I have been fascinated by the Tudors since childhood – in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that I grew up in the American Midwest, where Tudor artefacts were few and far between. A family holiday to England, when I was fourteen, sparked the beginning of a life-long love affair, which I have been lucky enough to turn into a career focused on all things Tudor. After receiving my PhD from Yale University, I took up a post-doctoral fellowship in England, at Warwick University, with which I have been affiliated ever since. I am currently an Honorary Reader at Warwick and working on a new book, on Hans Holbein.
Alas, now out of print, this book is part biography, part architectural history, and part social history. The mason-architect Robert Smythson comes to life, as do the houses he designed and the eccentric patrons who employed him. The book's (mainly black-and-white) illustrations inevitably look a bit dated now. But the text is, to my mind, hard to beat: utterly engrossing, particularly when dealing with Hardwick Hall, a house Girouard knows intimately, having lived there as a small child. I remember stumbling across this book many years ago, as a student, while looking for something else at the library. I ended up spending the better part of the day reading Robert Smythson from cover to cover: it was a revelation that a work of scholarship could be so beautifully written.
Describes the career of the seventeenth-century British architect, looks at his designs for rural mansions and castles, and discusses his contributions to their interior decoration
I have always been fascinated by statistics (I’m a statistician by profession), and anything that tells a story of actual people and events has always captured my imagination. I have a particular affection for the quirky and offbeat, something that illustrates catastrophic failure, lack of common sense, a misplaced sense of entitlement and people who repeatedly tried but always fell short. I have a passion for black humour as it helps me to realise that, no matter how dark things look in my own life, there are others who have it much worse.
I was truly astonished to read a book that celebrates the dark side of life. It is full of unsavoury facts and includes many amazing lists. I found them really appalling, but at the same time was taken in by the sheer depravity of people from history.
In fact, I found myself reading this large volume twice as it was easy to forget just how nasty some of these characters were. I have recommended it to my friends, who also found it as fascinating as I did.
Prepare to be even more revolted, flabbergasted, appalled and entertained by this incredible follow-up collection of bizarre but absolutely true trivia. Nothing is too distasteful for this astonishing compendium, including scores of eclectic lists to amuse, astonish and appal your friends.
Entries include: 10 Road-kill Recipes History's 10 Most Murderous Regimes 10 Historic Sex Toys 10 People who Married Their Nieces 10 Deaths by Sex 10 People Killed by Falling Animals 10 Ancient Remedies Containing Body Parts 10 Flatalogical Facts 8 Most Violent National Anthems 15 Premature Obituaries 10 Unusual Royal Deaths 10 Cruel and Unusual Punishments 10 Notable Executions…
Fake news is not new. Biographies, in particular, are fraught with fallacies and fake stories. When fake news slanders individuals, reputations are ruined and lives destroyed. That’s what happened to Elizabeth Wydeville, Queen Consort to Edward IV, and mother of the two princes who disappeared during Richard III’s reign. When I discovered the slander that destroyed Queen Elizabeth’s reputation, I began a 5-year research project to set the record straight. Some fallacies are deliberate, originating in envy or power putsches. Others derive from historical laziness or incompetence. What I learned from my research has determined my choices of biographies, stories that tell previously unrevealed truths about individuals.
Critics argue that William Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him because he lacked the knowledge of classical myth and history basic to his plots and imagery. Jonathan Bates proves that the curriculum of the grammar school in Stratford-on-Avon provided an education sufficient to explain Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Bate reviews books in English and Latin that Shakespeare would have read and that created his rhetorical brilliance.
I treasure Bate’s biography because my own background originated in a rural, agricultural setting outside the social and economic circles that usually produce academic types. Bates disproves the fallacy that only the privileged and elite can survive and thrive in life and careers.
“One man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.”
In this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bard’s own immortal list of a man’s seven ages in As You Like It, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeare’s life and connects them to his world and work as never before.
Here is the author as an infant, born into a world of plague and syphillis, diseases with which he became closely familiar; as a…
When I was researching my novel, I learned why so many psychics are women: Spiritualism, founded in the 19th century, had both an intense following (more than 8 million followers in the late 1800s) and gave women equal importance to men, one of the few religions at the time (or since) to do so. Even today, women’s pain is dismissed by doctors disproportionately to that of men; women’s testimony is scrutinized more closely than that of men. I love books that invest women with abilities that seem super-human, perhaps as compensation for unequal access to resources. These books keep one foot in the real, one in the fantastic.
The first thing I do in the morning is check my phone. And I’m sure I’m not alone in waking to a world I don’t fully recognize. My reassurance is that my friends and family find it equally strange. But what if I was the only one who woke up each day to a world I found baffling?
