Search results for ""author jacob"

Demonstrates how Purcell, Berlioz, Verdi, and Britten, responding to Shakespeare's juxtaposition of contrasting theatrical styles, devised music dramas that call opera into question. In this book, Daniel Albright, one of today's most intrepid and vividly communicative explorers of the border territory between literature and music, offers insights into how composers of genius can help us to understand Shakespeare. Musicking Shakespeare demonstrates how four composers -- Purcell, Berlioz, Verdi, and Britten -- respond to the distinctive features of Shakespeare's plays: their unwieldiness, their refusal to fit into interpretive boxes, their ranting quality, their arbitrary bursts of gorgeousness. The four composers break the normal forms of opera -- of music altogether -- in order to come to terms with the challenges that Shakespeare presents to the music dramatist. Musicking Shakespeare begins with an analysis of Shakespeare's play The Tempest as an imaginary Jacobean opera and as a real Restoration opera. It then discusses works that respond with wit and sophistication to Shakespeare's irony, obscurity, contortion, and heft: Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette, Verdi's Macbeth, Purcell's The Fairy Queen, and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. These works are problematic in the ways that Shakespeare's plays are problematic. Shakespeare's favorite dramatic device is to juxtapose two kinds of theatres within a single play, such as the formal masque and the loose Elizabethan stage. Thefour composers studied here respond to this aspect of Shakespeare's art by going beyond the comfort zone of the operatic medium. The music dramas they devise call opera into question. Daniel Albright is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University.

Read more less

Last Acts argues that the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater offered playwrights, actors, and audiences important opportunities to practice arts of dying. Psychoanalytic and new historicist scholars have exhaustively documented the methods that early modern dramatic texts and performances use to memorialize the dead, at times even asserting that theater itself constitutes a form of mourning. But early modern plays also engage with devotional traditions that understand death less as an occasion for suffering or grief than as an action to be performed, well or badly. Active deaths belie narratives of helplessness and loss through which mortality is too often read and instead suggest how marginalized and constrained subjects might participate in the political, social, and economic management of life. Some early modern strategies for dying resonate with descriptions of politicized biological life in the recent work of Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito, or with ecclesiastical forms. Yet the art of dying is not solely a discipline imposed upon recalcitrant subjects. Since it offers suffering individuals a way to enact their deaths on their own terms, it discloses both political and dramatic action in their most minimal manifestations. Rather than mournfully marking what we cannot recover, the practice of dying reveals what we can do, even in death. By analyzing representations of dying in plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, alongside devotional texts and contemporary biopolitical theory, Last Acts shows how theater reflects, enables, and contests the politicization of life and death.

Read more less

‘There is an old Scottish saying: Some are born cool, some achieve coolness, and some have coolness thrust upon them. At least I think it’s Scottish. It doesn’t matter.’ What do Kenny Dalglish and Robert Louis Stevenson have in common? Or Annie Lennox and Mary Barbour? Or Joseph Knight and Sean Connery? They are but a few examples of the Scots that have shaped the cool nation we see today. In this whacky toon-fest of character sketches, Greg Moodie presents 42 key figures in Scotland’s rich and varied history. Spanning the living and the dead, the portraits range from potentially paranoid politicians and health-and-safety-loving Formula One drivers to Jacobite heroines and promiscuous poets. Basically, you get the best of the best. Accompanying each brief biography – peppered with quirky anecdotes, hilarious quips and mostly accurate facts – is a psychedelic portrait that blends past and present. Ever seen Muriel Sparks sport a studded choker or James Clerk Maxwell boast two sleeves of tattoos? You will now. For once including those cool Scottish women so often ignored in history books, Moodie presents his collection ‘in an order deliberately designed to jolt your little minds out of their preconceived ideas of time’. You’ll leap between modern day musicians and 18th century science writers at the turn of each delightfully glossy page. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Moodie celebrates Scotland’s achievements, revels in its victories and occasionally blends fact and fiction.

Read more less

Rob Roy Way is a walk across part of the Southern Highlands of Scotland taking in some of the most beautiful countryside in the UK. Starting from Drymen it goes north east to finish in Pitlochry. The Way is 77mls or 94 mls (124Km or 151Km) depending on your route choice. The tracks and paths you follow were used by Rob Roy MacGregor in the 17th & 18th centuries, other historical characters throughout the Jacobite uprisings and during the feuds between the local clans. Places you will pass through include Aberfoyle, Callander, Strathyre, Killin or Amulree and Aberfeldy. Lochs you will walk along include Venachar, Lubnaig and Tay passing by Ben Ledi, Ben Chonzie and Ben Lawers. XT40 New generation of tough polyethylene maps. The HARVEY series of Long Distance Route maps is an established success. Now the advanced technology used in the creation of our best-selling British Mountain Maps is also applied to the route maps. These maps are a leap forward in technical excellence. They are tough, durable, light and 100% waterproof virtually indestructible in normal use. They are light to carry, and compact not the great bulky package you get with a laminated map. The map is detailed, with the routes clearly marked. It also contains general information, useful telephone numbers and a full key.

Read more less

In the first modern biography of Lord Mansfield (1705-1793), Norman Poser details the turbulent political life of eighteenth-century Britain's most powerful judge, serving as chief justice for an unprecedented thirty-two years. His legal decisions launched England on the path to abolishing slavery and the slave trade, modernized commercial law in ways that helped establish Britain as the world's leading industrial and trading nation, and his vigorous opposition to the American colonists stoked Revolutionary fires. Although his father and brother were Jacobite rebels loyal to the deposed King James II, Mansfield was able to rise through English society to become a member of its ruling aristocracy and a confidential advisor to two kings. Poser sets Mansfield's rulings in historical context while delving into Mansfield's circle, which included poets (Alexander Pope described him as "his country's pride"), artists, actors, clergymen, noblemen and women, and politicians. Still celebrated for his application of common sense and moral values to the formal and complicated English common law system, Mansfield brought a practical and humanistic approach to the law. His decisions continue to influence the legal systems of Canada, Britain, and the United States to an extent unmatched by any judge of the past. An illuminating account of one of the greatest legal minds, Lord Mansfield presents a vibrant look at Britain's Age of Reason through one of its central figures.

Read more less

The German Idealism Reader is a comprehensive account of the key ideas and arguments central to German idealists and their immediate critics. Expanding the scope beyond the four best-known representatives - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel - and including those thinkers often considered as secondary, but who are also crucial for understanding of this period, the Reader presents an influential era in all its philosophical complexity. Through its broad coverage of philosophers and their texts, it offers a complete dynamic picture of the intellectual period and features: - Selections from key texts by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel - Readings from Reinhold, Schiller, Maimon, Schulze, Jacobi, Hölderlin, and Novalis - Responses to and critiques of German idealist thought by late nineteenth century thinkers, such as Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche - Selections extending beyond the typical focus on epistemology and metaphysics to include ethics, religion, society, and art - A general introduction and timeline, together with a chronology and bibliography to each thinker and introductory overviews to both thinkers and text With readings carefully selected to illustrate thinkers in dialogue with each other, The German Idealism Reader provides a better appreciation of the philosophical discussions central to the period. This is essential reading for all students of German idealism and the nineteenth-century German and Continental philosophies, as well as to those studying the important movements and periods of European intellectual history.

