Search results for ""author edward wilson""

A brilliant, eye-opening espionage thriller by a former special forces officer 'now at the forefront of spy writing' 'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent'More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers' Publishers WeeklyApril, 1982. The British prime minister and the Argentine president are both clinging to power. Downing Street, having ignored alarm bells coming from the South Atlantic, finds itself in a full-blown crisis when Argentina invades the remote and forgotten British territory of the Falklands Islands. Catesby is dispatched urgently to prevent Argentina from obtaining more lethal Exocet missiles, by fair means or foul. From Patagonia to Paris, from Chevening to the White House, he plays a deadly game of diplomatic cat and mouse, determined to avert the loss of life. The clock is ticking. Diplomats and statesmen race for a last-minute settlement while the weapons of war are primed and aimed. 'Absolutely fascinating' Literary Review'Gets nearer to the truth of what happened in the Falklands War than any of the standard histories. Highly recommended' Clive Ponting'A classic of the genre . . . as good as espionage thriller writing gets' NB Magazine'A stunning and ingenious book' Crime ReviewPraise for Edward Wilson:'Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader's attention' W.G. Sebald'A reader is really privileged to come across something like this' Alan Sillitoe'All too often, amid the glitzy gadgetry of the spy thriller, all the fast cars and sexual adventures, we lose sight of the essential seriousness of what is at stake. John le Carré reminds us, often, and so does Edward Wilson' Independent

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A magnificent debut novel, which follows in the spirit of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, in which an alienated student named Lopez joins the Vietnam war to escape from his past and himself. Forced out of self-pity by the brutality and injustice surrounding him, Lopez begins to shed his layers of acquired culture, identifying instead with the Vietnamese and their cause. 'Stylistically sophisticated, visually and emotionally present; the pace is good and the author knows how to hold the reader's attention.' y

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A gripping espionage thriller about an establishment plot to take control of 1970s Britain, by a writer who is 'poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carre' 'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent'More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers' Publishers WeeklyMarch, 1976. A secret plot unfolds on both sides of the Atlantic to remove the British prime minister from power. 1947: As a hungry Britain freezes through a harsh winter, a young cabinet minister makes a deal with Moscow, trading jet engines for grain and wood. 1951: William Catesby executes a Nazi war criminal in the ruins of a U-boat bunker. The German turns out be a CIA asset. Both men have made powerful enemies in Washington, and their fates become entwined as one rises through MI6 and the other to Downing Street. Now the ghosts of the past are returning to haunt them. A coup d'état is imminent, and only Catesby stands in its way.'A fantastic read' Culture Matters'Le Carré fans will find a lot to like' Publishers Weekly'The best espionage story you'll read this year or any other' Crime ReviewPraise for Edward Wilson: 'Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader's attention' W.G. Sebald'A reader is really privileged to come across something like this' Alan Sillitoe'All too often, amid the glitzy gadgetry of the spy thriller, all the fast cars and sexual adventures, we lose sight of the essential seriousness of what is at stake. John le Carré reminds us, often, and so does Edward Wilson' Independent

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A brilliant Cuban Missile Crisis spy thriller by a former special forces officer who is 'poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' 'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent'More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers' Publishers WeeklyOctober, 1962. If the Cuban gamble goes wrong and war breaks out, Britain will cease to exist. Whitehall dispatches a secret envoy to defuse the confrontation. Spawned in the bleak poverty of an East Anglian fishing port, Catesby is a spy with an anti-establishment chip on his shoulder. He loves his country, but despises the class who run it. Though he is loathed by the Americans for his left-wing sympathies, Catesby is sent to Havana and Washington to make clandestine contacts. London has authorised Catesby to offer Moscow a secret deal to break the deadlock. But before it can be sealed, he meets the Midnight Swimmer, who has a chilling message for Washington.'An intellectually commanding thriller' Independent'An excellent spy novel . . . belongs on the bookshelf alongside similarly unsettling works by le Carré, Alan Furst and Eric Ambler' Huffington PostPraise for Edward Wilson: 'Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader's attention' W.G. Sebald'A reader is really privileged to come across something like this' Alan Sillitoe'All too often, amid the glitzy gadgetry of the spy thriller, all the fast cars and sexual adventures, we lose sight of the essential seriousness of what is at stake. John le Carré reminds us, often, and so does Edward Wilson' Independent