Kate lives an ordinary life in Manhattan by day, but at night she travels back to Elizabethan England, where she lives a richly detailed dream life. Except Kate doesn’t believe it’s a dream—she believes she’s living two lives, and as the book goes on, details from her present-day reality support her. I love this book because it would be easy to dismiss Kate as mentally ill, but the novel remains ambiguous.
New York, late summer, 2000. A party in a spacious Manhattan apartment, hosted by a wealthy young activist. Dozens of idealistic twenty-somethings have impassioned conversations over takeout dumplings and champagne. The evening shines with the heady optimism of a progressive new millennium. A young man, Ben, meets a young woman, Kate―and they begin to fall in love.
Kate lives with her head in the clouds, so at first Ben isn’t that concerned when she tells him about the recurring dream she’s had since childhood. In the dream, she’s transported to the past, where she lives a second life as Emilia,…
I’m a writer-researcher based at the University of East Anglia. My work is driven by a love of travel and the sea, and an interest in how people move between cultures and ideas across time. I’ve written widely on early modern travel writing and maritime culture, plays about cultural encounter including first contact, and the intersections between ideas about gender, race, colonial and/or imperial identities, and power. At heart, I’m a cultural historian interested in how people and writing can say one thing but mean another.
This study is a model of how to use meticulous archival research – here in the records of the High Court of Admiralty – to make a powerful argument with far-reaching implications: that many of Elizabethan England’s principal merchants and highest-ranking members of the court, including the queen, invested in and profited from extra-legal activities, and that England’s capitalist system was based on theft from European rivals. Andrews’ achievement is to explain clearly the ways the court operated and what its records – depositions and testimonies, complaints and interrogations, and summaries of activities – can tell us. Using information about who was licensed as a privateer and when, how plunder was distributed, and the international disputes caused by the depredations of privateers and pirates, Andrews book exemplifies how economic and naval history can be brought into productive dialogue.
Privateering was a form of legal private warfare at sea in which individuals who possessed suitable ships took the opportunity offered by a war to plunder enemy commerce. In this study of privateering during the Elizabethan war with Spain, which was originally published in 1966, Dr Andrews shows that it was closely connected with trade, in particular having a stimulating effect on oceanic commerce and that it was at the time the main form of English maritime warfare. Dr Andrews begins with an account of how privateering became legal and how it was organised. He then examines the various types…
I’m a fan of historical fiction, and love novels that portray the social
norms and attitudes of other eras in all their contradictory messiness. This
novel shares the Elizabethan age in England, with its wild new ideas (alchemy)
and its rootedness in a superstitious past (a belief in witchcraft).
Alone while her husband is away, Martha’s healing skills bring her
unwanted attention. She must set out on the road to find her husband, traveling
northwards through the countryside, surviving by wit, intelligence, and
determination. Both the richness of the upper class, and the isolated poverty
of the working class, are portrayed.
The author’s wordsmithing is truly beautiful, with vivid descriptions of
complex and unusual characters, the landscape, the weather, and all that Martha
experiences as she survives her journey. I reread certain passages several
times, reveling in the prose. Reading this book was like time traveling, and I
highly recommend…
'Eleanor Porter is a major new voice in historical fiction.' Tim Clayton Where will her loyalty lead her?
Once accused of witchcraft Martha Spicer is now free from the shadow of the gallows and lives a safe and happy life with her husband, Jacob. But when Jacob heads north to accompany his master, he warns Martha to keep her healing gifts a secret, to keep herself safe, to be a good wife.
Martha loves Jacob but without him there to protect her, she soon comes under the suspicious eye of the wicked Steward Boult, who's heard of her talent and…
I have been fascinated with Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare since I was a child and read a kid biography of the queen and saw a Shakespearean comedy. The two topics are completely intertwined—Elizabeth saw Shakespeare’s plays at court and the strong women in Shakespeare’s plays reflect the queen. Elizabeth and Shakespeare have been both my passion and my profession. I have loved teaching and writing about them. One of my favorite things to do is to go see Shakespeare plays and to see portraits of the queen at museums. This passion has so enriched my life. The queen and the playwright have been very good to me.
Today concerns over madness and disability are very much with us, especially if they connect with issues of power and masculinity. This was also true in the age of Shakespeare. Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy’s collection of essays on the topic of mad kings on the Renaissance stage is very readable and interesting, and tie in with contemporary issues. The book is divided into three sections: distracted kingship, fractured masculinity, and performed madness. The plays under discussion include Shakespeare’s King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, Henry VI, and All’s Well That Ends Well. Gutierrez-Dennehy brilliantly and explicitly brings the topics raised in the collection into the twenty-first century.
This book provides a fascinating study into the history of kingship, madness and masculinity that was acted out on the early modern stage. Providing students of early modern history, theatre and performance studies and disability studies with interesting case studies to inform their upper level seminars and research.
