Search results for ""author peter murphy""

The English Heritage Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey (RCZAS) programme has produced a wealth of new information, with over 45 survey reports now completed. Alongside this, the offshore survey completed as part of the Marine Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund has increased understanding of early prehistoric coastal change, while other researchers have extended back the time scale for a human presence in England to at least 900,000 years. From a wider Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management perspective, there has been increased participation by English Heritage in Defra and Environment Agency initiatives. It is apt, now, to review what has been achieved and learnt from the RCZAS and other recent coastal historic environment studies. The book will include an introduction to the coastal historic environment, a consideration of long-term coastal change, an outline of survey, recording and characterisation methodology, a national review of the coastal historic environment and a separate discussion of regional significance, a set of research priorities for the future, and a final section considering how England’s coastal heritage should be managed in the future. The fact that climate change will impact significantly, and mostly adversely, on the coastal historic environment, gives a special urgency to this new publication.

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COVID-19: Proportionality, Public Policy and Social Distance explores the social and political response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It details the sociological aspects of the spread of the virus, the role played by social distancing in virus mitigation, and the comparative effect of social proximity and distance on national anti-viral behavior. Peter Murphy discusses various public policy approaches to the pandemic and their successes and failures. In this engaging analysis, he investigates the way that contemporary societies think about risk, threat and harm, and how social mood affected the response to COVID-19.

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Thomas Wyatt didn't publish "They Flee from Me." It was written in a notebook, maybe abroad, maybe even in prison. Today it is in every poetry anthology. How did it survive? That is the story Peter Murphy tells—in vivid and compelling detail—of the accidents of fate that kept a great poem alive across 500 turbulent years. Wyatt's poem becomes an occasion to ask and answer numerous questions about literature, culture, and history. Itself about the passage of time, it allows us to consider why anyone would write such a thing in the first place, and why anyone would care to read or remember the person who wrote it. From the deadly, fascinating circles of Henry VIII's court to the contemporary classroom, The Long Public Life of a Short Private Poem also introduces us to a series of worlds. We meet antiquaries, editors, publishers, anthologizers, and critics whose own life stories beckon. And we learn how the poem came to be considered, after many centuries of neglect, a model of the "best" English has to offer and an ideal object of literary study. The result is an exploration of literature in the fine grain of the everyday and its needs: in the classroom, in society, and in the life of nations.

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Charlie Walden is the Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, where he had hoped for a quiet life, but has found it to be anything but. With the job of balancing the needs of prosecutors, judges, 'Grey Smoothies', the humourless grey-suited civil servants, and the overall needs of a Crown Court he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace and his own delightful humour.Charlie is confronted by a number of topical issues he hadn't anticipated; invited to join the Court of Appeal he finds himself faced with a case involving the 'confusion' of one of his team. In another a teacher must be penalised for defacing a statue, a huge and mysterious cat comes to the rescue in yet another case, and so the harassed Judge must pick his way through this minefield of exasperating cases in order to keep everyone from the cannabis lobby to the anti-slave traders happy with his judgements.No hope of a quiet life for Charlie then, but, as ever, he deals with the issues of the day with satirical good humour, insight and wit. Another entertaining and insightful look at the British court system and the long-awaited sole Walden novel.

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'This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty' - Alexander Hamilton Kiah Harmon, a young Virginia lawyer, is just emerging from the most traumatic time of her life when actress Sam van Eyck walks into her office, unannounced, with the case of a lifetime. She asks Kiah to recover a 200-year-old debt from the US Government - a debt that goes right back to the time of Alexander Hamilton. The selfless generosity of Sam's ancestor, Jacob van Eyck, in making a massive loan of gold and supplies at Valley Forge, during the freezing winter of 1777-1778, may well have saved George Washington's army, and the War of Independence, from disaster. But it reduced Jacob to ruin. Despite the government's promises, the debt was never repaid, and this hero of the American Revolution died in poverty, unknown and unrecognised. Two hundred years later, Sam and Kiah embark on a quest to change that. But first, they will have to find the evidence, and overcome a stubborn Government determined to frustrate their every move. Will Sam and Kiah succeed in finally getting Jacob the statue he deserves?

