Search results for ""William Henry""

Two years before T E Lawrence received orders to travel to the Hejaz to liaise with the leader of the Arab Revolt, other British officers had already roamed the Arabian Peninsula's unforgiving Nejdi desert, to rally tribal support for the British war effort. The first was Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, a political agent from the Government of India's Political Department. Born in October 1878 in India, Shakespear spent much of his childhood away from his Anglo-Indian parents, schooling in Portsmouth and later in the Isle of Man, before entering Sandhurst as a British Indian Army Officer Cadet. On his return to India, Shakespear spent six years in military service before he joined the Political Department in 1904, serving twice in Bandar Abbas and briefly in Muscat. Shakespear's next mission was as a political agent in Kuwait, arriving at the coastal Sheikhdom in the spring of 1909. For the next four years, he travelled extensively into the Nejdi desert, providing both London and Delhi with valuable intelligence about the vastly unknown interior as well as cultivating a personal relationship with Ibn Sa'ud, the Emir of Riyadh. At a time when London and Constantinople were negotiating the Anglo-Ottoman treaty, Shakespear almost became persona non grata for advocating the need to back the emir after his tribal warriors had expelled the Ottoman garrisons in al-Hasa in 1913. When war was declared in July 1914, Shakespear was one of the first to try to join the British Army to fight in France, but when the Ottoman Empire looked set to ally with Germany, the powers that had previously shunned him now needed his unique knowledge of Central Arabia and relationship with Ibn Sa'ud. That October, as many of his peers and countrymen crossed the English Channel to reinforce those already in the trenches, Shakespear set sail for Kuwait on special duty to rendezvous with the emir. It was a mission that T E Lawrence would later commend, acknowledging the crucial role that the political agent played during the early stages the Middle Eastern theatre of war. Shakespear was a pioneer in exploring the Nejd, capturing many firsts with his camera, although there were a few other equally intrepid British officials who preceded him into the desert. From the late-18th century, the East India Company collided numerous times with the House of Sa'ud as both attempted to understand the intentions of the other, before the political agent finally laid the foundations for formal diplomatic relations with Ibn Sa'ud, and later with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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Like Goethe, Ralph Waldo Emerson wanted to be the cultural historian and interpreter of his age—its business, politics, discoveries. The journals and notebooks included in this volume and covering in depth the years 1848 to 1851 reflect Emerson’s preoccupations with the events of these often turbulent years in America.On his return to Concord from his successful lecture trip to England and visit to Paris in 1847–1848, Emerson resumed his familiar life of writer, thinker, and lecturer. Impressions of his recent European travels appear in passages in this volume which are used later in English Traits (1856). He writes of technological and scientific discoveries in America and abroad—one of which, the discovery of ether, was to involve his brother-in-law in legal embroilment. He ponders the meaning, for “the age” or “the times,” of reports on the Dew textile mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, of faster steamers daily breaking records, of new geological and paleontological findings, of theories of race, and many other matters that were coming increasingly to the fore in the mid-nineteenth century. Many passages on these topics, used first in lectures, later appear in his essays “Fate,” “Wealth,” and “Power” in Conduct of Life (1860). He was also adding to his critical biographies for Representative Men (1850), with special attention to Swedenborg, always a source of particular interest for Emerson.Between 1850 and 1853, Emerson traveled farther west to lecture than he had hitherto ventured—to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and many other cities in the midwest. One notebook in the present volume records his customary percipient observations of places and people encountered during these western trips.The tragic drowning of Margaret Fuller Ossoli and her family on her return from Italy in 1850 prompted Emerson to consider a collaboration on her life and writings, and another notebook printed here contains her memorabilia, including original entries by Emerson. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli by Emerson, William Henry Charming, and James Freeman Clarke, was published in 1852.Passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 brought to a boil something in Emerson that had long been simmering. Concerned with slavery, freedom, and the future of the black population in America more than his public record had shown, he now delivered himself of an outburst—pained, vitriolic, ironic—a more sustained response to a single issue than appears elsewhere in all his journals. In this latest move in a compounding national tragedy he could see only chicanery and deterioration, the crumbling of America’s moral fiber. He saw the Fugitive Slave Law in a larger context of a sick age; like Tennyson and Arnold in England, he lamented in moods of spite and chagrin the loss of faith and of an old world where political men of honor stood firm for the moral law. Most of his journal outburst went into his addresses “The Fugitive Slave Law,” 1851 and 1854.

