Book picks similar to
Whitehall Palace: The Official Illustrated History by Simon Thurley
tudor
tudor-era
18th-century
britain
The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown
Claire Ridgway - 2012
The coup against the Queen results in the brutal executions of six innocent people - Anne Boleyn herself, her brother, and four courtiers - and the rise of a new Queen. Drawing on sixteenth century letters, eye witness accounts and chronicles, Claire Ridgway leads the reader through the sequence of chilling events one day at a time, telling the true story of Anne Boleyn's fall. The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown is presented in a diary format, allowing readers to dip in, look up a particular date, or read from start to finish. Special features include mini biographies of those involved, a timeline of events and full referencing. Claire Ridgway, creator of The Anne Boleyn Files website and author of The Anne Boleyn Collection, continues her mission to share the real truth about Anne Boleyn.
Engravings by Hogarth
William Hogarth - 1973
Sean Shesgreen, a foremost authority on Hogarth, has consistently selected the best states of the plates to be used in this edition and has carefully introduced them, commenting upon the artist's milieu and the importance of plot, character, time, setting, and other dimensions. A most important aspect of this book, found in no other Hogarth edition, is the positioning of the editor's commentary on each plate on a facing page. With the incredible and sometimes overwhelming amount of detail and action going on in these engravings, this is a most helpful feature.
Fear of the Collar: The True Story of the Boy They Couldn't Break
Patrick Touher - 1991
No allowances were made for emotion, sentiment or boyhood worries, and anyone who disturbed the routine was severely punished. Artane demanded absolute obedience, absolute submission; Patrick's was an education in cruelty and fear. Patrick Touher spent eight long years in Artane Industrial School. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s which is currently the subject of an official inquiry. This is the inside story of a childhood lived in the most horrific of circumstances. A moving and powerful true account, Fear of the Collar bears testament to the courage and determination of the children that society forgot.
Holloway Falls
Neil Cross - 2003
Gentle man. Wanted man. Holloway has secrets. Years ago, he witnessed his wife's betrayal and his life fell apart. Now someone's toying with his mind and the life of a missing woman, the prostitute Holloway pays to imitate his ex-wife. When she is murdered, his ex-wife's name scrawled on her abdomen, Holloway is trapped by the consequence of love and sex, of infidelity and violence in a world of his own terrible making. Hunted as a rogue policeman and a killer, he's on the run. And planning retribution.
A Dish of Spurs
Robert Low - 2020
For centuries the Scottish and English borders were known as the Debatable lands: wild, lawless, and the province of reivers, tight-knit robber families that roamed and pillaged the remote passes without fear...Fifteen-year-old Mintie Henderson has just seen her father murdered. With the Scottish King newly dead and an army of hired reivers on the march, justice is in short supply. Then she comes across Batty Coalhouse: one-armed and hard as nails. Together they will set out on a journey of revenge.But they are soon caught up in something bigger, a tale of Mary Queen of Scots and King Henry VIII. Stuck in the heart of a tempest, they know only one way to get out alive…Fight.
Who Do the English Think They Are?: From the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit
Derek J. Taylor - 2017
They say ‘British’ when they mean ‘English’, and ‘English’ when they should say ‘British.’ But when England, more than the rest of the UK, voted to leave the EU, polls showed national identity was a big concern. So it’s time the English sorted out in their minds what it means to be English. A nation’s character is moulded by its history. And in ‘Who Do the English Think They Are?’ historian and journalist, Derek J. Taylor travels the length and breadth of the country to find answers. He discovers that the first English came from Germany, and then in the later Middle Ages almost became French. He tracks down the origins of English respect for the rule of law, tolerance and a love of political stability. And, when he reaches Victorian times, he investigates the arrogance and snobbishness that have sometimes blighted English behaviour. Finally, Taylor looks ahead. He asks – faced with uncharted waters post-Brexit, what is it is in their national character that will help guide the English people now?
Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life
David Mitchell - 2014
Funny, provocative and shot through with refreshing amounts of common sense, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse celebrates and commiserates on the state of things in our not entirely glorious nation.
