts from the surviving volumes of Massoud's diaries. Massoud's prolific diary-keeping was little known during his lifetime, and his entries detail crucial moments in his life and throw fascinating light on his struggles, both in the resistance and in his personal life. Born into an ostensibly liberalising Afghanistan in the 1960s, Massoud ardently opposed communism and Mohammed Daoud, Afghanistan's puppet leader. He quickly rose to prominence and distinguished himself by coordinating the defence of the Panjshir Valley against repeated Soviet offensives. As the occupation wore on, Massoud became the resistance's unifying force. Massoud's assassination in 2001 presaged the attack on the Twin Towers just two days later and it is widely believed to have been ordered by Osama bin Laden. Forever the underdog in a life dominated by conflict, Massoud's attempts to build political consensus in Afghanistan were ultimately frustrated. Despite that, he is recognised today as a national hero.
£22.50
Haus Publishing In Search of Ancient North Africa: A History in Six Lives
For 40 years, Barnaby Rogerson has travelled across North Africa, making sense of the region's complex and fascinating history as both a writer and a guide. Throughout that time, there have always been a handful of stories he could not pin into neat, tidy narratives; stories that were not distinctly good or bad, tragic or pathetic, selfish or heroic, malicious or noble. This book, neither a work of history nor travel writing, is a journey into the ruins of a landscape to make sense of these stories through the lives of five men and one woman. A sacrificial refugee (Queen Dido), a prisoner-of-war who became a compliant tool of the Roman Empire (King Juba), an unpromising provincial who, as Emperor, brought the Empire to its dazzling apogee (Septimius Severus), an intellectual careerist who became a bishop and a saint (St Augustine), the greatest General the world has ever known (Hannibal), and the Berber Cavalry General who eventually defeated him (Masinissa). Though all six lives have been clouded with as much myth as fact, the destinies of these North African figures remain highly relevant today. Their descendants are faced with the same choices: Do you stay pure to your own culture and fight against the power of the West, or do you study and assimilate this other culture, and utilise its skills? Will it greet you as an ally only to own you as a slave? The chosen heroes of this book represent classical North Africa, and not the familiar drum roll of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian, Constantine and Justinian. In between these life stories, we explore ruins which tell their own tales and see the multiple interconnections that bind the culture of this region with the wider world, particularly the spiritual traditions of the ancient Near East. With photographs by Don McCullin.
£10.99
Haus Publishing Cabinet's Finest Hour: The Hidden Agenda of May 1940
Using the Cabinet papers from the National Archives, former Foreign Secretary David Owen has written a new history of the pivotal British War Cabinet meetings of May 1940. Eight months into the war defeat seemed to many a certainty. With the United States and Russia over a year away from entering the conflict, Britain found herself in a perilous and lonely position. The Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax was pushing Churchill, his Prime Minister, to explore the possibility of a negotiated peace with Hitler, using Mussolini as a conduit. Ignored in Churchill's later account of the con--flict, the question before the War Cabinet was straightforward: should Britain fight on in the face of overwhelming odds, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives, or seek a negotiated peace? The minutes of these meetings reveal just how close Halifax came to convincing the Cabinet that negotiations should be sought.
£13.49
Haus Publishing My Cyprus
The history of the island of Cyprus is in many ways a world history. Its strategic position means it has been coveted by one foreign power after another. All came here: the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, crusaders, Venetians, Genoese, Ottomans, British, and they all left their mark. Aside from the Roman and early-Byzantine ruins of Salamis, the most impressive monuments date from the Frankish and Venetian times: the Abbey of Bellapais, the fortified harbour of Kyrenia, the magnificent cathedrals of Nicosia and Famagusta, the setting for Shakespeare's Othello. Sartorius lived in Cyprus for three years. In My Cyprus he returns to the cultures and legends, to the colours and the light of the Levant, sifting the sediments of the island's history, including its division after the Turkish invasion of 1974 and the difficulties that followed. Yet this is not the work of a historian or a political scientist, but of a poet, who with the help of friends, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, tries to understand this unique place.
