An examination of the European exploration of the African continent probes the impact and reputation of the explorers and discusses the abnormal psychology that led these men to court death in the African wilderness.

Hearts Of Darkness

Travel

MCLYNN, Frank

Africa

RANDOM HOUSE UK

First edition. A new biography. x , 567 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..

Robert Lewis Stevenson

Biographies & Memoirs

The celebrated African explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley was one of the most fascinating of the late-Victorian adventurers. Born into poverty and illegitimacy, he survived a series of incredible adventures at sea and in the U.S., emerging as a talented journalist. His writing led to a commission to find David Livingstone, the greatest single feat in African exploration. Yet behind the public man lay a disturbed personality. As Frank McLynn’s study shows, his foundation of the Congo Free State on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium, as well as the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition were both dubious enterprises that tarnished Stanley’s reputation and revealed his complexand often troublingrelationship with Africa.

Stanley, the making of an African explorer

Constable

Bound in publisher's original cloth with the spine stamped in gilt.

Stanley - Sorcerers Apprentice

Constable And Co

Although 1759 is not a date as well known in British history as 1215, 1588, or 1688, there is a strong case to be made that it is the most significant year since 1066. In 1759 - the fourth year of the Seven Years War - the British defeated the French in arduous campaigns on four continents and also achieved absolute mastery of the seas.Drawing on a mass of primary materials - from texts in the Vatican archives to oral histories of the North American Indians - Frank McLynn shows how the conflict between Brtiain and France triggered the first 'world war', raging from Europe to Africa; the Caribbean to the Pacific; the plains of the Ganges to the Great Lakes of North America. It also brought about the War of Independence, the acquisition by Britain of the Falkland Islands and, ultimately, the French Revolution.

1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World

History

Europe

Vintage

A vivid, brutal and enthralling account of the Burma Campaign -- one of the most punishing and hard-fought military adventures of World War Two. Often described as "the forgotten war", the Burma Campaign was one of the most punishing and protracted military adventures of World War Two. It has become notorious for the ingenious tactics used by Britain, America and their allies on the one hand and the Japanese and their allies on the other, as well as for the atrocious conditions that had to be endured by both sides. Seasonal monsoon rains -- which allowed effective campaigning for little more than half the year -- as well as famine, disease, snakes and crocodiles all bore heavily on the troops. Impenetrable jungle, poor transport infrastructure and the Allied preoccupation with the war in Europe made this the longest single campaign fought by the British in the Second World War. It is against this epic backdrop that Frank McLynn constructs the dramatic story of the four larger-than-life commanders directing the Allied effort: Louis Mountbatten, Orde Wingate, Joseph Stilwell and William Slim. Strikingly original in its approach, the book explores the Campaign through the prism of these four men and their often stormy relationship. From 1942 and the greatest defeat for British arms in the history of the Empire, through the crucial simultaneous battles of Imphal and Kohima -- 'the Stalingrad of the East' -- and on to ultimate victory in 1945, this is a vivid, brutal and enthralling account. By telling it through the interactions and antagonisms of its principal players, we see how the plans, designs and strategies of generals and politicians were translated into a hideous reality for the men on the ground.

The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942-45

Asia

Vintage Books

Sir Henry Morton Stanley, is known popularly for his celebrated meeting with David Livingstone. But Stanley is by any reckoning a key figure in the history of the European penetration of the African continent. He was also a man of intriguing psychological complexity - a complexity which Frank McLynn seeks to understand. In this book the author focuses on the years 1841-1877, the most dramatic and fascinating years of Stanley's long life. Stanley was one of the great achievers of the 19th century. Born in poverty and illegitimacy, with an infancy spent in a Welsh workhouse, he survived a series of incredible adventures at sea and in the USA to emerge as a journalist of talent after the American Civil War. His courage on the British Ethiopian expedition to chastise Emperor Theodore brought him to the attention of James Gordon Bennett, proprieter of the "New York Herald Tribune" who commissioned him to find Livingstone in darkest Africa. His historic meeting with Livingstone at Ujiji in 1871 ("Dr Livingstone, I presume") was the scoop of the century. It brought him fame and fortune and the opportunity to carry out the greatest single feat in the whole of African exploration: crossing the continent from east to west and following the Congo to its Atlantic mouth. Behind these monumental achievements was a man who was a pathological liar, with sadomasochistic tendencies, who himself occupied a blurred middle-ground between fantasy and reality.