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Charlie Walden, the irrepressible Resident Judge (RJ) of Bermondsey Crown Court is back to preside over five new cases. As ever, there is little rest for the RJ as he does his best to deal with: the church-going carer who steals from the old lady under her care, the cleaver-wielding chefs wth different ideas about how to make a Caesar salad, the man with a penchant for 'marrying' multiple women, and the astrological guru accused of fraud. Not to mention the shock-horror when colleagues get into trouble - Judge Hubert Drake for writing an angry letter to the press, and Judge Marjorie Jenkins for storing suspected pornography on her judicial computer. Oh, and the ongoing wars against the Grey Smoothies, who try to frustrate Charlie at every turn with their bureaucracy and their endless quest for value for money for the taxpayer.

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Two generations of abuse... one shocking conspiracy... a woman determined to expose it all When Audrey Marshall sends her daughter Emily to the religious boarding school where she herself was educated a generation before, memories return - memories of a culture of child sexual abuse presided over by a highly-regarded priest. Audrey turns to barrister Ben Schroeder in search of justice for Emily and herself. But there are powerful men involved, men determined to protect themselves at all costs. . .

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Ben Schroeder, a talented young man from an East End Jewish family, has been accepted as a pupil into the Chambers of Bernard Wesley QC. But Schroeder is an outsider, not part of this privileged society, where wealth and an Oxbridge education are essentials. He encounters prejudice, intrigue and scandal. Kenneth Gaskell, a rising star of Wesley's Chambers has become involved in an affair with a high-profile client and the relationship, if known, could ruin his career, and the careers of all those around him. But Bernard Wesley has some information - he knows about a student prank that went terribly wrong - can he use this knowledge in a desperate gamble to save his Chambers and turn the tables on his old rival, Miles Overton QC? Ben Schroeder has proved his ability, but he is no more than a pawn in this game. Can he survive in this world where nothing, not even justice, is sacred?

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Thomas Wyatt didn't publish "They Flee from Me." It was written in a notebook, maybe abroad, maybe even in prison. Today it is in every poetry anthology. How did it survive? That is the story Peter Murphy tells—in vivid and compelling detail—of the accidents of fate that kept a great poem alive across 500 turbulent years. Wyatt's poem becomes an occasion to ask and answer numerous questions about literature, culture, and history. Itself about the passage of time, it allows us to consider why anyone would write such a thing in the first place, and why anyone would care to read or remember the person who wrote it. From the deadly, fascinating circles of Henry VIII's court to the contemporary classroom, The Long Public Life of a Short Private Poem also introduces us to a series of worlds. We meet antiquaries, editors, publishers, anthologizers, and critics whose own life stories beckon. And we learn how the poem came to be considered, after many centuries of neglect, a model of the "best" English has to offer and an ideal object of literary study. The result is an exploration of literature in the fine grain of the everyday and its needs: in the classroom, in society, and in the life of nations.

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'A good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs' - Sir Robert Mark 'A good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs' - Sir Robert Mark A clever, accomplished Cambridge graduate with a good job and an attentive lover, Imogen Lester seems to have the world at her feet. But when her parents are murdered abroad while working for the Diplomatic Service, she is suddenly thrown headlong into a murky world of espionage and organised crime. When she is charged with drug trafficking, even Ben Schroeder's skills may not be enough to save her - unless a shadowy figure from Ben's past can survive long enough to unmask a web of graft and corruption...

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1 July 1969. The Investiture of the new Prince of Wales. When Arianwen Hughes is arrested driving with a home-made bomb near Caernarfon Castle, her case seems hopeless. Her brother Caradog, her husband Trevor, and their friend Dafydd are implicated in the plot, the evidence against them damning. Ben Schroeder's reputation as a barrister is riding high after the cases of Billy Cottage (A Matter for the Jury) and Sir James Digby (And is there Honey Still for Tea?). But defending Arianwen will be his greatest challenge yet. Trevor may hold the only key to her defence, but he is nowhere to be found. . .