£9.99
Haus Publishing On the Edge: A Novel
When the cynical divorce lawyer Thomas Clarin finds himself at a table on the terrace of the Bellavista Hotel beside Thomas Loos, an eccentric, ageing philologist, they strike up an unlikely conversation. Soon Clarin's questions tease out stories from Loos' past, and as both men slowly reveal more of themselves they are forced to question their opinions on love and life. The men are opposites; they intrigue and repel each other. But as the mystery of Loos' past deepens, we begin it wonder if all as it seems.
£13.30
Haus Publishing A Matter of Time
In November 1913, three German shipbuilders, led by master shipwright Anton Ru ter, were ordered by Kaiser Wilhelm II to dismantle a steam ship, send the parts to German East Africa, and reassemble it on Lake Tanganyi- ka. Their initial aim of getting the task done quickly and returning home to claim an excellent salary is quickly eclipsed by the enchantment of the exotic landscape, the governor's beautiful wife, and the violent machinery of colonialism. At the same time, Winston Churchill sends Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson to transport two dilapidated and incongruously named gun-boats, Mimi and Toutou, to the other side of the lake. When World War I breaks out the Germans and British are facing each other, and the boat-builders reluctantly find themselves having to fight under the unsympathetic Captain-Lieutenant Gustav von Zimmer.
£8.99
Haus Publishing From the Sultan to Atatürk: Turkey
World War I sounded the death knell of empires. The forces of disintegration affected several empires simultaneously. To that extent they were impersonal. But prudent statesmen could delay the death of empires, rulers such as Emperor Franz Josef II of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II. Adventurous rulers Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Enver Pasha in the Ottoman Empire hastened it. Enver's decision to enter the war on the side of Germany destroyed the Ottoman state. It may have been doomed in any case, but he was the agent of its doom. The last Sultan Mehmet VI Vahdettin thought he could salvage the Ottoman state in something like its old form. But Vahdettin and his ministers could not succeed because the victorious Allies had decided on the final partition of the Ottoman state. The chief proponent of partition was Lloyd George, heir to the Turcophobe tradition of British liberals, who fell under the spell of the Greek irredentist politician Venizelos. With these two in the lead, the Allies sought to impose partition on the Sultan's state. When the Sultan sent his emissaries to the Paris peace conference they could not win a reprieve. The Treaty of Sevres which the Sultan's government signed put an end to Ottoman independence. The Treaty of Sevres was not ratified. Turkish nationalists, with military officers in the lead, defied the Allies, who promptly broke ranks, each one trying to win concessions for himself at the expense of the others. Mustafa Kemal emerged as the leader of the military resistance. Diplomacy allowed Mustafa Kemal to isolate his people's enemies: Greek and Armenian irredentists. Having done so, he defeated them by force of arms. In effect, the defeat of the Ottoman empire in the First World War was followed by the Turks' victory in two separate wars: a brief military campaign against the Armenians and a long one against the Greeks. Lausanne where General Ismet succeeded in securing peace on Turkey's terms was the founding charter of the modern Turkish nation state. But more than that it showed that empires could no longer rule people against their wishes. This need not be disastrous: Mustafa Kemal demonstrated that the interests of developed countries were compatible with those of developing ones. He fought the West in order to become like it. Where his domestic critics wanted to go on defying the West, Mustafa Kemal saw that his country could fare best in cooperation with the West.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Simone de Beauvoir (Life & Times)
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) always stood in the shadow of her lover and teacher, Jean-Paul Sartre, despite the fact that she was a brilliant writer and philosopher in her own right. Her monumental study "The Second Sex" made her a cult figure of the Feminist movement.
£9.99
Haus Publishing The Dictatorship Syndrome
The study of dictatorship in the West has acquired an almost exotic dimension. But authoritarian regimes remain a painful reality for billions of people worldwide who still live under them, their freedoms violated and their rights abused. They are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, corruption, ignorance, and injustice. What is the nature of dictatorship? How does it take hold? In what conditions and circumstances is it permitted to thrive? And how do dictators retain power, even when reviled and mocked by those they govern? In this deeply considered and at times provocative short work, Alaa Al Aswany tells us that, as with any disease, to understand the syndrome of dictatorship we must first consider the circumstances of its emergence, along with the symptoms and complications it causes in both the people and the dictator.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Beyond Britannia: Reshaping UK Foreign Policy: 2023
What should the future of British foreign policy look like? For too long successive governments have shied away from acknowledging uncomfortable truths about the decline of Britain's military capabilities. As we approach the middle years of the twenty-first century a new set of urgent and daunting challenges - including climate change, technological development and the rise of AI, and a growing threat from China - lie ahead, making the need for us to reconcile ourselves with our position in the world more acute. In this persuasively argued book, Simon McDonald shows how the UK's significant soft-power strengths can be harnessed to expand our international influence. Such a shift will only be possible, he says, if we first acknowledge the challenges of Brexit and the need to reduce our unrealistic hard-power ambitions. Excellence in areas that other countries care about will keep the UK internationally relevant in the second half of the century in a way that nostalgia for a lost pre-eminence will not.