Princess Helena
John Van der Kiste - 2013
A steady, dependable young woman, known as ‘Lenchen’ within the family, she was particularly ‘useful’ to her demanding and recently widowed mother, who could not bear to lose her to a marriage which would oblige her to move and live abroad with her husband. In 1866 she married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, a kindly but penniless bachelor fifteen years older than her. Despite the difference in ages, it was the only marriage among the Queen’s children in which both partners lived long enough to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. For nearly sixty years Helena was a tireless supporter of good causes, particularly in the field of nursing and education. This concise biography examines her life, work and relationships with her family.
Britain Alone: The Path from Suez to Brexit
Philip Stephens - 2021
Nearly 60 years later, the rebuke rings true again. Britain's postwar search for its place in the world has vexed prime ministers and government since the nation's great victory in 1945: the cost of winning the war was giving up the empire. After the humiliation of Anthony Eden's Suez expedition, Britain seemed for a time to have found an answer. Clinging to its self-image as a great island nation, it would serve as America's best friend while acknowledging its geography by signing up to membership of the European Union. Never a comfortable balancing act, for 40 years it appeared to work. In 2016 David Cameron called the Brexit referendum and blew it up. Author Philip Stephens paints a fascinating portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile its waning power with past glory. Drawing on decades of personal contact and interviews with senior politicians and diplomats in Britain, the United States and across the capitals of Europe, Britain Alone is a vivid account of a proud nation struggling to admit it is no longer a great power. It is a guide to how we arrived at the state we are in.
Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire
David Cannadine - 2001
But the question of how we understand the British Empire - its origins, nature, purpose, and effect on the world it ruled - is far from settled. In this incisive work, David Cannadine looks at the British Empire from a new perspective - through the eyes of those who created and ruled it - and offers fresh insight into the driving forces behind the Empire.Arguing against the views of Edward Said and others, Cannadine suggests that the British were motivated not only by race, but also by class. The British wanted to domesticate the exotic world of their colonies and to reorder the societies they ruled according to an idealized image of their own class hierarchies.
Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies
Hayley Nolan - 2019
Quite the tragic love story, right?Wrong.In this electrifying exposé, Hayley Nolan explores for the first time the full, uncensored evidence of Anne Boleyn’s life and relationship with Henry VIII, revealing the shocking suppression of a powerful woman.So leave all notions of outdated and romanticised folklore at the door and forget what you think you know about one of the Tudors’ most notorious queens. She may have been silenced for centuries, but this urgent book ensures Anne Boleyn’s voice is being heard now.#TheTruthWillOut
Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage
Stephen Budiansky - 2005
A ruthless, fiercely loyal civil servant, Walsingham worked brilliantly behind the scenes to foil Elizabeth's rival Mary Queen of Scots and outwit Catholic Spain and France, which had arrayed their forces behind her. Though he cut an incongruous figure in Elizabeth's worldly court, Walsingham managed to win the trust of key players like William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester before launching his own secret campaign against the queen's enemies. Covert operations were Walsingham's genius; he pioneered techniques for exploiting double agents, spreading disinformation, and deciphering codes with the latest code-breaking science that remain staples of international espionage.
Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain
Amy Jeffs - 2021
It begins between the Creation and Noah's Flood, follows the footsteps of the earliest generation of giants from an age when the children of Cain and the progeny of fallen angels walked the earth, to the founding of Britain, England, Wales and Scotland, the birth of Christ, the wars between Britons, Saxons and Vikings, and closes with the arrival of the Normans. These are retellings of medieval tales of legend, landscape and the yearning to belong, inhabited with characters now half-remembered: Brutus, Albina, Scota, Arthur and Bladud among them.Told with narrative flair, embellished in stunning artworks and glossed with a rich and erudite commentary. We visit beautiful, sacred places that include prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge and Wayland's Smithy, spanning the length of Britain from the archipelago of Orkney to as far south as Cornwall; mountains and lakes such as Snowdon and Loch Etive and rivers including the Ness, the Soar and the story-silted Thames in a vivid, beautiful tale of our land steeped in myth. It Illuminates a collective memory that still informs the identity and political ambition of these places.In Storyland, Jeffs reimagines these myths of homeland, exile and migration, kinship, loyalty, betrayal, love and loss in a landscape brimming with wonder.
Frenchman's Creek
Daphne du Maurier - 1941
She finds the passion her spirit craves in the love of a daring French pirate who is being hunted by all of Cornwall.Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him.