Read more less

Wildlife management specialists and landscape ecologists offer a new perspective on the important intersection of these fields in the twenty-first century.It's been clear for decades that landscape-level patterns and processes, along with the tenets and tools of landscape ecology, are vitally important in understanding wildlife-habitat relationships and sustaining wildlife populations. Today, significant shifts in the spatial scale of extractive, agricultural, ranching, and urban land uses are upon us, making it more important than ever before to connect wildlife management and landscape ecology. Landscape ecologists must understand the constraints that wildlife managers face and be able to use that knowledge to translate their work into more practical applications. Wildlife managers, for their part, can benefit greatly from becoming comfortable with the vocabulary, conceptual processes, and perspectives of landscape ecologists.In Wildlife Management and Landscapes, the foremost landscape ecology experts and wildlife management specialists come together to discuss the emerging role of landscape concepts in habitat management. Their contributions• make the case that a landscape perspective is necessary to address management questions• translate concepts in landscape ecology to wildlife management• explain why studying some important habitat-wildlife relationships is still inherently difficult• explore the dynamic and heterogeneous structure of natural systems• reveal why factors such as soil, hydrology, fire, grazing, and timber harvest lead to uncertainty in management decisions• explain matching scale between population processes and management• discuss limitations to management across jurisdictional boundaries and balancing objectives of private landowners and management agencies• offer practical ideas for improving communication between professionals• outline the impediments that limit a full union of landscape ecology and wildlife managementUsing concrete examples of modern conservation challenges that range from oil and gas development to agriculture and urbanization, the volume posits that shifts in conservation funding from a hunter constituent base to other sources will bring a dramatic change in the way we manage wildlife. Explicating the foundational similarity of wildlife management and landscape ecology, Wildlife and Landscapes builds crucial bridges between theoretical and practical applications.Contributors: Jocelyn L. Aycrigg, Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau, Jon P. Beckmann, Joseph R. Bennett, William M. Block, Todd R. Bogenschutz, Teresa C. Cohn, John W. Connelly, Courtney J. Conway, Bridgett E. Costanzo, David D. Diamond, Karl A. Didier, Lee F. Elliott, Michael E. Estey, Lenore Fahrig, Cameron J. Fiss, Jacqueline L. Frair, Elsa M. Haubold, Fidel Hernández, Jodi A. Hilty, Joseph D. Holbrook, Cynthia A. Jacobson, Kevin M. Johnson, Jeffrey K. Keller, Jeffery L. Larkin, Kimberly A. Lisgo, Casey A. Lott, Amanda E. Martin, James A. Martin, Darin J. McNeil, Michael L. Morrison, Betsy E. Neely, Neal D. Niemuth, Chad J. Parent, Humberto L. Perotto-Baldivieso, Ronald D. Pritchert, Fiona K. A. Schmiegelow, Amanda L. Sesser, Gregory J. Soulliere, Leona K. Svancara, Stephen C. Torbit, Joseph A. Veech, Kerri T. Vierling, Greg Wathen, David M. Williams, Mark J. Witecha, John M. Yeiser

Read more less

This Handbook strives to enhance knowledge and application within sustainability in management education (SiME) across different academic programs, geographic regions and personal/professional contexts. Cross-disciplinary and boundary spanning, this book focuses on specific themes and is therefore split into four distinct sections: one on theory and practice, one on transformational interventions in business programs, one on the role of external agents and the last on innovative approaches in SiME. The co-editors expertly provide a roadmap for sustainability in management education while discussing key implications, applications and utilities that explore motivations and project possible outcomes for advances and integration of SiME. In addition to identifying new discursive strategies in SiME research, the co-editors provide a critical narrative and discussion on newly identified commonalities and connections within the Handbook's chapters. This content assessment highlights prevalent intersections for advancing, challenging, and questioning how to implement SiME in various programs. Management scholars, researchers, educators and practitioners as well as current, emerging and future leaders in various academic and private sectors will find this Handbook invaluable. It will serve as a key reference for more advanced studies in this rapidly developing field.Contributors include: F. Ahen, M. Albert, J.A. Arevalo, K.R. Bandyopadhyay, L. Barin Cruz, R.G. Bell, S. Benn, M. Bidart Carneiro de Novaes, N. Boyd, J. Bressler, M. Brueckner, J. Brunstein, T. Bunn Hiller, N. Christopher, M. Edwards, Q. Evansluong, D. Fodness, C.J. Fox, A. Girardi, T.A. Hart, J.R. Hendry, S. Hüsig, P.R. Jacobi, Y. Jakobcic, S. Klomp, J. Korstad, L. Krzykowski, R. Mahajan, S.L. Manring, E. Martin, E. Meliou, P. Miesing, R. Miller, S.F. Mitchell, E.E. Nill, F.S. Nobre, E.E. Nordman, M. Paull, M. Pozzebon, M. Ramirez Pasillas, E. Raufflet, E. Rich, A.J. Richardson, I. Rimanoczy, M.F. Sambiase, P. Schmitt Figueiró, S. Schutel, C.A. Simmers, S. Soderstrom, R. Spencer, R. Sroufe, M. Starik, A. Sulkowski, D. Vazquez-Brust, A. Vidal da Silva Martins, J.L. Whittington, J. Williams, L.T. Wong, N. Yakovleva

Read more less

Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped is at once a rollicking adventure story and an earnest political allegory. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Donald McFarlan and a foreword by Alasdair Gray.Orphaned and penniless, David Balfour sets out to find his last living relative, miserly and reclusive Uncle Ebenezer. But Ebenezer is far from welcoming, and David narrowly escapes being murdered before he is kidnapped and imprisoned on a ship bound for the Carolinas. When the ship is wrecked, David, along with the fiery rebel Alan Breck, makes his way back across the treacherous Highland terrain on a quest for justice. Through his powerful depiction of the two very different central characters - the romantic Breck and the rational Whig David - Stevenson dramatized a conflict at the heart of Scottish culture in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion, as well as creating an unforgettable adventure story.This new edition includes a foreword by Alasdair Gray discussing Stevenson's life and literary career and how he came to write Kidnapped. In his introduction, Donald McFarlan considers the novel's realism and a depiction of Scotland. This volume also includes a historical note, a map, notes, new further reading and a glossary.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh, the son of a prosperous civil engineer. Although he began his career as an essayist and travel writer, the success of Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886) established his reputation as a writer of tales of action and adventure. Stevenson's Calvinist upbringing lent him a preoccupation with predestination and a fascination with the presence of evil, themes he explored in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and The Master of Ballantrae (1893).If you enjoyed Kidnapped, you might like Jack London's The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

Read more less

My Cue to Fight, Volume I of a planned two volume release, is the first book of its kind to provide an in-depth examination of how the greatest playwright in the English language employed not only psychological brutality but also physical violence throughout his works. Written ideally for theatrical stage directors, fight directors, intimacy consultants, and actors as a technical scene-by-scene breakdown in staging combat during production of these plays, this publication is also for Shakespeare enthusiasts who want to learn more about the blood, sweat, and viscera hidden just underneath the poetry. A writer utilises violence, like song or dance, in moments where the story requires more than just words. But addressing how the violence will be staged tends either to be neglected or utterly gratuitous, both of which serve to separate the audience from the story and kill the whole venture. The answer rests in approaching violence the same way we do scenework. The plays of William Shakespeare seek to engage audiences with all of the characters’ blood, tears, sweat, and guts. These works are not flowery poems meant to be mumbled in a classroom, or histrionically declaimed in frilly costumes. There is nothing light and fluffy about 'rape' and 'murder’s rages', or 'carving' someone as a dish fit for the gods, or fighting till from one’s bones one’s 'flesh be hacked'. Making matters more complicated is the ambiguity and sometimes even complete lack of stage directions. Modern texts typically possess clear directions whenever violence is to occur in the action, but playscripts were quite different four centuries ago. Such denotations were both rare and inconsistent in Elizabethan and Jacobean printings. The potential violence we will examine is not appropriate for all productions or scene partners. We’re here to question and inspire rather than provide catch-all solutions. Actors, directors, fight directors, and intimacy consultants must work together to find the most effective way for their production to communicate the playwright’s story to the audience.

Read more less

Being of Two Minds examines the place that early modern literature held in Modernist literary criticism. For T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and William Empson, the early modern period helps model a literary future. At stake in their engagements across time were ontological questions about literature and its ability to mediate between the one and the many, the particular and the general, life and death, the past and the present. If reading and writing literature enables the mind to be in two places at once, creative experience serves as a way to participate in an expanded field of consciousness alongside mortality. Goldberg reads the readings that these modernists performed on texts that Eliot claimed for the canon like the metaphysical poets and Jacobean dramatists, but also Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, and Margaret Cavendish. Ontological concerns are reflected in Eliot’s engagement with Aristotle’s theory of the soul and Empson’s Buddhism. These arguments about being affect minds and bodies and call into question sexual normativity: Eliot glances at a sodomitical male-male mode of literary transmission; Woolf produces a Judith Shakespeare to model androgynous being; Empson refuses to distinguish activity from passivity to rewrite gender difference. The work of one of our leading literary and cultural critics, Being of Two Minds spans centuries to show how the most compelling and surprising ideas about mind, experience, and existence not only move between early modernity, high modernism, and our own moment, but are also constituted through that very movement between times and minds.