£19.80
Haus Publishing A Short History of Finland
The modern nation of Finland is the heir to centuries of history, as a wilderness at the edge of early Europe, a borderland of the Swedish empire, and a Grand Duchy of tsarist Russia. And, as Jonathan Clements' vivid, concise volume shows, it is a tale paved with oddities and excitements galore: from prehistoric reindeer herders to medieval barons, Christian martyrs to Viking queens, and, in the twentieth century, the war heroes who held off the Soviet Union against impossible odds. Offering accounts of public artworks, literary giants, legends, folktales, and famous figures, Clements provides an indispensable portrait of this fascinating nation.This updated edition includes expanded coverage on the Second World War, as well as new sections on Finns in America and Russia, the centenary of the republic, and Finland's battle with COVID-19, right up to its historic application to join NATO.
£9.99
Haus Publishing Kathmandu
One of the greatest cities of the Himalaya, Kathmandu, Nepal, is a unique blend of thousand-year-old cultural practices and accelerated urban development. In this book, Thomas Bell recounts his experiences from his many years in the city--exploring in the process the rich history of Kathmandu and its many instances of self-reinvention. Closed to the outside world until 1951 and trapped in a medieval time warp, Kathmandu is, as Bell argues, a jewel of the art world, a carnival of sexual license, a hotbed of communist revolution, a paradigm of failed democracy, a case study in bungled western intervention, and an environmental catastrophe. In important ways, Kathmandu's rapid modernization can be seen as an extreme version of what is happening in other traditional societies. Bell also discusses the ramifications of the recent Nepal earthquake. A comprehensive look at a top global destination, Kathmandu is an entertaining and accessible chronicle for anyone eager to learn more about this fascinating city.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Thirst: A Novel of the Iran-Iraq War
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, an Iraqi journalist is given a tour of a military prison. He is informed by the major in charge about what is expected of him: he is to write a fabricated report about a murder that has occurred in the camp, in order to demoralise the enemy soldiers. The journalist is unwilling to write this story. In a long night of intense discussion at his home, he speaks to the major of a historic conflict between the two countries and tells him that he is writing a novel about a group of soldiers trapped on a hill, dying of thirst as they compete for a water tank with a group of enemy soldiers on the opposite hill. So far the water tank has remained undamaged at the bottom of a rift between the hills, but neither group has a hope of reaching it without being shot by the other. Delirious, the soldiers await their end: either being saved by a fabled female lion who feeds her milk to all who are thirsty, or morphing into doves once they are martyred. At the same time, in Iran, another writer remembers how he first came into contact with a gun...In a narrative riddled with surreal images, shifting perspectives and dark humour, Dowlatabadi blurs the boundaries between the two warring countries as he questions the meaning of national identity when confronted with time and human suffering.
£7.99
Haus Publishing Gandhi: The Man, His People and the Empire
This monumental biography, written by Gandhi's grandson, is the first to give a complete and balanced account of his remarkable life, the development of his beliefs, his political campaigns and his complex relationship with his family. Written with unprecedented insights and access to family archives, this biography sheds new light on Gandhi's life, showing a man both more complicated and conflicted than his receiver public image suggests. For the first time this book gives us the true Gandhi, the public and the private, the man and the legend.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Leonard Cohen
A man who shares his name with a famous singer must grapple with his identity, purpose, and love.
