Search results for ""Author Roger Louis""

The latest volume in Wm. Roger Louis' acclaimed "Adventures with Britannia" series takes the reader on a highly engaging excursion through British life and intellectual biography. Collecting the interpretations of outstanding writers on the literature and history of modern Britain, "Ultimate Adventures with Britannia" deals with a rich variety of themes - some familiar, many unexpected. The scope of this wide-ranging volume includes not only the personalities, politics and culture of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, but also the interaction between British and other societies throughout the world. The chapters embracing historical themes include Brian Harrison and Dominic Sandbrook on the 1960s and Geoffrey Wheatcroft on Churchill and the Jews. In Britannia's literary domain, Dan Jacobson assesses Thomas Hardy and T.S. Eliot while Margaret Macmillan asks how well Paul Scott's Raj Quartet bears up after some four decades. And in a combination of cultural, architectural and intellectual history, Bernard Wasserstein traces the decline and possible revival of the 'second city in the Empire', Glasgow. "Ultimate Adventures with Britannia" retains all the intellectual originality and accessibility that characterise the earlier volumes in this series and continues a stimulating and highly appealing tradition.

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Effervescent Adventures with Britannia is the latest addition to Wm Roger Louis's stimulating and acclaimed series, Adventures with Britannia. It draws upon a distinguished array of writers and scholars - historians, political scientists, journalists, novelists, biographers and English literature specialists - to guide the reader through a fascinating labyrinth of British culture, history and politics. Together, they provide a unique insight into the pivotal themes - political, literary and cultural - which have shaped British state and society. The subjects covered include a new analysis of Jack the Ripper by Richard Davenport-Hines, a new appraisal of Harold Nicholson and Royal Biography by Jane Ridley and a new account of Evelyn Waugh in North America by Martin Stannard. In literature, Patrick French writes on V.S. Naipul; in history Andrew Lownie offers new perspectives on Guy Burgess and in politics Kenneth O. Morgan considers what will become of Britain after Brexit. Collectively, the chapters combine a rich mix of original ideas, historical and literary allusion, personality and anecdote, to provide an intellectual adventure into the mainsprings of modern British and international society.

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"Penultimate Adventures with Britannia" is the sixth volume in Wm. Roger Louis' "Adventures with Britannia" series and, as in the earlier volumes, this is not a sedate guided tour but an exciting journey by a range of distinguished writers and academics through British cultural, intellectual, literary and political life, in its contact with other cultures and with international politics; and the tour is conducted by one of our greatest historians of empire. War and empire dominated the twentieth century and beyond. They continue to shape international history, both politically and culturally. Bernard Porter shows the importance of culture on British imperial history, Priaya Satia's writes on the cultural foundation of British power in Iraq and Geoffrey Wheatcroft deals with the perennial problems of partition, here as experienced in India and Ireland.Dane Kennedy's "The New American Empire" covers the dominating theme in modern international relations. International politics remain centre stage but there are illuminating literary and artistic glances behind the scenes. These include Susan Pedersen's portrait of Frances Stevenson and her influence on Lloyd George even at the height of the First World War, Martin Gilbert on Tolkien and English culture and Hilary Spurling's "Reassessing Paul Scott" - vital for students of modern Indian history. There are fascinating vignettes of the art of Larry Carver on Felix Topolski and Martin Francis on Cecil Beaton. Felipe Fernandez Armesto's "An Accidental Criminal" rounds off a remarkable and rewarding volume and maintains the delightful tradition of Wm. Roger Louis' "Adventures" series.

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In Creating Conversos, Roger Louis Martínez-Dávila skillfully unravels the complex story of Jews who converted to Catholicism in Spain between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, migrated to colonial Mexico and Bolivia during the conquest of the Americas, and assumed prominent church and government positions. Rather than acting as alienated and marginalized subjects, the conversos were able to craft new identities and strategies not just for survival but for prospering in the most adverse circumstances. Martínez-Dávila provides an extensive, elaborately detailed case study of the Carvajal–Santa María clan from its beginnings in late fourteenth-century Castile. By tracing the family ties and intermarriages of the Jewish rabbinic ha-Levi lineage of Burgos, Spain (which became the converso Santa María clan) with the Old Christian Carvajal line of Plasencia, Spain, Martínez-Dávila demonstrates the family's changing identity, and how the monolithic notions of ethnic and religious disposition were broken down by the group and negotiated anew as they transformed themselves from marginal into mainstream characters at the center of the economies of power in the world they inhabited. They succeeded in rising to the pinnacles of power within the church hierarchy in Spain, even to the point of contesting the succession to the papacy and overseeing the Inquisitorial investigation and execution of extended family members, including Luis de Carvajal "The Younger" and most of his immediate family during the 1590s in Mexico City. Martinez-Dávila offers a rich panorama of the many forces that shaped the emergence of modern Spain, including tax policies, rivalries among the nobility, and ecclesiastical politics. The extensive genealogical research enriches the historical reconstruction, filling in gaps and illuminating contradictions in standard contemporary narratives. His text is strengthened by many family trees that assist the reader as the threads of political and social relationships are carefully disentangled.

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