Read more less

Britain's defeat of Napoleon is one the great accomplishments in our history. And yet it was by no means certain that Britain itself would survive the revolutionary fervour of the age, let alone emerge victorious from such a vast conflict. From the late 1790s, the country was stricken by naval mutinies, rebellion in Ireland, and riots born of hunger, poverty and grinding injustice. As the new century opened, with republican graffiti on the walls of the cities, and revolutionary secret societies reportedly widespread, King George III only narrowly escaped assassination. Jacobin forces seemed to threaten a dissolution of the social order. Above all, the threat of French invasion was ever-present. Yet, despite all this, and new threats from royal madness and rampant corruption, Britain did not become a revolutionary republic. Her elites proved remarkably resilient, and drew on the power of an already-global empire to find the strength to defeat Napoleon abroad, and continued popular unrest at home. In this brilliant, sweeping history of the period, David Andress fuses two hitherto separate historical perspectives - the military and the social - to provide a vivid portrait of the age. From the conditions of warfare faced by the British soldier and the great battles in which they fought, to the literary and artistic culture of the time, The Savage Storm is at once a searing narrative of dramatic events and an important reassessment of one of the most significant turning points in our history.

Read more less

A beautifully illustrated examination of the women artists whose inspired search for artistic integrity and equality influenced Expressionist avant-garde cultureWomen Artists in Expressionism explores how women negotiated the competitive world of modern art during the late Wilhelmine and early Weimar periods in Germany. Their stories challenge predominantly male-oriented narratives of Expressionism and shed light on the divergent artistic responses of women to the dramatic events of the early twentieth century.Shulamith Behr shows how the posthumous critical reception of Paula Modersohn-Becker cast her as a prime agent of the feminization of the movement, and how Käthe Kollwitz used printmaking as a vehicle for technical innovation and sociopolitical commentary. She looks at the dynamic relationship between Marianne Werefkin and Gabriele Münter, whose different paths in life led them to the Blaue Reiter, a group of Expressionist artists that included Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Behr examines Nell Walden’s role as an influential art dealer, collector, and artist, who promoted women Expressionists during the First World War, and discusses how Dutch artist Jacoba van Heemskerck’s spiritual abstraction earned her the status of an honorary German Expressionist. She demonstrates how figures such as Rosa Schapire and Johanna Ey contributed to the development of the movement as spectators, critics, and collectors of male avant-gardism.Richly illustrated, Women Artists in Expressionism is a women-centered history that reveals the importance of emancipative ideals to the shaping of modernity and the avant-garde.

Read more less

The Battle of Culloden has gone down in history as the last major battle fought on British soil: a vicious confrontation between Scottish forces supporting the Stuart claim to the throne and the English Royal Army. But this wasn't just a conflict between the Scots and the English, the battle was also part of a much larger campaign to protect the British Isles from the growing threat of a French invasion. In Trevor Royle's vivid and evocative narrative, we are drawn into the ranks, on both sides, alongside doomed Jacobites fighting fellow Scots dressed in the red coats of the Duke of Cumberland's Royal Army. And we meet the Duke himself, a skilled warrior who would gain notoriety due to the reprisals on Highland clans in the battle's aftermath. Royle also takes us beyond the battle as the men of the Royal Army, galvanized by its success at Culloden, expand dramatically and start to fight campaigns overseas in America and India in order to secure British interests; we see the revolutionary use of fighting techniques first implemented at Culloden; and the creation of professional fighting forces. Culloden changed the course of British history by ending all hope of the Stuarts reclaiming the throne, cementing Hanoverian rule and forming the bedrock for the creation of the British Empire. Royle's lively and provocative history looks afresh at the period and unveils its true significance, not only as the end of a struggle for the throne but the beginning of a new global power.

Read more less

A forgotten episode of mathematical resistance reveals the rise of modern mathematics and its cornerstone, mathematical purity, as political phenomena. The nineteenth century opened with a major shift in European mathematics, and in the Kingdom of Naples, this occurred earlier than elsewhere. Between 1790 and 1830 its leading scientific institutions rejected as untrustworthy the “very modern mathematics” of French analysis and in its place consolidated, legitimated, and put to work a different mathematical culture. The Neapolitan mathematical resistance was a complete reorientation of mathematical practice. Over the unrestricted manipulation and application of algebraic algorithms, Neapolitan mathematicians called for a return to Greek-style geometry and the preeminence of pure mathematics. For all their apparent backwardness, Massimo Mazzotti explains, they were arguing for what would become crucial features of modern mathematics: its voluntary restriction through a new kind of rigor and discipline, and the complete disconnection of mathematical truth from the empirical world—in other words, its purity. The Neapolitans, Mazzotti argues, were reacting to the widespread use of mathematical analysis in social and political arguments: theirs was a reactionary mathematics that aimed to technically refute the revolutionary mathematics of the Jacobins. During the Restoration, the expert groups in the service of the modern administrative state reaffirmed the role of pure mathematics as the foundation of a newly rigorous mathematics, which was now conceived as a neutral tool for modernization. What Mazzotti’s penetrating history shows us in vivid detail is that producing mathematical knowledge was equally about producing certain forms of social, political, and economic order.

Read more less

Ledbury lies in a quiet corner of Herefordshire, just about equidistant from the cities of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester. Remote, but not isolated, the town is surrounded by ancient wooded hills, while the River Leadon, from which the town is thought to take its name, meanders slowly through the meadows to the west. Visitors and inhabitants alike can empathise with Ledbury-born Poet Laureate John Masefield, who 'felt the beauty of the place and the mystery of its past … through century after century'.Ledbury: a Market Town and its Tudor Heritage tells the story of this ancient town from 1558, when Elizabeth I confiscated the bishop's manor and estate, through a period of great prosperity in the 16th century to the present day. During the Tudor period the town's cloth trade flourished and the market which served the rural parishes surrounding the town thrived. The resulting physical transformation, including the wide market place and streets lined with timber-framed buildings, still attracts visitors today. The story extends from the reign of the first Elizabeth to the present day. It traces the ups and downs of a market town which has benefited from its location on the route between Hereford and Worcester but remains a small town.Ledbury has enjoyed its share of changes in trade, transport, social provision, architecture, industry and leisure, developments which have individually and collectively helped to shape the town today. But what strikes the visitor is its Tudor heritage, which continues to reflect the unexpected and untold riches generated, albeit for such a short time, in the later Tudor and early Jacobean decades.

Read more less

The iconic first novel in the bestselling Outlander series, as seen on Amazon Prime.'Scotland's answer to Game of Thrones' Herald'So intricately plotted and peopled that one is amazed she could conceive and write it in only seven years' Independent'Gabaldon is a gifted world-builder' Daily Telegraph______________What if your future lay in the past?1946, and Claire Randall goes to the Scottish Highlands with her husband Frank. It's a second honeymoon, a chance to re-establish their loving marriage. But one afternoon, Claire walks through a circle of standing stones and vanishes into 1743, where the first person she meets is a British army officer - her husband's six-times great-grandfather.Unfortunately, Black Jack Randall is not the man his descendant is, and while trying to escape him, Claire falls into the hands of a gang of Scottish outlaws, and finds herself a Sassenach - an outlander - in danger from both Jacobites and Redcoats.Marooned amid danger, passion and violence, her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives.______________With more than 20,000 5-star ratings on Amazon and 25 million copies sold worldwide, OUTLANDER is among the most popular book series of all time. Begin your journey into the Highland past here...***** 'Read on, GR friends, this series is epic and you won't regret it!!!'***** 'my favourite book of all time <3'***** 'This series changed my life. I cannot even begin to go into the details of how much I fell in love with the main characters'***** 'If you like historical fiction, time travel, and/or romance, PICK THIS UP.'***** 'Anyone who's known me longer than 5 minutes knows this is my favourite book.'

