Every serious researcher who seeks clarity about specific historical events understands the value of primary source material, and I was happy to stumble across this treasure trove.
The editor and his assistants diligently researched every surviving official record from the 16th Century pertaining to the Battle of the Spanish Armada, and they compiled a series of official letters written by actual protagonists and eyewitnesses.
The magnitude of the battle is summarized by the editor in his introduction: "The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588…[was] one of the decisive battles of the world…it marks alike the approaching downfall of Spain and the rise of England as a great maritime power.”
I frequently tapped into this critical resource while researching and writing my novelized account of the battle.
These are chiefly 'State Papers' in the narrow sense of records of the English Secretary of State, but include other English government documents from the Public Record Office and the British Museum. Vol I covers December 1587 to July 1588.
On 19 May 1588 the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon. 130 ships and carried 2,500 guns and 30,000 men. The fleet was not sighted off the Lizard until 29 July 1588 as the Armada was forced by poor weather and a lack of supplies into Corunna. This book, the very first published by the Navy Records Society, in 1894,…
I have three lifelong passions, the first was reading, then writing, and then archaeology/history. To this end I studied and trained as an archaeologist before I sat down and decided to write stories set in the past as a way of bringing it to life. Of course, there had to be an adventure, a bit of a mystery, and a dash of magic to bring it all together. The books on my list are just a few of those that I have enjoyed reading during my hunt to get to know the past in intimate detail – on my own time travelling journey.
My interest in the Vikings initially arose out of seeing the Lewis Chessmen at the British Museum, they have such interesting faces, full of life and mystery. For me, the chessmen are the reason for my writing journey and in this small and perfectly formed book is the story of their discovery on the Isle of Lewis and their journey to the present day.
Written by the marvelous storyteller Irving Finkel who is the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages, and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum – which is something of a mouthful (check out his YouTube videos).
It is an easy read that transports a person back into time, wondering who the chessmen belonged to, why did they end up on a Scottish beach and what do those funny little carved characters make of it all?
The Lewis Chessmen were found on the Isle of Lewis in mysterious circumstances. Consisting of elaborately worked walrus ivory and whales' teeth in the form of seated kings and queens, bishops, knights, warders and pawns, this curious chess set is strongly influenced by Norse culture. Of the 93 pieces known to us today, 11 pieces are in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland, and 82 are in the British Museum, where they have delighted generations of visitors with their wonderfully expressive details. In this engaging story, Irving Finkel follows the many adventures of the chessmen after they came to…
I am a Yorkshire writer with a passion for historical fiction. My love of history came as a surprise to me in my late teens, as I had originally thought history was not my thing. However, I soon discovered the incredible stories throughout history, and how many authors carve fictional stories around these time periods or historical events. I love researching for my own historical writing, whether it be to find out what kind of jobs people did, or what they ate for breakfast. I love reading and writing historical fiction in multiple eras, such as WW2, Victorian times, and further back to the Romans and ancient Egyptians.
Martin Ferguson has quickly become one of my favourite authors, thanks to his Relic Hunters series. What I love about these books is that they are split between two stories, the modern-day story based on the Relic Hunters who work at the British Museum, and the secondary story set in the past relating to the relic they are hunting in the modern chapters. In some ways I would say the historical chapters are my favourite, and the author clearly does a lot of research for these books. These books make me eager to go away and read the rest of the history surrounding the relic, history, and myths. I am always recommending these books to friends.
RELIC HUNTERS: EAGLE OF THE EMPIREWhen his brother mysteriously disappears, sixteen-year-old Adam Hunter discovers that the myths and legends he was told as a boy have more truth to them than he ever thought possible.To free his brother, Adam must uncover the truth about the lost Roman Ninth Legion and find its fabled Eagle Standard, an artefact of mysterious mythical power. Adam calls on the help of the British Museum, a team of quirky Relic Hunters, skilled in recovering and protecting relics around the world. However, they need to act fast for they are not the only ones searching for…
I studied the ancient world in college, but Egypt really got my attention when I covered the CT scanning of King Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings on January 5, 2005, for National Geographic magazine, where I was a staff writer for many years. Ancient Egypt has become one of my great passions, especially the royal successions of the 18th dynasty and the saga of King Tut. I’m currently president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt, and I host a lecture about ancient Egypt every month for that group. I’m also studying hieroglyphs—and appreciating how the landscape comes alive now that I can read the signs.