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Born and raised in New York City, Lockwood de Forest (1850–1932) has long been recognized as an early business partner of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933). He began his career as a painter trained by Frederic E. Church with connections to the Tenth Street Studio, the National Academy of Design, and Society of Decorative Art in New York, and emerged as an artistic decorator with a specialty in richly appointed interiors that boasted heavily carved East Indian architectural elements and furniture. Though his formal ties with Tiffany lasted only two years, de Forest continued an independent career in the decorative arts that extended into the early twentieth century. In this book—the first that focuses scholarly attention on de Forest’s career in the decorative arts—Robert A. Mayer argues that his commitment to India cannot be understood without exploring the larger context of the East Indian craft revival, a self-conscious attempt by the British colonial government to create a Western market for handmade, East Indian goods. This endeavor brought together many different individuals—Queen Victoria in her role as Empress of India, the Price of Wales as a cultural ambassador, key enthusiasts employed by the Indian Civil Service who emerged as collectors and connoisseurs, the ideology of the English arts and crafts movement, the art schools of India, and hereditary craftsmen of India who had lost their traditional patrons. De Forest was the only American represented within these intersecting circles, and part of his commitment to India was fueled by his concern that East Indian arts and crafts were dying and his belief that American patronage could reverse this trend. Mayer further suggests that de Forest embraced India because of his desire to achieve authority in an intellectual pursuit that was equal to, yet different from, those of his brothers, both of whom were successful lawyers. She provides a complete view of his career, from his early idealistic ideas, to his success in courting Gilded Age millionaires, to the fading of demand for opulent Indian rooms. In doing so, she balances de Forest’s memoirs of his experience of India in the 1880s and the 1890s with those more tempered recollections of his wife, Meta Kemble de Forest (of the du Pont family), and also acknowledges the perspectives of his contemporary critics. De Forest’s house and studio at 7 East Tenth Street survives today as the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at New York University. In his role as a decorative artist, he had major patrons in New York City and the Hudson River Valley, including Frederic Edwin Church (for Olana), William Henry Appleton (for Wavve Hill), and Andrew Carnegie (for his mansion, now the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum). This book contains sixty color plates and one hundred thirty-two black-and-white illustrations.

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Forty-five of Britain's best-loved poems, read by John Nettles, Siobhan Redmond, Greg Wise and Emma Fielding.In a national poll conducted to discover Britain's favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling's 'If -' was voted number one. This unique anthology brings together over forty poems from the poll, including the top ten.Here is poignant war poetry (Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', Rupert Brooke's 'The Soldier' and Siegfried Sassoon's 'Everyone Sang' ); romantic verse such as Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?' and W. B. Yeats' 'When You Are Old'; Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear's great nonsense poems 'Jabberwocky' and 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat', and much more. Classics such as Wordsworth's 'The Daffodils' and Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shallot' sit alongside contemporary poetry like Allan Ahlberg's 'Please Mrs Butler' and Wendy Cope's 'Bloody Men'.Superbly read by John Nettles, Siobhan Redmond, Greg Wise and Emma Fielding, this popular collection includes many of the very best examples ofBritish verse, as chosen by poetry lovers nationwide.The poems included in this collection are:1 'If -' by Rudyard Kipling, read by John Nettles2 'The Lady of Shallot' by Alfred Lord Tennyson, read by Siobhan Redmond3 'The Listeners' by Walter de la Mare, read by Greg Wise4 'Not Waving but Drowning' by Stevie Smith, read by Siobhan Redmond5 'The Daffodils' by William Wordsworth, read by John Nettles6 'To Autumn' by John Keats, read by Siobhan Redmond7 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' by William Butler Yeats, read by Emma Fielding8 'Dulce et Decorum Est' by Wilfred Owen, read by Greg Wise9 'Ode to a Nightingale' by John Keats, read by Siobhan Redmond10 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' by William Butler Yeats, read by John Nettles11 'Remember' by Christina Rossetti, read by Siobhan Redmond12 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray, read by John Nettles13 'Fern Hill' by Dylan Thomas, read by John Nettles14 'Leisure' by William Henry Davies, read by Emma Fielding15 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes, read by Greg Wise16 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell, read by Greg Wise17 'Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold, read by John Nettles18 'The Tyger' by William Blake, read by John Nettles19 'Adlestrop' by Edward Thomas, read by Siobhan Redmond20 'The Soldier' by Rupert Brooke ,read by Greg Wise21 'Sea-Fever' by John Masefield, read by John Nettles22 'Upon Westminster Bridge' by William Wordsworth, read by Greg Wise23 'How Do I Love Thee?' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, read by Emma Fielding24 'Cargoes' by John Masefield, read by Greg Wise25 'Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll, read by Emma Fielding26 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, read by John Nettles27 'Ozymandias of Egypt' by Percy Bysshe Shelley, read by Greg Wise28 'Abou ben Adhem' by Leigh Hunt, read by John Nettles29 'Everyone Sang' by Siegfried Sassoon, read by Greg Wise30 'The Windhover' by Gerard Manley Hopkins, read by Siobhan Redmond31 'Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night' by Dylan Thomas, read by John Nettles32 'Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?' by William Shakespeare, read by Siobhan Redmond33 'When You Are Old' by William Butler Yeats, read by Emma Fielding34 'Lessons of the War (To Alan Mitchell): Naming of Parts' by Henry Reed, read by John Nettles35 'The Darkling Thrush' by Thomas Hardy, read by Emma Fielding36 'Please Mrs Butler' by Allan Ahlberg, read by Emma Fielding37 'Kubla Khan' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, read by John Nettles38 'Home-Thoughts, from Abroad' by Robert Browning, read by Greg Wise39 'High Flight (An Airman's Ecstasy)' by John Gillespie Magee, read by Greg Wise40 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' by Edward Lear ,read by Emma Fielding41 'The Glory of the Garden' by Rudyard Kipling, read by Greg Wise42 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost, read by Siobhan Redmond43 'The Way through the Woods' by Rudyard Kipling, read by Emma Fielding44 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' by Wilfred Owen, read by Greg Wise45 'Bloody Men' by Wendy Cope, read by Siobhan Redmond

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