Read more less

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE'A writer out to do whatever the hell he wants . . . a grisly, gross-out slice of medieval life and death, it's vigorously, writhingly itself, spilling out of any box you put it in' Observer'A dark and bloody tale, well leavened with bone-dry humour, and with a dramatic climax that has about it the flavour of a Jacobean tragedy' Guardian 'Set to become an Irish cult classic' Sunday Business Post'A tremendously engaging and fun read . . . a crazed, quixotic odyssey' Kevin BarryAn ambitious noble and his three serving men travel through the Irish countryside in the stifling summer of 1348, using the advantage of the plague which has collapsed society to buy up large swathes of property and land. They come upon Nobber, a tiny town, whose only living habitants seem to be an egotistical bureaucrat, his volatile wife, a naked blacksmith, and a beautiful Gaelic hostage. Meanwhile, a band of marauding Gaels are roaming around, using the confusion of the sickness to pillage and reclaim lands that once belonged to them. As these groups converge upon the town, the habitants, who up until this point have been under strict curfew, begin to stir from their dwellings, demanding answers from the intruders. A deadly stand-off emerges from which no one will escape unscathed.'Nobber is hallucinatory and sly, conjuring a densely strange and savagely captivating world. There are lots of novels, and there are lots of novels that are all much alike, but there is nothing like Nobber' Colin Barrett'A skilled storyteller with a rich command of language and rare comedic flair' Irish Times

Read more less

A fearsome young woman stormsinger and pirate hunter join forces against a deathless pirate lord in this swashbuckling Jacobean adventure on the high-seas. Launching the Winter Sea series, full of magic, betrayal and redemption, for readers of Adrienne Young, R. J. Barker and Naomi Novik Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: a woman whose voice can still hurricanes and shatter armadas. Faced with servitude to pirate lord Silvanus Lirr, Mary offers her skills to his arch-rival in exchange for protection - and, more importantly, his help sending Lirr to a watery grave. But her new ally has a vendetta of his own, and Mary's dreams are dark and full of ghistings, spectral creatures who inhabit the ancient forests of her homeland and the figureheads of ships. Samuel Rosser is a disgraced naval officer serving aboard The Hart, an infamous privateer commissioned to bring Lirr to justice. He will stop at nothing to capture Lirr, restore his good name and reclaim the only thing that stands between himself and madness: a talisman stolen by Mary. Finally, driven into the eternal ice at the limits of their world, Mary and Samuel must choose their loyalties and battle forces older and more powerful than the pirates who would make them slaves. Come sail the Winter Sea, for action-packed, high-stakes adventures, rich characterisation and epic plots full of intrigue and betrayal.

Read more less

The Elizabethan age was a tumultuous time, when long-cherished certainties were crumbling and life was exhilaratingly uncertain. Shakespeare's Restless World uncovers the extraordinary stories behind twenty objects from the period to re-create an age at once distant and yet surprisingly familiar. From knife crime to belief in witches, religious battles to the horizons of the New World, Neil MacGregor brings the past to life in a fresh, unexpected portrait of a dangerous and dynamic era.'Fascinating ... filled with anecdotes and insights, eerie, funny, poignant and grotesque ... another brilliant vindication of MacGregor's understanding of physical objects to enter deep into our fore­fathers' mental and spiritual world' Christopher Hart, Sunday Times'Enjoyable and intriguing, an absorbing evocation ... he draws us into the minds of the Elizabethan and Jacobean audience. Next time you see one of the plays reading this book will make those first audiences seem real to you' Peter Lewis, Daily Mail'How gripping are these tales from a lost world. And what a world Shakespeare's was - adventurous, melancholy, rich and plagued by beggary, courteous and quarrelsome, sceptical and credulous' Daily Telegraph 'Elegant, informative ... provides stimulating insights' Anne Somerset, Spectator

Read more less

A stylish and informative guide to the best of Midcentury Modern chair design. These are the top 100 most interesting, most controversial, or simply most beautiful chairs from the period spanning 1930–1970, according to expert curator and chair addict Lucy Ryder Richardson. Get to know the designers of the Modern era, and find out about the controversies, drama, gossip and intrigue that accompanied these fascinating figures. Featuring a range of top international names, including Robin Day, Charles and Ray Eames, Ernest Race, Arne Jacobsen, Pierre Paulin, Finn Juhl, Harry Bertoia, Ero Saarinen and Norman Cherner. There is also an exploration into materials and manufacturing processes, plus lots of information about the manufacturers that brought chair designs to the masses, such as Knoll, Herman Miller, Fritz Hansen and Asko. Packed full of design details, historical facts, quotes and anecdotes – you can even find out the position in which the designers intended you to sit in their chairs! With a ‘chair timeline’, showcasing the very best of European, Scandinavian, Japanese and American design, this is the perfect book for collectors, enthusiasts and design junkies alike. Word count: 50,000

Read more less

Rattan evokes the glamour and exoticism of the Riviera, grand yachts, and tropical verandas. It appeared in Impressionist paintings, and dazzling celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Gina Lollobrigida were photographed lounging on it. Now, rattan is regaining its allure and becoming increasingly fashionable in interior design and fashion spreads a reflection of beauty, craftsmanship, and sustainability. Heywood-Wakefield furniture from the nineteenth century is highly collectible, as are pieces created by giants of modern design such as Josef Hoffmann for Thonet, Josef Frank for Svenskt Tenn, Jean-Michel Frank for Ecart, Renzo Mongiardino for Bonacina, and Arne Jacobsen for Sika. Paul Frankl and Donald Deskey designed sleek Art Deco rattan furniture. Rattan pieces have become iconic and highly prized, including Hiroomi Tahara s Wrap Sofa, Franca Helg s Primavera Chair, and the many iterations of the Peacock Chair. The glamour of rattan shines through in seductive and beautiful interiors Madeleine Castaing s house in Chartres, Michael Taylor s California beach houses, the Titanic s Cafe Parisien. The book also showcases tastemakers who have embraced rattan, from Marella Agnelli and Cecil Beaton to design leaders of today, including Jeffrey Bilhuber, Veere Grenney, Axel Vervoordt, and Bunny Williams.

Read more less

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 WINGATE LITERARY PRIZETHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERA MAIL ON SUNDAY, THE TIMES, THE ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN, THE SPECTATOR, TIME, AND DAILY EXPRESS/DAILY MIRROR BOOK OF THE YEAR'Thrilling' Daily Mail'Gripping' Guardian'Heartwrenching' Yuval Noah Harari'Magnificent' Philip Pullman'Excellent' Sunday Times'Inspiring' Daily Mail'An immediate classic' Antony Beevor'Awe inspiring' Simon Sebag Montefiore'Shattering' Simon Schama'Utterly compelling' Philippe Sands'A must-read' Emily Maitlis'Indispensable' Howard Jacobson April 1944. Nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba and fellow inmate Fred Wetzler became two of the very first Jews to successfully escape Auschwitz. Evading the thousands of SS men hunting them, Vrba and Wetzler made the perilous journey on foot across Nazi-occupied Poland.Their mission: to reveal to the world the truth of the Holocaust.Vrba's unique testimony would save some 200,000 lives.But he kept on running - from his past, from his home country, his adopted country, even from his own name. Now, at last, Rudolf Vrba's heroism can be known.

Read more less

A rich picture of commercial life among the British Catholic merchants operating in the Atlantic and Mediterranean at the end of the Stuart era. British Catholic merchants in the long eighteenth century occupied an ambiguous social space. On the one hand, their religion made them marginal and suspect figures in a nation increasingly defining itself by its Protestantism against the Catholic powers of Europe. On the other, their Catholicism, particularly as national rivalries erupted into outright war, afforded them access to markets and contacts overseas which their Protestant competitors found it increasingly difficult to reach. Drawing on extensive original research on the business papers of one prominent Catholic merchant family, the Aylwards, Pizzoni maps a complex network of merchants emanating from trading housesin London, Cadiz and St Malo and linking Britain and Ireland, continental Europe, the Levant and colonial America. She reveals the high level of cooperation between these Catholic houses and their Protestant trading partners - a cooperation which seems to have overridden even such political perils as the Jacobite rebellion - and shows the increasing role played by smuggling and privateering in keeping the wheels of legitimate commerce turning in time of war. A final chapter looks particularly at the business activities of Roman Catholic women, who mostly inherited their husbands' businesses but in many cases developed and expanded them through new activities and investments. This is a rich picture of commercial life in a time of shifting political and religious attitudes when the pressures of mercantilism led to de facto economic integration for the successful Catholic merchant class and opened up theroad which would lead to emancipation in the next century.

Read more less

When you step into the headquarters of Fritz Hansen in Allerød, northwest of Copenhagen, you breathe in the spirit of a company that has made design history. The showroom, a mecca for students of design and architecture, displays pieces that have become icons, including the Series 7 chair, the Swan lounge chair, and the Lissoni sofa. A recurring theme in the history of the Danish furniture maker is its collaborations with big-name visionary designers like Arne Jacobsen, Poul Kjærholm, and Piero Lissoni. With these influxes of fresh energy and an unwavering commitment to Fritz Hansen’s core values of creativity, the finest craftsmanship, and the utmost attention to even the smallest details, the company has succeeded in placing its products in the collective consciousness of humanity as well as in the offices of the President of the UN General Assembly, the Crown Plaza Hotel in Bangkok, the Banquet Hall of Oxford’s venerable St. Catherine’s College, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and private homes all over the world. With over 150 breathtaking photos, this thoughtfully designed coffee table book recounts the history of an exclusive brand, the marvellous pieces of furniture that has made it so revered, and provides examples of how a single piece of furniture can beautify an entire room or building, and fire the imagination of those who live there. Whether you’re leaving the world of Fritz Hansen in Allerød or closing this book, it will be with a wealth of new creative ideas and the knowledge that before sustainability became a trendy buzzword, Fritz Hansen was already practicing it in its purest sense, true to its motto of “Crafting Timeless Design".