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WINNER OF THE 2019 PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE The fascinating history of Christopher Columbus’s illegitimate son Hernando, guardian of his father’s flame, courtier, bibliophile and catalogue supreme, whose travels took him to the heart of 16th-century Europe’ Honor Clerk, Spectator, Books of the Year This is the scarcely believable – and wholly true – story of Christopher Columbus' bastard son Hernando, who sought to equal and surpass his father's achievements by creating a universal library. His father sailed across the ocean to explore the known boundaries of the world for the glory of God, Spain and himself. His son Hernando sought instead to harness the vast powers of the new printing presses to assemble the world’s knowledge in one place, his library in Seville. Hernando was one of the first and greatest visionaries of the print age, someone who saw how the scale of available information would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. His was an immensely eventual life. As a youth, he spent years travelling in the New World, and spent one living with his father in a shipwreck off Jamaica. He created a dictionary and a geographical encyclopaedia of Spain, helped to create the first modern maps of the world, spent time in almost every major European capital, and associated with many of the great people of his day, from Ferdinand and Isabel to Erasmus, Thomas More, and Dürer. He wrote the first biography of his father, almost single-handedly creating the legend of Columbus that held sway for many hundreds of years, and was highly influential in crafting how Europe saw the world his father reached in 1492. He also amassed the largest collection of printed images and of printed music of the age, started what was perhaps Europe's first botanical garden, and created by far the greatest private library Europe had ever seen, dwarfing with its 15,000 books every other library of the day. Edward Wilson-Lee has written the first major modern biography of Hernando – and the first of any kind available in English. In a work of dazzling scholarship, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells an enthralling tale of the age of print and exploration, a story with striking lessons for our own modern experiences of information revolution and Globalisation.

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A spy thriller that will change your view of the Cold War forever, by a former special forces officer who is 'poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' 'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent'More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers' Publishers WeeklyAugust, 1956. A generation of British spies is haunted by the ghosts of friends turned traitor. Whitehall spymaster Henry Bone has long held Butterfly to be the Holy Grail of Cold War Intelligence. His brain is an archive of deadly secrets - he can identify each and every traitor spy as well as the serving British agents who helped them. And now Bone learns that Butterfly plans to defect to the Americans. Unless Bone gets to him first. William Catesby, a spy with his reputation in tatters, is pressured into posing as a defector in order to track down Butterfly. His quest leads him from Berlin, through a shower of Molotov cocktails in Budapest, to dinner alone with the East German espionage legend Mischa Wolf. 'A gripping Cold War story centred on a Berlin seething with agents and counterspies' Mail on Sunday'Smart, finely written' Publishers Weekly Starred Review'All you could want in a spy thriller' Oliver JamesPraise for Edward Wilson:'Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader's attention' W.G. Sebald'A reader is really privileged to come across something like this' Alan Sillitoe

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A Times History Book of the Year 2022 A TLS Book of the Year 2022 ‘Exhilarating and whip-smart’ THE SUNDAY TIMES From award-winning writer Edward Wilson-Lee, this is a thrilling true historical detective story set in sixteenth-century Portugal. A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them – an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music – returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other – a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan – ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.

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A Times History Book of the Year 2022 A TLS Book of the Year 2022 ‘Exhilarating and whip-smart’ THE SUNDAY TIMES From award-winning writer Edward Wilson-Lee, this is a thrilling true historical detective story set in sixteenth-century Portugal. A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them – an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music – returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other – a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan – ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damião de Góis and Luís de Camões capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.

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"A compelling slice of mid-century espionage that expertly blends history with possibility. All comparisons that will inevitably be made with le Carré are entirely apt" Tim Glister'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent1949: William Catesby returns to London in disgrace, accused of murdering a 'double-dipper' the Americans believed to be one of their own. His left-wing sympathies have him singled out as a traitor.Henry Bone throws him a lifeline, sending him to Marseille, ostensibly to report on dockers' strikes and keep tabs on the errant wife of a British diplomat. But there's a catch. For his cover story, he's demobbed from the service and tricked out as a writer researching a book on the Resistance.In Marseille, Catesby is caught in a deadly vice between the CIA and the mafia, who are colluding to fuel the war in Indochina. Swept eastwards to Laos himself, he remains uncertain of the true purpose behind his mission, though he has his suspicions: Bone has murder on his mind, and the target is a former comrade from Catesby's SOE days. The question is, which one.