Stanley, the Making of an African Explorer (Lives and Letters)

Oxford University Press

Beginning with the accession of James I to the Scottish throne in 1406, the Royal House of Stuart was plagued by incredible, almost supernatural, misfortune. From the battle of Flodden field, through the executions of Mary, Queen of Scots and Charles I, King of England, to the exile of James II in 1688 during the Glorious Revolution, the tragedy of the Stuarts seemed to be re-enacted by each generation. But with the birth in 1720 of Charles Edward Stuart--the "Bonnie Prince Charlie" of romantic legend--the final act had at last begun. In this widely acclaimed biography--the first based on comprehensive research among previously untapped sources--Frank McLynn brings to life the elusive and enigmatic "Prince in the Heather." McLynn's ten years of work in such diverse libraries as the Vatican Archives in Rome, majors collections in the United States, France, and Spain, and the Royal archives in Windsor (where the Stuart Papers are housed) has enabled him to present an entirely new interpretation of the life and career of Charles Edward Stuart. Following the Prince from his birth and unhappy childhood in the Stuart's exiled court in Rome, through his rise as the charismatic "Young Pretender" and the crushing defeat at Culloden, to his exile and death in Italy, McLynn illuminates episodes in the Prince's life hitherto obscure or deliberately concealed. What emerges is truly the stuff of classical tragedy--a leader of promise brought down by a combination of ill-luck and his own fatally flawed character. Potentially the Stuart family's best hope to regain the throne of England, Bonnie Prince Charlie inherited the cunning and seductive charm of Charles II, the stubborn bravery of James II, and the rugged physique of his Scots ancestors. But, increasingly dominated by self destructive character traits and the complex politics of his age, he ended his life a sad, drunken figure, dissolute and physically wasted. When his death came on 31 January 1788--the anniversary of the execution of his great grandfather Charles I--the tragedy had come full circle. Filled with the excitement of adventure and brimming with tales too improbable for fiction, Charles Edward Stuart is a fascinating biography of a remarkable man.

Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart

Historical

Eighteenth-century England was a land of profound contradiction. On the one hand it exhibited the spirit of the Age of Reason, with the intellects of Alexander Pope, Adam Smith, and Samuel Johnson flourishing in Augustan calm and elegance. But on the other it was a Hogarthian caricature come to life, a world of crime, disease, and squalor, where life was cheap and visitors to English cities half expected to be robbed, raped, or murdered upon arrival--and often had their worst fears confirmed. Was it a society more open than its oppressive continental neighbors that allowed this chaos? Or was it, in some crude fashion, a means of redistributing wealth in a country where the line between rich and poor was a veritable abyss? While questions such as these have been raised and partly answered in the last decade, Frank McLynn here provides the first comprehensive view of crime and its consequences in eighteenth-century England. Much of the book dispels the traditonal myths of crime in the eighteenth century, but it does more than merely challenge these old assumptions. McLynn places crime and punishment in a wider social and political context, and shows how a pervading sense of insecurity--due in part to the constant threat of Jacobitism and instability of the economy--contributed in a large part to the rampant lawlessness. He also demonstrates how, despite the ever-growing list of capital offenses, a day at the Tyburn gallows offered more in the way of celebration than deterrance for would-be criminals. Drawing many parallels to our own often chaotic world, this book offers us a distant and disturbing mirror, one that helps readers focus not only on the social problems of yesterday, but on those of today as well.

Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England

Napoleon

Leaders & Notable People

JONATHAN CAPE.

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