Read more less

When you step into the headquarters of the Republic of Fritz Hansen in Allerød, northwest of Copenhagen, you are breathing in the spirit of a company that has made design history. The showroom, which is a mecca for design and architecture students, displays pieces that have become icons: the Series 7 chair, the Swan lounge chair, the Lissoni sofa. Again and again, the Danish furniture maker has teamed up with big-name visionary designers including Arne Jacobsen, Poul Kjærholm and Piero Lissoni. With these influxes of fresh energy and an unwavering commitment to the core values of Fritz Hansen-creativity, the finest craftsmanship, and careful attention to even the smallest details-the company has succeeded in placing its product into humanity's collective consciousness as well as the offices of the President of the UN General Assembly, the Crown Plaza Hotel in Bangkok, the Banquet Hall of Oxford's venerable St. Catherine's College, New York's Museum of Modern Art, and in private homes all over the world. With over 150 breathtaking photos, this thoughtfully-designed coffee table book tells you about the history of an exclusive brand, the marvellous pieces of furniture that has made it so revered, and provides examples of how a single piece of furniture can beautify an entire room or building and spur the imagination of the people who live there. After closing this book, you'll have a wealthy of new creative ideas and realise that before sustainability became a trendy buzzword, Fritz Hansen was already practicing it in its purest sense, true to its motto: "Crafting Timeless Design."

Read more less

Sixteen-year-old trans boy Miles Jacobson has two New Year’s resolutions: 1) win back his ex-boyfriend (and star of the football team) Shane McIntyre, and 2) finally beat his arch-nemesis at the Midwest’s biggest classical piano competition. But that’s not going to be so easy. For one thing, Shane broke up with Miles two weeks after Miles came out as trans, and now Shane’s stubbornly ignoring him, even when they literally bump into each other. Plus, Miles’ new, slightly terrifying piano teacher keeps telling him that he’s playing like he “doesn’t know who he is”—whatever that means. Then Miles meets the new boy in town, Eric Mendez, a proudly queer cartoonist from Seattle who asks his pronouns, cares about art as much as he does—and makes his stomach flutter. Not what he needs to be focusing on right now. But after Eric and Miles pretend to date so they can score an invite to a couples-only Valentine’s party, the ruse turns real with a kiss, which is also definitely not in the plan. If only Miles could figure out why Eric likes him so much. It's not like he’s cool or confident or comfortable in his own skin. He’s not even good enough at piano to get his fellow competitors to respect him, especially now, as Miles. Nothing’s ever been as easy for him as for other people—other boys. He’s only ever been almost enough. So why, when he’s with Eric, does it feel like the only person he’s ever really not been enough for...is himself?

Read more less

Britain was rapidly emerging as the most powerful European nation, a position France long believed to be her own. Yet with France still commanding the largest continental army, Britain saw its best opportunities for expansion lay in the East. Yet, as Britain's influence increased through its official trading arm, the East India Company, the ruler of Bengal, Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah, sought to drive the British out of the sub-continent and turned to France for help. The ensuing conflict saw intimate campaigns fought by captains and occasionally colonels and by small companies rather than big battalions. They were campaigns fought by individuals rather than anonymous masses; some were heroes, some were cowards and most of them were rogues on the make. The story is not only about Robert Clive, a clerk from Shropshire who became to all intents and purposes an emperor, but also about Eyre Coote an Irishman who fought with everyone he met, about Alexander Grant a Jacobite who first escaped from Culloden and then, Flashman-like was literally the last man into the last boat to escape Calcutta and the infamous Black Hole. The fighting culminated in Robert Clive's astonishing victory at Plassey where just 3,000 British and sepoy troops defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah's Franco-Bengali army of 18,000 in the space of only forty minutes. The victory at Plassey in 1757 established Britain as the dominant force in India, the whole of which gradually come under British control and became the most prized possession in its empire. Few battles in history have ever had such profound consequences.

Read more less

Previously unpublished interviews with some of America’s leading postwar artists—including Frankenthaler, Johns, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Stella and Warhol—originally made for TV in the mid-’60s by famed curator Alan Solomon This substantial volume publishes for the first time a series of interviews conducted with seminal East Coast artists and their associates, including Kenneth Noland, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Marcella Brenner, Helen Jacobson, Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Poons, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Barnett Newman, Leo Castelli, Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick. These were produced in late 1965 and early 1966 for the documentary television series USA: Artists by famed curator Alan Solomon, who was a regular fixture in the New York art world of the time. This was a logical extension of Solomon's recent curatorial involvements, including most importantly his organization of the United States exhibition at the 1964 Venice Biennale. The half-hour format of the episodes meant that a vast amount of Solomon’s original interviews, some of which lasted an hour or more, wound up on the cutting-room floor. At some point after the series was completed the original filmed and tape-recorded interviews were lost. A single set of typed transcripts, preserved in the Alan R. Solomon papers at the Archives of American Art, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution (copublisher of this volume), is the sole complete record of the original interviews. The New York Tapes gathers these interview transcripts and publishes them as a group for the first time, extensively illustrated with numerous stills from the television programs and related documentation. The transcripts make available material that was not included in the final programs, while also revealing how what was included became subtly manipulated to fit the format of documentary television. An informative introduction by editor Matthew Simms sets the project in context and highlights the differences between the interviews and the films, shedding new light on a germinal moment in postwar American art and how it was presented to the public.

Read more less

Louis XIV was a man in pursuit of glory. Not content to be the ruler of a world power, he wanted the power to rule the world. And, for a time, he came tantalizingly close. Philip Mansel’s King of the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography in English of this hypnotic, flawed figure who continues to captivate our attention. This lively work takes Louis outside Versailles and shows the true extent of his global ambitions, with stops in London, Madrid, Constantinople, Bangkok, and beyond. We witness the importance of his alliance with the Spanish crown and his success in securing Spain for his descendants, his enmity with England, and his relations with the rest of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We also see the king’s effect on the two great global diasporas of Huguenots and Jacobites, and their influence on him as he failed in his brutal attempts to stop Protestants from leaving France. Along the way, we are enveloped in the splendor of Louis’s court and the fascinating cast of characters who prostrated and plotted within it.King of the World is exceptionally researched, drawing on international archives and incorporating sources who knew the king intimately, including the newly released correspondence of Louis’s second wife, Madame de Maintenon. Mansel’s narrative flair is a perfect match for this grand figure, and he brings the Sun King’s world to vivid life. This is a global biography of a global king, whose power was extensive but also limited by laws and circumstances, and whose interests and ambitions stretched far beyond his homeland. Through it all, we watch Louis XIV progressively turn from a dazzling, attractive young king to a belligerent reactionary who sets France on the path to 1789. It is a convincing and compelling portrait of a man who, three hundred years after his death, still epitomizes the idea of le grand monarque.

Read more less

Was it the Titanic of its age? Christened by an optimistic King James I in December 1609, the Trades Increase was the greatest English merchant vessel of the Jacobean era—a magnificent ship embodying the hopes of the nascent East India Company to claim a commanding share of the Eastern trade. But the ship's launch failed when it proved too large to exit from its dock, an ill-fated start to an expedition that would end some three years later, when a dangerously leaking Trades Increase at last reached the shores of Java. While its smaller companion vessel would sail home with handsome profits for investors, the rotting hull of the great ship itself was beyond repair. The Trades Increase and nearly all who sailed it perished wretchedly on the far side of the world. The terrible pattern proven by this voyage, with profits to an elite few in London stained by catastrophic losses in equipment and personnel abroad, ignited rancorous controversy in England over the human, moral, and economic costs of such commerce. In The Loss of the "Trades Increase" Richmond Barbour has written an engrossing account of the tragic expedition and of global capitalism at its hour of emergence. Its sources fragmented among journals, minutes, and letters in the archives of the East India Company, the full story of the Trades Increase is told here for the first time. Earlier writers minimized the loss as a temporary setback and necessary sacrifice on the road to empire. In a work informed by corporate history and postcolonial theory, Barbour sees the saga of the voyage, and all that produced and justified it, differently: as an expression of the structural conflicts, operational risks, and material incapacities that haunted and ultimately unraveled the British Empire—and that destabilize multinational corporations, global markets, and our common biosphere to this day.