Throughout the volume the authors engage with the field of disability studies to show how disability and mental health were portrayed and what that tells us about the period and the people who lived in it. Showing students, a new dimension of early modern Europe.
I have always been fascinated with stargazing, bird-watching, photography, and microscopy, and consequently vintage telescopes, binoculars, cameras, microscopes, and optical and scientific instruments in general. I began my career in an optics laboratory at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, and went on to become a Chartered Engineer. After a successful career in science and engineering, spanning more than three decades, I left the corporate world to make stringed instruments and write fiction and non-fiction. Brass and Glass: Optical Instruments and Their Makersis my first non-fiction book. My novels include An Accident of Birth, andGalactic Alliance: Betrayal. I live in Kent, England with my wife, Margo, and our cat.
This book provides a history of the London instrument makers who worked during the period 1540 to 1610. Few precision instruments survive from this period, and Gerard L’E Turner has constructed a fascinating in-depth account of the London trade and the instrument makers of the time, as well as providing a description and history of the different kinds of instrument, and a detailed descriptive catalogue of the known surviving instruments. This is an invaluable resource about a period considered to be the dawn of the precision instrument trade in England.
Europe in the sixteenth century experienced a period of unprecedented vitality and innovation in the spheres of science and commerce. The Americas had been discovered and the colonizing nations had an urgent need for mathematical instruments for navigation and surveying. The Elizabethan age saw the establishment of the precision instrument-making trade in London, from 1540, a trade that would become world-famous in the succeeding two centuries.The first of a group of London makers was an immigrant from Flanders, Thomas Gemini, succeeded by the Englishman, Humfrey Cole.It has proved possible to find over 100 surviving mathematical instruments, signed and unsigned, made…
I’ve always had a soft spot for pirates. The romanticized version, of course. They epitomize everything I want in a story: adventure, romance, humor, drama, and danger. As for my life story, I’ve traveled around the world (22 countries in 3 months), am married (got it right the second time), find something to laugh at every day (myself, usually), have a five-year-old (plenty of drama), and the most danger I’ve ever been in was climbing into the bed of a pick-up truck to avoid a grizzly bear and her cub at 3:00 A.M. in Alaska.
The Golden Age of England is brought alive through the adventures of Sir Nicholas Beauvallet. When attacked by a Spanish ship which Nicholas then boards, he finds an unexpected treasure in the form of Dona Dominica, a noblewoman traveling back to Spain with her ailing father. Once Dominica accuses him of hastening her father’s demise, Nicolas promises to deliver her safely back to the shores of Spain – something only a madman (or a man in love) would dare. I’m absolutely a huge fan of Georgette Heyer, and this is the book that made me appreciate pirates.
If you love Bridgerton, you'll love Georgette Heyer!
'The greatest writer who ever lived' Antonia Fraser 'When it comes to Regency novels, Heyer was The Master' India Knight 'One of the wittiest, most insightful and rewarding prose writers imaginable' Stephen Fry __________
Sir Nicholas Beauvallet has never been known to resist a challenge.
When he captures a galleon at sea, and the treasure turns out to be the lovely Dona Dominica de Rada y Silva, he vows to return her and her father to the shores of Spain.
But, upon his immediate return, he proposes another venture; one more reckless…
I am a librarian and a writer with a passion for history and challenging the narrative, because sometimes, the things the history books tell us aren’t the whole story. After all, history belongs to the victor, doesn’t it? Finding and writing stories that explore historical lives beyond royals and the wealthy is what I love, and I’m always looking for more books that do this. I started reading historical fiction as a child, delving into things like the Dear America and American Girl series, that told the stories of everyday people in these grand moments of history, and reading those books inspired me to write my own.
This book, set during the Elizabethan period, tells the intrigue-filled story of Christopher (or Kit) Marlowe as he agrees to be a spy for the Queen of England in order to make the money he needs to become a playwright. I know what you’re thinking. This does involve a monarch, but it’s very much about what happens when a desperate man makes a deal with powerful people to achieve his dreams, and ends up in trouble. If you know what happened to the famous playwright who was Shakespeare’s peer before his death (or what likely happened to him), you know what I mean. This book is a thriller, but is at its heart a love story about a man in love with his art and his best friend, and his struggle to choose between them.
An Elizabethan espionage thriller in which playwright Christopher Marlowe spies on Mary, Queen of Scots while navigating the perils of politics, theater, romance—and murder.
England, 1585. In Kit Marlowe's last year at Cambridge, he is approached by Queen Elizabeth's spymaster offering an unorthodox career opportunity: going undercover to intercept a Catholic plot to put Mary, Queen of Scots on Elizabeth's throne. Spying on Queen Mary turns out to be more than Kit bargained for, but his salary allows him to mount his first play, and over the following years he becomes the toast of London's raucous theater scene. But when…