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April 1971. When DI Webb and DS Raymond respond to a 999 call at Harpur Mews in Bloomsbury, a horrific scene awaits them. Susan Lang is lying on the ground, bleeding to death. Her husband Henry is sitting nearby, holding a large, blood-stained knife. In shock, Henry claims to have no memory of the events that led to his wife's death, leaving his barrister, Ben Schroeder, little with which to defend a potential murder charge. Unbeknownst to his strict Baptist wife, Deborah, Justice Rainer has a secret life as a gambler. In his desperation for money to fund his habit, he has already raided his own and Deborah's resources, and now he has crossed another line - one from which there is no return. To his horror, as the trial of Henry Lang starts, Rainer discovers a sinister connection between the trial and his gambling debts which could cause his world to unravel. In a rare case in which the judge is in greater peril than the defendant on trial, both Lang and Rainer have called down the storm on their own heads. Their lives are on the line, and time is running out.

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'When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw' - Nelson Mandela 1964, Apartheid South Africa. Danie du Plessis, the son of a conservative Afrikaner family, is poised to start a glittering legal academic career at one of South Africa's leading universities, when he falls in love with a student, Amy Coetzee. But there's a problem: he's white, she's not. Facing arrest, imprisonment and ruin, the couple flee South Africa, and settle in Cambridge, where friends find them positions at the University. They marry and have two children, and have seemingly put the past, and South Africa, behind them. But in 1968 Art Pienaar enters their lives, and, insisting that they have a duty to fight back, enlists their help in increasingly dangerous schemes to undermine the South African regime. When Pienaar and a notorious drug dealer, Vince Cummings, are found murdered together, Danie's activities come to light, and he and his family find themselves in mortal danger. Danie is also threatened with criminal prosecution on behalf of a government desperate to maintain good relations with the apartheid regime. Danie knows he's sailed close to the wind. But has he become an outlaw? Can Ben Schroeder persuade a jury that the answer is no?

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Shall We Gather At The River tells the story of Enoch O'Reilly, the great flood that afflicts his small town, and the rash of mysterious suicides that accompany it. Charlatan, Presleyite and local radiovangelist, O'Reilly is a man haunted by the childhood ghosts of his father's sinister radio set... a false prophet destined for a terrible consummation with that old, evil river.A suicide mystery and a rich patchwork narrative of legend, myth, occult inheritance, eco-conspiracy, viral obsession, airwaves, water and death, Shall We Gather At The River is a spellbinding piece of work, marked by prose that is by turns haunting, poetic and blackly humourous. With shades of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, of Twin Peaks and Wisconsin Death Trip, Shall We Gather At The River is a novel that will further cement Murphy's reputation as one of the most original and exciting novelists to emerge in recent years.

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Advancement in the arts and sciences is a primary driver of economic production and social policy in post-industrial societies. Imagination steps back and asks ‘what advances the arts and sciences?’ This book explores the collective, social and global dimension of human imagining–and the ambivalent relationship of social institutions, including universities, schools, economies, media and culture industries, to the collective imagination. Basic discovery requires high levels of creative thinking: Imagination looks at the social conditions that make path-breaking thought possible on a large scale. It examines the role of aesthetic, pictorial, digital, paradoxical and other imaginative styles of thinking, and the times and places in which such styles become socially prominent and a significant force in economic and cultural production. It looks at successful societies as they are approaching their peak, when new ideas are driving them forward.

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Contemporary reforms of the fire and rescue service result from two excoriating reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee that demonstrated the inadequacy of contemporary policy, service delivery and public assurance for fire and rescue services in England. This book focuses on the key reforms proposed by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary in response to these reports and critically examines the new National Framework and the new external Inspectorate that were created as a result. Rebuilding the Fire and Rescue Services will prove invaluable for both academics and practitioners in order to build a more efficient and effective performance regime for this essential emergency service. It demonstrates the context, the parameters, the agencies and the inter-relationships that operate within the areas of policy development, service delivery and public assurance in the service. It shows how the new national framework and the new inspectorate can be improved. Most of all it shows the need for robust data and intelligence at both the national and local levels.

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