Read more less

Quantum mechanics, based on the Schrodinger equation (and its relativistic Dirac's extension) is a statistical theory, here denominated as Statistical Quantum Mechanics (SQM), to differentiate it from the new part of the quantum theory, provided in PART I and II, denominated Individual-particles Quantum Mechanics (IQM). Both of them are necessary components of the quantum theory, as are the Classical Mechanics for Individual objects (ICM), based on the Newton equations, Hamiltonian-Jacobi equations or the Euler-Lagrange equation of motion of individual objects, and the Statistical Classical Mechanics (SCM) based on the Liouville equations. The SQM tells us the various possible outcomes of experiments and the corresponding probabilities if we would do a large number of identical experiments on individual quantum systems. The SQM systems are not all identical but this is the same type of fluctuation that occurs in classical statistical descriptions in SCM. At first sight the situation may not appear very different therefore from the description provided by classical statistical mechanics. In that case however, we have an underlying description (ICM) that provides a complete (i.e. non-statistical) description of the world, which in general is far too complex, however, to be of use. The last PART III of this trilogy is dedicated to the completion of the whole theoretical mechanics, both classical and quantum inside a 9-D time-space manifold of the Universe. Only in this final third volume, this IQM theory, dedicated in the first two volumes only to the elementary particles, is extended also to the non-elementary particles (like hadrons, nucleus, atoms, molecules, and all every-day objects in our common life, up to the biggest non-elementary particles, like the planets, stars, etc.) in our unique Universe. So, each object in our Universe, from the smallest (elementary) to the biggest, can be mathematically expressed by the same mathematical 9-D complex field expression, in a unifying way at which the physical determinism holds for the individual objects at all micro-macro scales in our Universe.

Read more less

Features an introduction to advanced calculus and highlights its inherent concepts from linear algebra Advanced Calculus reflects the unifying role of linear algebra in an effort to smooth readers' transition to advanced mathematics. The book fosters the development of complete theorem-proving skills through abundant exercises while also promoting a sound approach to the study. The traditional theorems of elementary differential and integral calculus are rigorously established, presenting the foundations of calculus in a way that reorients thinking toward modern analysis. Following an introduction dedicated to writing proofs, the book is divided into three parts: Part One explores foundational one-variable calculus topics from the viewpoint of linear spaces, norms, completeness, and linear functionals. Part Two covers Fourier series and Stieltjes integration, which are advanced one-variable topics. Part Three is dedicated to multivariable advanced calculus, including inverse and implicit function theorems and Jacobian theorems for multiple integrals. Numerous exercises guide readers through the creation of their own proofs, and they also put newly learned methods into practice. In addition, a "Test Yourself" section at the end of each chapter consists of short questions that reinforce the understanding of basic concepts and theorems. The answers to these questions and other selected exercises can be found at the end of the book along with an appendix that outlines key terms and symbols from set theory. Guiding readers from the study of the topology of the real line to the beginning theorems and concepts of graduate analysis, Advanced Calculus is an ideal text for courses in advanced calculus and introductory analysis at the upper-undergraduate and beginning-graduate levels. It also serves as a valuable reference for engineers, scientists, and mathematicians.

Read more less

With its dominance as a European power and the explosion of its prose and dramatic writing, Spain provided an irresistible literary source for English writers of the early modern period. But the deep and escalating political rivalry between the two nations led English writers to negotiate, disavow, or attempt to resolve their fascination with Spain and their debt to Spanish sources. Amid thorny issues of translation and appropriation, imperial competition, the rise of commercial authorship, and anxieties about authenticity, Barbara Fuchs traces how Spanish material was transmitted into English writing, entangling English literature in questions of national and religious identity, and how piracy came to be a central textual metaphor, with appropriations from Spain triumphantly reimagined as heroic looting. From the time of the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada of the 1580s, through the rise of anti-Spanish rhetoric of the 1620s, The Poetics of Piracy charts this connection through works by Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and Thomas Middleton. Fuchs examines how their writing, particularly for the stage, recasts a reliance on Spanish material by constructing narratives of militaristic, forcible use. She considers how Jacobean dramatists complicated the texts of their Spanish contemporaries by putting them to anti-Spanish purposes, and she traces the place of Cervantes's Don Quixote in Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Shakespeare's late, lost play Cardenio. English literature was deeply transnational, even in the period most closely associated with the birth of a national literature. Recovering the profound influence of Spain on Renaissance English letters, The Poetics of Piracy paints a sophisticated picture of how nations can serve, at once, as rivals and resources.

Read more less

In 1688, a vast fleet of 463 ships, twice the size of the Spanish Armada, put to sea from Holland. On board was William of Orange with 40,000 soldiers - their objective, England. The Protestant William had been encouraged by a group of Church of England bishops to risk everything and oust the Catholic King James. He landed at Tor Bay in Devon and soon gathered enough support, including that of John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough, to cause King James to flee to France. It had been seen, in the eyes of most in England and Scotland as a 'Glorious' Revolution. William ascended the throne along with his wife Mary, the daughter of England's Charles II, who had preceded James. Though the revolution had been virtually bloodless, William had to fight to keep his crown. Most Irish were Catholics and King William's armies met stiff opposition there. In this, James saw a chance to regain his crown. Sailing to Ireland, he led his Jacobite troops against William at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690\. James was defeated, ending his hopes of ousting William. There were also large numbers of Catholics in Scotland, but they too were defeated by William's army at the Battle of Killiecrankie. This, in turn, led to the infamous Massacre of Glencoe. The accession of William and Mary to the throne was a landmark moment in British history, one which saw Parliament emerge into the modern state. In January 1689, two months after the Glorious Revolution, Parliament met and in February a Declaration of Rights was incorporated into the Bill of Rights. This included the measure that the crown could not tax without Parliament's consent or interfere in elections. William, therefore, is not only known both for being one of England's most revolutionary kings, but also one of the least remembered.

Read more less

Disturbing. Original. Terrifying. The 'master of horror' is back with the chilling tale of what lurks in the walls of an abandoned hospital. The perfect Halloween read. In this abandoned hospital, pain lives on... and it wants revenge. St Philomena's military hospital has been abandoned for over three years. Now Lilian Chesterfield, who works for one of the most successful building companies in England, is in charge of developing it into a luxury housing complex. But as soon as she and her colleagues start work in the Jacobean-style mansion, their dream turns into a nightmare. They hear screaming from wards full of empty beds. They hear doors slamming and find cutlery scattered over the kitchen floor. Then they see faces peering at them from the mullioned windows. Lilian is pragmatic – she doesn't believe in the supernatural. But just when she's put her mind at rest by scouring the mansion from top to bottom and finding nothing, a former patient of St Philomena's arrives with a warning. The hospital is haunted. And it is haunted by something a thousand times more terrifying than ghosts... Perfect to read at Halloween and for fans of The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining and The Woman in Black. Praise for Graham Masterton: 'One of Britain's finest horror writers.' Daily Mail 'A true master of horror' James Herbert 'One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time' Peter James

Read more less

This unique account of the life of German nationalist and revolutionary Charles Follen opens a window on several worlds during the first half of the nineteenth century. Seldom does one biography embrace so many important historical issues and events.Trained as a lawyer in his native Germany, Follen was involved in student nationalism, eventually turning to revolutionary Jacobinism. He fled to Switzerland in 1819 after conspiring in the first political murder of modern German history--the assassination of the playwright August von Kotzebue. In Switzerland, Follen secretly continued activities for revolutionizing Germany. When his plans were discovered in 1824, he fled to America. For ten years, Follen taught at Harvard; he was the first professor of German literature at an American institution of higher learning. He played a central role in the early importation of German ideas to New England, contributing to the fields of literature, philosophy, and theology. His marriage to Eliza Lee Cabot allowed him to move in elite Boston social circles. After his ordination as a Unitarian minister in 1836, Follen combined his interest in social reform (including an ardent devotion to the antislavery movement) with clerical service. Unitarian leader William Ellery Channingand abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison became Follen's close friends.During the last two years of his life, Follen began to doubt his own power to bring about political change and suffered a crisis in self-confidence before his accidental death at the age of forty-three.

Read more less

Nottinghamshire’s position at the very heart of England has given it important strategic significance throughout two millennia, underlined by the number of roads, waterways, and later railways, criss-crossing the county. An endless succession of armies have used the Great North Road: the Romans, the Vikings, the Normans, the Lancastrians and the Jacobites. Strategic river crossings and road junctions have been guarded by Roman camps, Viking and Saxon burhs, medieval castles, Parliamentarian and Royalist forts, and the anti-invasion defences of the Second World War. The area has traditionally provided a rallying point for armies to be gathered, from Richard III’s in 1485 to Kitchener’s in 1914. Building on the experience of the great training camps of Clipstone and the Dukeries and the extensive munitions works of Chilwell and Nottingham, in the Second World War the county expanded such provision, becoming home to a concentration of flying training centres, key components of the army’s and the RAF’s logistical support networks and further munitions plants. Much of this military activity has left its mark on the landscape, some of it relatively untouched, and some adapted to meet the demands of change. Some monuments are of enormous national importance; Newark-on-Trent, as well as retaining its unspoilt medieval castle ruins, boasts the best single concentration of Civil War-period fortifications anywhere in Britain.