£14.99
Haus Publishing Black Earth: A Journey through Ukraine
'Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.' Mikhail Bulgakov wrote these words in Kiev during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War. Since then Ukrainian borders have shifted constantly and its people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions that have left them with nothing. As a state, Ukraine exists only since 1991 and what it was before is controversial among its people as well as its European neighbours. Writing in a simple and vivid way, Jens Muhling narrates his encounters with nationalists and old Communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, archaeologists and soldiers, all of whose views could hardly be more different. Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine - a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the centre of countless conflicts of opinion.
£11.99
Haus Publishing Nonviolence: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
A powerful book on the importance of committing to nonviolence. In this compact book, Ramin Jahanbegloo argues that the time has come for humanity to renew its political, economic, and cultural commitment to the idea of nonviolence. At the core of the work of such towering fighters against oppression as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Václav Havel, the idea of nonviolence still has much to teach us and much work to do in the ongoing fight for justice worldwide.
£7.99
Haus Publishing Tito
The charismatic, near-mythological figure of Josip Broz Tito was many things: an inspirational partisan leader and scourge of the Germans during their occupation of Yugoslavia in the Second World War; a doctrinaire communist but an ever-present thorn in Moscow's side; an oppressor, a dictator, a reformer, and a playboy. He managed Yugoslavia's internal tensions through personality, force of will, and political oppression. It was only after his death in 1980 that the true scale of this feat was understood; the country's institutions and politicians were then revealed as rudderless, and the country created by Tito - a Croat turned Yugoslav - collapsed into a bloody and at times genocidal civil war. These ethnic conflicts were Tito's nightmare, yet, as Neil Barnett shows in this short but engaging biography, they were in many ways the result of his own myopic egomania.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Mumbai To Mecca: A Pilgrimage to the Holy Sites of Islam
Ilija Trojanow's journey from Mumbai to Mecca is told in the tradition of the rihla, one of the oldest genres of classical Arabic literature and describes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy sites of Islam. 'From the very first moment they realise that the Hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca - is among the duties of each and every Muslim, the faithful long to go.' Trojanov, with the help of his friends, donned the ihram, the traditional garb of the pilgrim. He joined hundreds of thousands of Muslims who each year go on the Hajj, the greatest demonstration of the Muslim faith. In three short weeks he experienced a tradition dating back over one thousand years This is his account, personal yet enlightening, for the interested non-Muslims who remain barred from the holy sites of Islam.
£10.00
Haus Publishing The Consequences of the Peace: The Versailles Settlement: Aftermath and Legacy 1919-2015
The Versailles Settlement does not enjoy a good international reputation: despite its lofty aim to settle the world's affairs at a stroke, it is widely considered to have set the world on the path to a second major conflict within a generation. Woodrow Wilson's controversial principle of self-determination amplified political complexities, and the war and its settlement bear significant responsibility for national borders and related conflicts in the Middle East. Furthermore, other objectives of the peacemakers, such as global disarmament and minority protection, are yet to be realised. This book, revised and updated with new material to mark the centenary of the First World War, sets the consequences - for good or ill - of the Paris Peace Treaties into their longer term context and argues that the responsibility for Europe's continuing interwar instability cannot be wholly attributed to the peacemakers of 1919-23.
£22.50
Haus Publishing Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy
Gustaf Mannerheim was one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. As a young Finnish officer he witnessed the coronation of the last Tsar and was decorated for bravery in the Russo-Japanese War. He spent two years undercover in Asia as an agent of the 'Great Game'. Crossing China on horseback, he stopped en route to teach the 13th Dalai Lama how to shoot a pistol; he also spied on the Japanese navy. Having escaped the Bolsheviks by the skin of his teeth in 1917, he commanded the anti-Russian forces in the local revolt and civil war and later, during Finland's darkest hour, he lead the defence of his country against the impossible odds of the Winter War. In this, the first major biography of Mannerheim for a decade, Jonathan Clements brings new material to light on Mannerheim's time in Manchuria and Japan. This is a fascinating appraisal of an adventurer and explorer who would go on to forge a new nation.
£15.29
Haus Publishing The Colonel
It's a pitch black, rainy night in a small Iranian town. Inside his house the Colonel is immersed in thought. Memories are storming in. Memories of his wife. Memories of the great patriots of the past, all of them assassinated or executed. Memories of his children, who had joined the different factions of the 1979 revolution. There is a knock on the door. Two young policemen have come to summon the Colonel to collect the tortured body of his youngest daughter and bury her before sunrise. The Islamic Revolution, like every other revolution in history, is devouring its own children. And whose fault is that? This shocking diatribe against the failures of the Iranian left over the last fifty years does not leave one taboo unbroken.
