Search results for ""Author Hugh Roberts""

This book is the first authorised account of the history of the finest diamond jewellery in the world. It tells the story of the magnificent royal inheritance of diamonds from the time of Queen Adelaide in the 1830s to the present day. Illustrated with a wide range of archive material as well as extensive new photography of the jewels, this fully researched publication includes stones of international importance as well as pieces of great historic significance, and will be a standard work of reference on diamond jewellery for many years to come.

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Loved Egyptian Night fundamentally reassesses the Arab Spring, refuting the stories the Western powers fed to the world. There is no doubt that the toppling of Ben Ali in Tunisia in January 2011 and what it led to amounted to a political revolution. But the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria - countries with quite different histories and political traditions - were never revolutions. As Hugh Roberts explains, the bitter ends of these episodes were inscribed in their misunderstood beginnings. To celebrate these uprisings as 'revolutions' preempts and inhibits critical analysis and expresses an abdication of intellectual responsibility. After so much wishful thinking, what remains is the debris of a cynical pretension. Outside interference, ostensibly on behalf of these 'revolutions', reduced Libya to anarchy and condemned Syria to a devastating proxy war now in its twelfth year. In Egypt, the Free Officers' state was re-booted in its most brutal ever

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Scanning across recent decades, Fractured Society … Causes, Effects and Resolutions looks at how human relations have been coming apart psychologically, a situation summarised by a failure to understand each other. Young people seem more stressed than previous generations, while politics are now more polarised than for a long time past. Wherever you look, at gender relations, the working environment, responses to traumatic events and how people relate - positively and negatively - to their sense of place, there are profound strains on how we interact with each other. But maybe all is not lost! Hugh Roberts examines how every situation can look better in context, applying lessons learned from many years working internationally with different cultures and value systems. He proposes a fresh approach to relationship building, based on empathy and understanding of individual agendas. CV19 has brought communities a renewed sense of collective purpose with digital communication proving vital in sustaining relationships. However, the Internet needs to take its rightful place in, rather than take over, the slow re-building of mutual trust. Fractured Society delivers an upbeat message advocating a better-connected world created through encouraging us to adopt a positive, empathetic approach to one another, replacing an approach shrouded in fear and mistrust of forming new acquaintances.

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The first comprehensive study of William Ince and John Mayhew’s famous eighteenth-century cabinetmaking partnership, complemented by high-quality photographs of their work. The partnership of William Ince (1737–1804) and John Mayhew (1736–1811) ran from 1758 to 1804, and was one of the most enduring and well-connected collaborations in Georgian London’s tight-knit cabinetmaking community. The partners’ clientele was probably larger, and their work was arguably more influential over a longer period, than most other leading metropolitan makers – perhaps even than that of their older contemporary, the celebrated Thomas Chippendale. Despite their considerable output and an impressive tally of clients and commissions, much of Ince and Mayhew’s work has remained unidentified until recent times. The authors’ substantial research in private family archives, county record offices and bank archives has allowed them to uncover much new evidence about the business and its influence within cabinetmaking circles. In Industry and Ingenuity, the results of these new investigations are presented alongside an impressive selection of more than 500 colourful, vibrant photographs of Ince and Mayhew’s works, many previously unpublished, which together emphasise the partnership’s proper position in the pantheon of great eighteenth-century cabinetmakers.

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