Read more less

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there was one art form in which English artists excelled above all their continental European counterparts: the painting of miniatures. This fascinating book explores the genre with special reference to two of its most accomplished practitioners, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, whose astounding skill brought them international fame and admiration. Four centuries ago, England was famous primarily for its literary culture – the dram a of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and the works of the great lyrical and metaphysical poets. When it came to the production of visual art, the country was seen as something of a backwater. However, there was one art form for which English artists of this period were renowned: portrait miniature painting, or as it was known at the time, limning. Growing from roots in manuscript illumination, it was brought to astonishing heights of skill by two artists in particular: Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619) and Isaac Oliver (c .1565–1617). In addition to exhibiting the exquisite technique of the artists, portrait miniatures express in a unique way many of the most distinctive and fascinating aspects of court life in this period: ostentatious secrecy, games of courtly love, arcane symbolism, a love of intricacy and decoration. Bedecked in elaborate lace, encrusted in jewellery and sprinkled with flowers, court ladies smile enigmatically at the viewer; their male counterparts rest on grassy banks or lean against trees, sighing over thwarted love, or more modestly express their hopes in Latin epigrams inscribed around their heads. Often set in richly enamelled and jewelled gold lockets, or beautifully turned ivory or ebony boxes, such miniatures could be concealed or revealed, exchanged or kept, as part of elaborate processes of friendship, love, patronage and diplomacy at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I /VI. This richly illustrated book, like the exhibition it accompanies, explores what the portrait miniature reveals about identity, society and visual culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

Read more less

WINNER OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE A SPECTATOR, WATERSTONES, BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE, PROSPECT AND HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEAR A profound and ground-breaking new history of one of the most important encounters in the history of colonialism: the British arrival in India in the early seventeenth century. ‘A triumph of writing and scholarship. It is hard to imagine anyone ever bettering Das's account of this part of the story’ - William Dalrymple, Financial Times ‘A fascinating glimpse of the origins of the British Empire . . . drawn in dazzling technicolour’ - Spectator ‘Beautifully written and masterfully researched, this has the makings of a classic’ - Peter Frankopan SHORTLISTED FOR THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA CROWN AWARDS When Thomas Roe arrived in India in 1616 as James I’s first ambassador to the Mughal Empire, the English barely had a toehold in the subcontinent. Their understanding of South Asian trade and India was sketchy at best, and, to the Mughals, they were minor players on a very large stage. Roe was representing a kingdom that was beset by financial woes and deeply conflicted about its identity as a unified ‘Great Britain’ under the Stuart monarchy. Meanwhile, the court he entered in India was wealthy and cultured, its dominion widely considered to be one of the greatest and richest empires of the world. In Nandini Das's fascinating history of Roe's four years in India, she offers an insider's view of a Britain in the making, a country whose imperial seeds were just being sown. It is a story of palace intrigue and scandal, lotteries and wagers that unfolds as global trade begins to stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. A major debut that explores the art, literature, sights and sounds of Jacobean London and Imperial India, Courting India reveals Thomas Roe's time in the Mughal Empire to be a turning point in history – and offers a rich and radical challenge to our understanding of Britain and its early empire.

Read more less

In recent years, there has been a real revival and appraisal of the works of the mid-century modern movement among architects and interior designers: the furniture, lighting and objects designed by Alvar Aalto, Charles & Ray Eames, Eileen Gray, Poul Henningsen, Arne Jacobsen, Pierre Jeanneret, Finn Juhl, Vladimir Kagan, Poul Kjaerholm, Florence Knoll, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Børge Mogensen, Serge Mouille, George Nakashima, George Nelson, Verner Panton, Ico Parisi, Charlotte Perriand, Gio Ponti, Jean Prouvé, Sergio Rodrigues, Jean Royère, Eero Saarinen, Arne Vodder, Jules Wabbes, Ole Wanscher, Hans J. Wegner, Jorge Zalszupin and many others is integrated in their most exclusive projects and their best pieces are sold at record prices at Christies, Philipps, Sotheby's... In the U.S., the mid-century modern movement in interiors, product and graphic design and architecture was a reflection of the International and Bauhaus movements including the works of Gropius, Florence Knoll, Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Brazilian and Scandinavian architects were very influential, with a style characterised by clean simplicity and integration with nature. In Europe, the influence of Le Corbusier and the CIAM resulted in an architectural orthodoxy manifest across most parts of post-war Europe that was ultimately challenged by the radical agendas of the architectural wings of the avant-garde. A critical but sympathetic reappraisal of the internationalist oeuvre, inspired by the Scandinavian Moderns and the late work of Le Corbusier himself, was reinterpreted by groups such as Team X, including structuralist architects and the movement known as New Brutalism. This chic, over-sized coffee table book is an essential object for all mid-century design aficionados, interior designers with a passion for the modernist 1950s and for refined readers seeking inspiration for their own interiors. In 20 reports, interior designers and passionate collectors of mid-century furniture, lighting, objects and artworks show how carefully selected touches of high-end mid-century modernism can contribute to a unique living environment.

Read more less

Three further adventures based on the Eagle comic strip "Dan Dare" created by Rev. Marcus Morris, adapted and drawn by Frank Hampson. Episode 4 - Reign of the Robots by Simon Guerrier. Dan Dare and his crew finally return to Earth. Landing in central London, they find the city deserted - or that's how it seems at first. But soon Dare faces an army of ruthless machines, robots who have conquered the planet and placed the surviving humans in slave camps. The robots are too powerful and too numerous to be resisted, and their invasion is complete. With limited resources, Dare, Digby and Peabody face their greatest challenge yet - to liberate planet Earth. But the task becomes more desperate than ever when Dan discovers the alien force behind the robot invasion. Episode 5 - Operation Saturn by Patrick Chapman. As work begins to rebuild planet Earth after the devastation of the robot invasion, Dare and his friends in Space Fleet remain vigilant, certain that it is only a matter of time before the Mekon launches a fresh attack. When the wreck of the Nautilus - an experimental ship lost over a decade before - appears in orbit of the moon, Dare, Digby and Peabody are sent to investigate.They find the ship and its crew were destroyed by advanced alien weapons. All clues lead them to Saturn's moons. With Earth still vulnerable our heroes must journey to an unknown world - to discover who sent the Nautilus back, not realising that for once the source of their latest conflict comes from a lot closer to home. Not all would-be conquerors of planet Earth are alien. Episode 6 - Prisoners of Space by Colin Brake. After a sequence of near non-stop adventures Dare, Digby and Peabody find themselves in a strange limbo of paranoid calm. Whilst there's been no sign of the Mekon anywhere in the solar system, Dare is certain Earth hasn't seen the last of the evil alien. Mysterious spaceship disappearances near Venus, an Academy student accidentally launching a prototype new spacecraft, and a floating prison cell in space...reveal themselves as all part of the Mekon's latest plan to defeat his arch-enemy Dan Dare once and for all. The first season of Dan Dare concludes with daring space action, fearless heroics and the revelation of devastating secrets concerning Space Fleet. Contains a fourth disc of extras. Created by artist Frank Hampson and his editor the Reverend Marcus Morris, Dan Dare first appeared in the Eagle comic story "Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future" from 1950 to 1967 (and subsequently in reprints); and was dramatised seven times a week on Radio Luxembourg between 1951-1956.This brand new audio version of the much-loved Dan Dare comic strips comes from the people behind the Derek Jacobi - starring version of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. CAST: Ed Stoppard (Dan Dare), Geoff McGivern (Digby), Heida Reed (Professor Peabody), MichaelCochrane (Sir Hubert), Raad Rawi(The Mekon), Bijan Daneshmand (Sondar), Amy Humphreys (Eko), Dean Harris (George Bryan), Dianne Weller (Onboard Computer), Jonathan Rhodes (Blasco), Nicholas Briggs (The Vora), Matthew Turmaine (The Prime Minister), Diane Spencer(Flight Control), Robert G Slade (Old Timer), Noof McEwan (Cadet Flamer Spry), Alistair Lock (Treen Captain). NOTE: Dan Dare features some mild swearing and content which may not be suitable for younger listeners.