£9.99
Haus Publishing Admiral Togo – Nelson of the East
Togo Heihachiro (1848-1934) was born into a feudal society that had lived in seclusion for 250 years. As a teenage samurai, he witnessed the destruction wrought upon his native land by British warships. As the legendary Silent Admiral, he was at the forefront of innovations in warfare, pioneering the Japanese use of modern gunnery and wireless communication. He is best known as the Nelson of the East for his resounding victory over the Tsar's navy in the Russo-Japanese War, but he also lived a remarkable life studying at a British maritime college, witnessing the Sino-French War, the Hawaiian Revolution, and the Boxer Uprising. After his retirement, he was appointed to oversee the education of the Emperor, Hirohito. This new biography spans Japan's sudden, violent leap out of its self-imposed isolation and into the 20th century. Delving beyond Togo's finest hour at the Battle of Tsushima, it portrays the life of a diffident Japanese sailor in Victorian Britain, his reluctant celebrity in America where he was laid low by Boston cooking and welcomed by his biggest fan, Theodore Roosevelt , forgotten wars over the short-lived Republics of Ezo and Formosa, and the accumulation of peacetime experience that forged a wartime hero.
£13.49
Haus Publishing Prince Saionji: Japan
The Japanese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference did not have the Japanese prime or foreign ministers with them as they had only just been elected and had plenty to do back home. The delegation was instead led by Prince Saionji Kinmochi (1849-1940), the dashing 'kingmaker' of early 20th-century Japanese politics whose life spanned the arrival of Commodore Perry and his 'black ships', the Japanese civil war, the Meiji Restoration, the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles, and the rise of Japanese militarism. Unlike many of the conservatives of his day, Saionji was a man with experience of international diplomacy and admiration for European culture.Brought up in the days of the last Shogun, he became an active supporter of Japan's new ruling regime, after the Shogun was overthrown in a civil war, and a leading figure in the post-Restoration reform movement. In 1869, he founded the institution that would become the Ritsumeikan University - literally, 'the place to establish one's destiny'. He was sent to France for nine years to investigate Western technology and philosophy, and served for a decade as a Japanese ambassador in Europe. Returning to Japan, he served twice as Minister of Education and later became prime minister before resigning to become a revered elder statesman. Japan entered the First World War on the Allied side, seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. In the closing days of the war, Japanese military forces participated in the Siberian Intervention - an American-led invasion of eastern Russia against Communist insurgents.At the Conference Saionji's presence was initially regarded by the Japanese as a sign that Japan had become a fully-fledged member of the international community and accepted on an equal footing with the Western Powers. His delegation introduced a controversial proposal to legally enshrine racial equality as one of the tenets of the League of Nations. The Japanese were also keen to grab colonies of their own, and went head-to-head with the Chinese delegation over the fate of the former German possession of Shandong. When Shandong was 'returned' not to China but to its Japanese occupiers, riots broke out in China. Despite Saionji's statesmanship and diplomacy, the Treaty of Versailles was regarded by many Japanese as a slap in the face. Saionji's influence weakened in his last years, while his party was dissolved and amalgamated with others.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Paul Hymans: Belgium
On 4 February 1919 in the League of Nations Commission at the Paris Peace Conference, Paul Hymans resisted minimal representation of small states on the League Council by shouting at Lord Robert Cecil, What you propose is a revival of the Holy Alliance of unhallowed memory!' It was Hymans, above all, who struggled to give the small states at the Conference a voice, making himself deeply disliked in the process. He was was rewarded by becoming the League's first president. Belgium had suffered the greatest degree of devastation in the Great War. When the country was liberated and the Peace Conference was set up, it was determined to succeed in its claims for territory and reparations. Equally important was the need for security from larger nations' ambitions. Only some of these would be achieved at Versailles, leaving a lasting legacy which influenced the country's policy as the Second World War approached. Hymans instigated Belgium's transition from the status of sheltered child to full participation in much great-power diplomacy.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Bonar Law
Bonar Law was a prominent opponent of Home Rule for Ireland; he also served the shortest term of any of Britain's 20th century Prime Ministers. In 1922 he was responsible for ending the coalition.