The
mother of all coffee-table books. Fabulous photos by Araldo de Luca, who’s
famous for shooting Tut’s personal effects in ways that show them at their
stunning best. And text written by T.G.H. James, long-time keeper of the
department of ancient Egypt at the British Museum and one of the great
authorities on the teenage king and his era. If I’m stuck on a gnarly detail
about some of King Tut’s stuff, I turn here. I get information that I can
trust, and images that allow me to see the tiniest of evocative details.
The purpose of this book is to describe by text and illustration the extraordinary tomb of this seemingly unimportant king of the late Eighteenth Dynasty, with its exceptional contents. An introductory chapter sets the historical scene for the reign of Tutankhamun, placing it in the context of the anciently reviled period of heresy associated with King Akhenaten, and its disintegration after his death. Tutankhamun ruled on the point of the change back to a traditional Egyptian regime, with the rehabilitation of the old gods, a change, which was consolidated after his death by his general Horemheb. A second chapter discusses…
A family visit to Hadrian’s Wall first sparked my interest in Roman Britain, and since then I’ve written eight novels, one novella, and a couple of short stories featuring Roman Army Medic and reluctant sleuth Gaius Petreius Ruso and his British partner, Tilla. I’m the owner of an archaeological trowel and infinite curiosity, both of which I wield as often as possible in search of the “real” Roman Britain.
This is the British Museum’s take on Roman Britain and as you’d expect, there are gorgeous photos on every page. If you can drag your eyes away from the visual feast, the text is intelligent and informative and there are suggestions for further reading. Don’t just leave it adorning the coffee table – pick it up and discover a lost world!
The British Museum's new introductory guide to Roman Britain combines an informative text with first-class design and is illustrated with plentiful artefacts from the museum's collections. Throughout the book the emphasis is on cultural interaction and change, showing the impact of the Roman presence, but also British survivals; the book starts, perhaps unusually for general guides of this kind, with a section on pre-Roman Britain, and ends with a chapter on Britons after Rome. In between we learn about the military, the new literate culture introduced by Rome, about the impact of Rome on the rural economy, and on life…
I’m a historian and writer who strives to combine the history of science and medicine, the study of visual culture, and cultural history in my work. Although I hated being dragged round art galleries and museums as a child, something must have stuck, laying the foundations for my interest in using images and artefacts to understand both the past and the present. Since the early 1990s I’ve been writing about portraits, how they work, and why they are important—I remain gripped by the compelling ways they speak to identity. It was a privilege to serve as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in London between 2001 and 2009.
London’s British Museum, with its massive and diverse collections, is world famous and the story of its foundation and early years in the eighteenth century sheds light on the histories of collecting, knowledge, and exploration. More than twenty essays were assembled to celebrate the opening of the Enlightenment Gallery in the King’s Library after years of research and refurbishment. These essays draw readers into the people, the objects, and the ideas that shaped this important and influential institution. The book is lavishly illustrated with gorgeous photographs of paintings and statues, coins, fossils, china, and much more—a wonderful way to grasp the museum’s stupendous holdings and also to understand better the controversies it has engendered.
The extraordinary companion to the British Museum's 250th anniversary exhibition. Opened in 1753 as the world's first public museum, the British Museum epitomized the Age of Enlightenment's dream of a rational universe. Indeed, in many ways the museum was the age's most potent instrument: the incarnation of a world that could be parsed, classified, and comprehended through the physical observation of objects, all in the name of reason, progress, and civic improvement.
In this lavishly illustrated volume, published to coincide with a new permanent exhibit, the museum's centrality to the Enlightenment enterprise is explored through the stunning breadth and variety…
I'm clinical psychology professor at UMass Boston and expert on mentoring relationships. When I was a senior in high school, my dad left behind thirty years of marriage, four kids, and a complicated legal and financial history to start a new life. I couldn't fully comprehend the FBI investigation that forced his departure—any more than I could've fathomed the fact that my classmate Jim Comey would eventually lead that agency. I was also reeling from a discovery that my dad had “shortened” his name from Rosenzweig to Rhodes, a common response to anti-Semitism. It was during that period that I experienced the benefits of mentors and the joy of books about hidden agendas and subtexts.