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This is the first printed edition of a landmark work in the history of English humanism and perhaps English drama: a translation of part of Petrarch's Secretum into English verse. Copied at Winchester Cathedral in 1487, it is only the third work by Petrarch to be translated into English and is the most accurate and extensive translation from his work before the 1530s. It offers an insight into early English responses to humanist learning, with its balance of classical and religious ideas, and to the cosmopolitan and urbane taste of fifteenth-century English churchmen in the century before the Reformation. It might bear witness to the inventiveness of English poetry in a period with few such records; and, as Secretum is a dialogue, it might even be counted an early English secular work for performance. The edition has detailed explanatory notes and a glossary, revealing its verbal inventiveness and the translator's familiarity with Chaucerian verse traditions. It has an extensive introduction, relating it to literary culture at Winchester at the time and to the manuscripts of Petrarch's Latin Secretum in England at the time.

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The brilliant opening novel of the Catesby series, by a former special forces officer and 'the thinking person's John le Carre' 'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent'More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers' Publishers WeeklyLondon, 1956. The height of the Cold War. On the face of it, Kit Fournier is a senior diplomat at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. But that's not the full story. He is also CIA Chief of Station. With the nuclear arms race looming large, Kit goes undercover to meet with his KGB counterpart to pass on secret information about British spies. In a world where truth means deception and love means honey trap, sexual blackmail and personal betrayal are essential skills. As the H-bomb apocalypse hangs over London, Kit Fournier faces a crisis of the soul. The unveiling of his own dark personal secrets will prove more deadly than any of his coded dispatches. 'A glorious, seething broth of historical fact and old-fashioned spy story' The Times'A sophisticated, convincing novel that shows governments and their secret services as cynically exploitative and utterly ruthless' Sunday TelegraphPraise for Edward Wilson:'Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader's attention' W.G. Sebald'A reader is really privileged to come across something like this' Alan Sillitoe

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A captivating spy thriller taking the reader from 60s sex scandals to the Vietnam War, by a former special forces officer who is 'poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carre' 'Edward Wilson seems poised to inherit the mantle of John le Carré' Irish Independent'More George Smiley than James Bond, Catesby will delight those readers looking for less blood and more intelligence in their spy thrillers' Publishers WeeklyLondon, 1957. Lady Somers is beautiful, rich and the first woman to head up the Ministry of Defence. She also has something to hide. Catesby's job is to uncover her story and bury it forever. His quest leads him through the sex scandals of Swinging-Sixties London and then on to Moscow, where a shocking message changes everything. His next mission is a desperate hunt through the war-torn jungles of Southeast Asia, where he finally makes a heart-breaking discovery that is as personal as it is political. It's a secret that Catesby may not live to share. 'Espionage and geopolitical history rewritten by Evelyn Waugh' Sunday Times'We attempt to second-guess both Catesby and his crafty creator, and are soundly outfoxed at every turn' Barry Forshaw, Independent'This cynically complex plot is laid over perfectly described settings, from London to Moscow to Vietnam. Wilson's characters and their consciences come alive to lend the book its power' Kirkus ReviewsPraise for Edward Wilson: 'Stylistically sophisticated . . . Wilson knows how to hold the reader's attention' W.G. Sebald'A reader is really privileged to come across something like this' Alan Sillitoe'All too often, amid the glitzy gadgetry of the spy thriller, all the fast cars and sexual adventures, we lose sight of the essential seriousness of what is at stake. John le Carré reminds us, often, and so does Edward Wilson' Independent

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The untold story of the greatest library of the Renaissance and its creator Hernando Colón This engaging book offers the first comprehensive account of the extraordinary projects of Hernando Colón, son of Christopher Columbus, which culminated in the creation of the greatest library of the Renaissance, with ambitions to be universal––that is, to bring together copies of every book, on every subject and in every language. Pérez Fernández and Wilson‑Lee situate Hernando’s projects within the rapidly changing landscape of early modern knowledge, providing a concise history of the collection of information and the origins of public libraries, examining the challenges he faced and the solutions he devised. The two authors combine “meticulous research with deep and original thought,” shedding light on the history of libraries and the organization of knowledge. The result is an essential reference text for scholars of the early modern period, and for anyone interested in the expansion and dissemination of information and knowledge.

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