£10.99
Haus Publishing The Vitality of Democracy
There is no such thing as the perfect society. There are no hard and fast rules on how to make it work for everyone. If we don't want to have things imposed upon us, then government by the people and for the people is the best system on offer. We call it democracy. We thought that, given a chance, every country would choose to become a liberal democracy. It hasn't quite worked out like that. There is pushback. No one likes to give up power. Strong leaders seem to offer certainty and stability. Big companies are much more responsive and efficient than governments. We don't like facing up to difficult choices and prefer to find fault with others rather than examine our own actions. Democracy is about making difficult choices and if we don't appreciate what makes the system work, we risk losing it. It is like a play that has repeat performances, with the audience having a say over the cast and the plot. Mob rule is bad. Elections are a fight. As no one has all the answers, we allow for power to change hands. Give the other side a chance and see if they can do a better job. In this play, audience participation is compulsory. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Government by the people and for the people requires the people to take part; to choose between competing ideas; to join political parties. To stand up for things that are important. The last five years have been a big challenge. The UK ceased being a member of the European Union. Faced with a deathly pandemic, we've accepted restrictions to our civil liberties that were unimaginable before. It is time to pause and reflect. Democracy has always been challenged, but this time it's more serious. The meaning of democracy is to take part.
£8.42
Haus Publishing Bealport: A Novel of a Town
An old shoe factory in a costal New England town is up for sale again. When a private equity mogul with a fondness for the factory’s shoes buys it, he sets in motion a story with profound implications for the way we live today. The people of Bealport depend on Norumbega. Their livelihoods, their self-respect and their interconnectedness are all at stake. The shadow of the factory’s fate looms over the people of the town. Idiosyncratic and humane, the cast is the kind that small communities under threat produce. Bealport is a portrait of a place, at once sympathetic, mordant, unsparing, comic, tragic and universal, and of a way of life that is passing. It is a novel of a town, and to no small degree of every town in America and beyond.
£9.04
Haus Publishing Budapest: City of Music
Singer Nicholas Clapton first visited Budapest to record a recently discovered mass by an almost unknown eighteenth-century Hungarian composer. There, he discovered a striking sense of otherness in spite of Hungary s central geographical and cultural position within Europe. And with that, a deep passion for the city was born. Budapest offers an engaging and affectionate look at this beautiful capital from the perspective of a musician who lived and worked there for many years. With rich musical traditions, both classical and folk, and possessing a language like almost no other, Hungary is in the process of abandoning the trappings of its communist past while attempting to preserve its culture from creeping globalization. Clapton delights in the fact that certain old-fashioned attitudes of courtesy, at times stemming from the very structures of the Magyar tongue, are still deeply ingrained in Hungarian society. At the same time, despite its association with world-famous composers such as Bartok, Liszt, and Kodaly, music is far from an activity enjoyed only by the elite. Including plenty of tips on food, drink, and sites of interest, Budapest describes the capital in uniquely melodic terms and will delight lovers of travel and music alike."
£11.88
Haus Publishing Rilke's Venice
Travel was a way of life for the Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke, and it was integral to his work. Between 1897 and 1920 he visited Venice ten times. The city has inspired countless writers and artists, but Rilke was both enthralled and provoked by it, as eager to see and explore the city’s deserted shipyards and back alleys as the iconic sights of St Mark’s and the Doge’s Palace. He would walk the city alone, staying in simple guesthouses or the grand palaces of his patrons. Birgit Haustedt guides readers through the city in the poet’s footsteps, showing us the sights through Rilke’s eyes.
£9.99
Haus Publishing The Men of 1924: Britain's First Labour Government
The new Cabinet in January 1924 consisted, as governments had for generations, of twenty white, middle-aged men. But that is where the similarities with previous governments ended, for the election of Britain's first Labour administration witnessed a radical departure from government by the ruling class. Replacing Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives were Ramsay MacDonald's Labour, the majority of whom had left school by the age of fifteen. Five of them had started work by the time they were twelve years old. Three were working down the mines before they entered their teens. Two were illegitimate, one was a foundling, three were of Irish immigrant descent. For the first time in Britain's history the Cabinet could truly be said to represent all of Britain's social classes.This unheralded revolution in representation is the subject of Peter Clark's fascinating new book, The Men of 1924. Who were these men? Clark's vivid portrayal is full of evocative portraits of a new breed of politician, the forerunners of all those who, later in the last century and in this one, overcame a system from which they had been excluded for too long.