This book, by Kirk Wallace Johnson tells the story of a bizarre heist that took place at the British Museum of Natural History in 2009.
The thief, Edwin Rist, was a 20-year-old American flute student who broke into the museum to steal hundreds of priceless, exotic bird specimens, many of which were collected by the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in the 19th century.
What first drew me to the book was that I knew Edwin’s dad back when I was in grad school. But what kept me turning the pages was the writing and story. The book explores the world of Victorian-era fly-tying and the obsession that collectors have with rare feathers.
Rist, who was also an avid fly-tier, had planned the heist to obtain feathers for his own collection, which he intended to sell to other collectors. Many of the collectors and fly-tying enthusiasts knew that the feathers probably…
"Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller." -Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever." -Christian Science Monitor
A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.
On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin…
I have been fascinated by ancient Egypt since I was a child and dressed up to play as ancient Egyptian with her friends. I studied fine art in college, and was trained in archaeological illustration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I worked as a staff illustrator in the Department of Egyptian Art. I later worked in the Department of Egyptian Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I have worked as the technical illustrator for a dozen archaeological digs in Egypt, Turkey, Spain, Belize, and California.
This is the best up-to-date book for beginners learning to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Egyptian hieroglyphs are the most beautiful written language. They are not an alphabet. It is a complex system. The authors have it organized in sections that make it easier to understand the basics, and to read actual ancient texts on Egyptian artifacts.
Hieroglyphs are pictures used as signs in writing. When standing before an ancient tablet in a museum or visiting an Egyptian monument, we marvel at this unique writing and puzzle over its meaning. Now, with the help of Egyptologists Mark Collier and Bill Manley, museum-goers, tourists, and armchair travelers alike can gain a basic knowledge of the language and culture of ancient Egypt. Collier and Manley's novel approach is informed by years of experience teaching Egyptian hieroglyphs to non-specialists. Using attractive drawings of actual inscriptions displayed in the British Museum, they concentrate on the kind of hieroglyphs readers might encounter…
Julian. D. Richards is a Professor of Archaeology at York. He has directed excavations at the Viking settlement at Cottam, and the only Viking cremation cemetery in the British Isles at Heath Wood. He is the author of Viking Age England, and The Vikings: A Short Introduction. His co-author is Dawn M. Hadley. Dawn is a Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of York. She and Julian Richards are Co-Directors of the Torksey project - which has been investigating the winter camp of the Viking Great Army of AD 872-3. She is the author of The Vikings in England and The Northern Danelaw.
Thomas Williams was project curator for the major international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend, held at the British Museum in 2014. In this tremendously readable account of Viking Britain from the late eighth to the end of the tenth century he interweaves first-person narrative, evocative prose, and more conventional historical and archaeological discussion to provide a new form of Viking history. Williams demonstrates how the Vikings have shaped British society, and how our perception has been shaped by authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and William Morris.
A new narrative history of the Viking Age, interwoven with exploration of the physical remains and landscapes that the Vikings fashioned and walked: their rune-stones and ship burials, settlements and battlefields.
To many, the word 'Viking' brings to mind red scenes of rape and pillage, of marauders from beyond the sea rampaging around the British coastline in the last gloomy centuries before the Norman Conquest. It is true that Britain in the Viking Age was a turbulent, violent place. The kings and warlords who have impressed their memories on the period revel in names that fire the blood and stir…
I’ve loved the Regency era since first reading Jane Austen’s novels, but in writing my series of 19th-century adventure fantasies, I discovered there was so much more to the period than I’d ever dreamed. Though their culture and traditions aren’t like ours, I’m fascinated by how much about the lives of those men and women is familiar—the same desires, the same dreams for the future. I hope the books on this list inspire in you the same excitement they did in me!
After getting a general idea of what Regency England was like, I recommend this slim little book produced in connection with the British Museum. It’s mostly reproductions of famous pictures and drawings, but for me it made the streets of London come alive. It’s great to read about the famous theaters at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, but so much better to see what they looked like at the height of their fame. And it saves you the cost of a trip to the British Museum!