Read more less

Text in English and German. The basic features of Deutsche Lufthansa's present corporate image emerged almost 45 years ago. It was created by Otl Aicher, one of the principal figures at the now legendary Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm. Another work by Aicher that spoke to the whole of Germany, as it were (and still does, in rudiments), is the 1972 corporate image for the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. The corporate image he created for the Olympic Games in Munich, which made an essential contribution to the ambience of the event, has also remained memorable. Since the ideas developed by Aicher and his colleagues were implemented in the early sixties, the airline has been seen world-wide as a perfect example of a consistently developed corporate image. Aicher based himself on ideas from the Deutscher Werkbund and took the company's entire inventory into consideration: "house colours, pictorial and typographic logos, typeface, graphic and typographic rules and standards, photographic style, quality of support materials, packaging, exhibition systems, architectural characteristics, forms (design) of interior furnishings and equipment, style of work and service clothes". As well as Otl Aicher, numerous other product and graphic designers, fashion designers and advertising and marketing agencies have worked for Lufthansa. They include Otto Firle, whose ideas led to the crane logo, Hartmut Esslinger and his company frog design, Priestman & Goode, Müller Romca Industriedesign, Don Wallance, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Hans Theo Baumann, Nick Roericht, Wolfgang Karnagel, Topel & Pauser and the bhar design practice, fashion designers Uli Richter, Ursula Tautz and Werner Machnick, Jürgen Weiss, Gabriele Strehle and the Jobis company as well as the agencies Zintzmeyer & Lux, the Peter Schmidt Group, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, Spiess/Ermisch/Abel, Springer & Jacoby, McCann & Erickson and Fanghänel & Lohmann. An exhibition of the same name at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt deals with the same subject as the book.

Read more less

Thirteen leading actors take us behind the scenes, each recreating in detail a memorable performance in one of Shakespeare's major roles. * Brian Cox on Titus Andronicus in Deborah Warner's visceral RSC production * Judi Dench on being directed by Franco Zeffirelli as a twenty-three-year-old Juliet * Ralph Fiennes on Shakespeare's least sympathetic hero Coriolanus * Rebecca Hall on Rosalind in As You Like It, directed by her father, Sir Peter * Derek Jacobi on his hilariously poker-backed Malvolio for Michael Grandage * Jude Law on his Hamlet, a palpable hit in the West End and on Broadway * Adrian Lester on a modern-dress Henry V at the National, during the invasion of Iraq * Ian McKellen on his Macbeth, opposite Judi Dench in Trevor Nunn's RSC production * Helen Mirren on a role she was born for, and has played three times: Cleopatra * Tim Pigott-Smith on Leontes in Peter Hall's Restoration Winter's Tale at the National * Kevin Spacey on his high-tech, modern-dress Richard II * Patrick Stewart on Prospero in Rupert Goold's arctic Tempest for the RSC * Penelope Wilton on Isabella in Jonathan Miller's 'chamber' Measure for Measure The actors discuss their characters, working through the play scene by scene, with refreshing candour and in forensic detail. The result is a masterclass on playing each role, invaluable for other actors and directors, as well as students of Shakespeare – and fascinating for audiences of the plays. Together, the interviews give one of the most comprehensive pictures yet of these characters in performance, and of the choices that these great actors have made in bringing them thrillingly to life. 'These passages of times remembered contribute vividly to the sense of a teemingly creative period when Shakespeare seemed to have been rediscovered.' Trevor Nunn, from his Foreword

Read more less

This is the story of ordinary men and women involved in the Rebellion, who were described on the gaol registers and regimental rosters of the time as 'Common Men'. There is little in this book about Bonnie Prince Charlie and other principals of the last Jacobite Rising of 1745. Culloden recalls them by name and action, presenting the battle as it was for them, describing their life as fugitives in the glens or as prisoners in the gaols and hulks, their transportation to the Virginias or their deaths on the gallows at Kennington Common. The book begins in the rain at five o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, 16 April 1746, when the Royal Army marched out of Nairn to fight the clans on Culloden Moor. It is not a partisan book, its feeling is for the 'Common Men' on both sides - John Grant charging with Clan Chatten and seeing the white gaiters of the British infantry suddenly as the east wind lifted the cannon smoke, and Private Andrew Taylor in a red coat waiting for Clan Chatten to reach him, likening them to 'a troop of hungry wolves'. Culloden reminds us, too, that many of the men who harried the glens as ruthlessly as the Nazis in Occupied Europe were in fact Scots themselves. It recalls the fact that many men in Prince Charles' army had been forced to join him. It shows that a British foot-soldier's wish for a sup of brandy on a cold morning before battle is as much a reality as a Prince's pretensions to a throne. The detail for the story told in Culloden has come from regimental Order Books and manuals, from contemporary newspapers and magazines, from the letters and memoirs of soldiers and officers, eye-witness accounts of atrocity and persecution, and the personal stories of the victims themselves. Culloden is the story not of a Prince, but of a people.

Read more less

Manny and Brigitta Davidson are a remarkable couple. Their parents, emigrés from Latvia and from Nazi-occupied Poland, strove to keep their heads above water and give their children a future in which to prosper. Together, Manny and Brigitta built a business empire from nothing, having survived the terrible Blitz on London during the Second World War. Their two children, however, have lived altogether different lives. Charmed lives, some might say. The Davidsons' business did so well that their offspring went to the finest schools, enjoyed luxury holidays and lived in beautiful homes here and abroad. As their success grew, the Davidsons set up a trust fund for their son and daughter, with two purposes. First, to provide generous incomes for them - it is currently delivering approximately £20 million a year. The second purpose was to protect the family's wealth for the future benefit of their children and further generations. That wealth included the beautiful Jacobean manor, Lyegrove House in Gloucestershire, and all its priceless contents of art and other treasures. Sadly, their children decided that they would wait no longer before laying claim to all that their parents had provided, and seized control of the trust in a cruel and punishing way, which led to legal action, and even to court Today, the Davidsons live in Monaco, estranged from their son and daughter. They have lost their children, as surely as those children have lost their parents. This is their story, in which they can be forgiven for echoing Shakespeare's line: 'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.'

Read more less

In Moby-Dick, Ishmael declares, "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that a whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me." Few readers today know just how much argument Ishmael is waiving aside. In fact, Melville's antihero here takes sides in one of the great controversies of the early nineteenth century--one that ultimately had to be resolved in the courts of New York City. In Trying Leviathan, D. Graham Burnett recovers the strange story of Maurice v. Judd, an 1818 trial that pitted the new sciences of taxonomy against the then-popular--and biblically sanctioned--view that the whale was a fish. The immediate dispute was mundane: whether whale oil was fish oil and therefore subject to state inspection. But the trial fueled a sensational public debate in which nothing less than the order of nature--and how we know it--was at stake. Burnett vividly recreates the trial, during which a parade of experts--pea-coated whalemen, pompous philosophers, Jacobin lawyers--took the witness stand, brandishing books, drawings, and anatomical reports, and telling tall tales from whaling voyages. Falling in the middle of the century between Linnaeus and Darwin, the trial dramatized a revolutionary period that saw radical transformations in the understanding of the natural world. Out went comfortable biblical categories, and in came new sorting methods based on the minutiae of interior anatomy--and louche details about the sexual behaviors of God's creatures. When leviathan breached in New York in 1818, this strange beast churned both the natural and social orders--and not everyone would survive.

Read more less

How the internet transformed television Before HBO’s hit show Insecure, Issa Rae’s comedy about being a nerdy black woman debuted as a YouTube web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, her response to the absence of diverse black characters on the small screen. Broad City, a feminist sitcom now on Comedy Central, originated as a web series on YouTube, developed directly out of funny women Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson’s real-life friendship. These unconventional stories took advantage of the freedom afforded outside the traditional television system: online. Open TV shows how we have left “the network era” far behind and entered the networked era, with the web opening up new possibilities for independent producers, entrepreneurs, and media audiences. Based on interviews with writers, producers, show-runners, and network executives, visits to festivals and award shows, and the experience of producing his own series, Aymar Jean Christian argues that the web brought innovation to television by opening up series development to new producers, fans, and sponsors that had previously been excluded. Online access to distribution provides creative freedom for indie producers, allows for more diverse storytelling from marginalized communities, and introduces new ways of releasing and awarding shows. Open TV is essential reading for anyone interested in the changing environment of television and how the internet can inspire alternatives to what’s on TV tonight.

Read more less