£18.00
Haus Publishing A History of Crete
Known by the Greeks as 'Megalonisos', the 'Great Island', Crete has been of paramount strategic importance for thousands of years thanks to its location close to the junction of three continents and the heart of the eastern Mediterranean. The island has been ruled for much of its history by foreign invaders - Mycenaeans, Dorians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians, Ottoman Turks and, briefly, the Third Reich - and thus much of its past has revolved around how the Cretans themselves, fierce lovers of freedom, have interacted with their conquerors and the influence of foreign rule on their culture. Two periods at either end of these three thousand years of domination form an intriguing contrast: the dazzling apogee of the Minoan civilisation and the brief period of autonomy before union with Greece at the beginning of the twentieth century. Moorey has written an engaging and lively account of Crete from the Stone Age to the present day.
£12.99
Haus Publishing King of Kings: The Triumph and Tragedy of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia
Haile Selassie I, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was as brilliant as he was formidable. An early proponent of African unity and independence who claimed to be a descendant of King Solomon, he fought with the Allies against the Axis powers during World War II and was a messianic figure for the Jamaican Rastafarians. But the final years of his empire saw turmoil and revolution, and he was ultimately overthrown and assassinated in a communist coup. Written by Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Haile Selassie s grandnephew, this is the first major biography on this final king of kings. Asserate, who spent his childhood and adolescence in Ethiopia before fleeing the revolution of 1974, knew Selassie personally and gained intimate insights into life at the imperial court. Introducing him as a reformer and an autocrat whose personal history with all of its upheavals, promises, and horrors reflects in many ways the history of the twentieth century itself, Asserate uses his own experiences and painstaking research in family and public archives to achieve a colorful and even-handed portrait of the emperor."
£13.49
Haus Publishing The Night of the Physicists: Operation Epsilon: Heisenberg, Hahn, Weizscker and the German Bomb
In the spring of 1945 the Allies arrested the physicists they believed had worked on the German nuclear programme during the war. Interned in an English country house, their conversations were secretly recorded. MI6's Operation Epsilon sought to determine how close Nazi Germany had come to building an atomic bomb. It was in this remote setting - Farm Hall, near Cambridge - that the German physicists first heard of the bombing ofHiroshima. August 6 1945 was a night that changed the course of history. The terrible weapon unleashed on Japan caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life. That the Allies had such a weapon at their disposal came as a great shock to the German scientists who had worked under the assumption that the Allies knew nothing of nuclear fission. This is the story of the wartime race to develop an atomic bomb, and the genius, guilt, complicity and hubris of Nobel Prize-winning scientists working to create a weapon that would undoubtedly have won the war for the Germans.
£13.49
Haus Publishing A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution
A well-known novelist and journalist from the coastal city of Jableh, Samar Yazbek witnessed the beginning four months of the uprising first-hand and actively participated in a variety of public actions and budding social movements. Throughout this period she kept a diary of personal reflections on, and observations of, this historic time. Because of the outspoken views she published in print and online, Yazbek quickly attracted the attention and fury of the regime, vicious rumours started to spread about her disloyalty to the homeland and the Alawite community to which she belongs. The lyrical narrative describes her struggle to protect herself and her young daughter, even as her activism propels her into a horrifying labyrinth of insecurity after she is forced into living on the run and detained multiple times, excluded from the Alawite community and renounced by her family, her hometown and even her childhood friends. With rare empathy and journalistic prowess Samar Yazbek compiled oral testimonies from ordinary Syrians all over the country. Filled with snapshots of exhilarating hope and horrifying atrocities, she offers us a wholly unique perspective on the Syrian uprising. Hers is a modest yet powerful testament to the strength and commitment of countless unnamed Syrians who have united to fight for their freedom. These diaries will inspire all those who read them, and challenge the world to look anew at the trials and tribulations of the Syrian uprising.
£12.99
Haus Publishing Baldwin
£10.69