Pirates of Barbary is an extraordinary record of the European renegades and Islamic sea-rovers who terrorised the Mediterranean and beyond throughout the seventeenth century. From the coast of Southern Europe to Morocco and the Ottoman states of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Christian and Muslim seafarers met in bustling ports to swap religions, to battle and to trade goods and slaves -- raiding as far as Iceland and New England in search of their human currency. Studying the origins of these men, their culture and practices -- from pirate etiquette to intimidation tactics -- Adrian Tinniswood expertly recreates the twilight world of the corsairs in fascinating detail, and uncovers a truly remarkable clash of civilisations. Pirates of Barbary draws on an incredible wealth of material, from furious royal proclamations to the private letters of pirates and their victims, as well as recent Islamic accounts to provide a new perspective on the corsairs, both as criminals and as devout warriors engaged in a battle against European incursions. The result is a kaleidoscopic image of a wild and exotic people, place and time, and a fascinating insight into what it meant to sacrifice all you have for a life so violent, so uncertain, and so alien that it set you apart from the rest of mankind.

Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean

History

Tinniswood, Adrian

Africa

Vintage Books

The Rainborowes

The enthralling history of one English family who changed the world through the turbulent years of the Civil War and birth of the New World.      The Rainborowes bridges two generations and two worlds, weaving together the lives of the Rainborowe clan as they struggle to forge a better life for themselves and a better future for humankind in the New World.      Starting with William Rainborowe, a prominent merchant-mariner and shipmaster, and his equally formidable sons and daughters between 1630 and 1660, we follow their astonishing story through the Civil War, the Putney debates, and settling in America. The Rainborowes explains America and mourns England's failed revolution. It spans oceans and ideologies and encompasses personal tragedies and triumphs, the death of kings and the birth of nations.     Using rare printed material from the period and unpublished manuscripts from collections in Britain and America The Rainborowes recreates day-to-day life on both sides of the Atlantic during one of the most tumultuous periods in Western history. In their efforts to build a paradise on earth, the Rainborowes and their friends encounter pirates and witches, prophets and princes, Muslem militants and Mohican Indians. They build new societies. They are ordinary men and women, and they do an extraordinary thing.     They change the world.

'A masterpiece of social history' Daily Mail\nThere is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes.\nReal life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles.\nDrawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world and shows how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs, and how the reality was so much more interesting than the dream.

Long Weekend

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

Vintage

In His Invention So Fertile, Adrian Tinniswood offers the first biography of Christopher Wren in a generation. It is a book that reveals the full depth of Wren's multifaceted genius, not only as one of the greatest architects who ever lived--the designer of St. Paul's Cathedral--but as an influential seventeenth-century scientist. Tinniswood writes with insight and flair as he follows Wren from Wadham College, Oxford, through the turmoil of the English Civil War, to his role in helping to found the Royal Society--the intellectual and scientific heart of seventeenth-century England. The reader discovers that the great architect was initially an astronomer who was also deeply interested in medicine, physics, and mathematics. Family connections pulled him into architecture, with a commission to restore the chapel at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Tinniswood deftly follows Wren's rise as architect, capturing the atmosphere of Restoration London, as old Royalists scrambled for sinecures from Charles II and Wren learned the art of political infighting at court, finally becoming Surveyor of the Royal Works-the King's engineer. Most important, the author recounts the intriguing story of the building of St. Paul's. The Great Fire of 1666--vividly recreated in Tinniswood's narrative--left London a smoldering husk. Wren played a central role in reshaping the city, culminating with St. Paul's, his masterpiece--though he had to steer between King and cathedral authorities to get his radical, domed design built. As the Enlightenment dawned in England, Wren's magnificent dome rose above London, soon to become an icon of London and world architecture. One of the most influential architects in history, Christopher Wren comes vividly to life in this fittingly grand biography.

His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Oxford University Press

His Invention So Fertile

London: Jonathan Cape

By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London

Europe

New York : Riverhead

From the chance discovery in an attic of thousands of letters comes this fascinating story of an English family in the seventeenth century. The Verneys is narrative social history at its best.

The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England

JONATHAN CAPE.

Pirates of Barbary is an extraordinary record of the European renegades and Islamic sea-rovers who terrorised the Mediterranean and beyond throughout the seventeenth century. From the coast of Southern Europe to Morocco and the Ottoman states of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Christian and Muslim seafarers met in bustling ports to swap religions, to battle and to trade goods and slaves -- raiding as far as Iceland and New England in search of their human currency. Studying the origins of these men, their culture and practices -- from pirate etiquette to intimidation tactics -- Adrian Tinniswood expertly recreates the twilight world of the corsairs in fascinating detail, and uncovers a truly remarkable clash of civilisations.Pirates of Barbary draws on an incredible wealth of material, from furious royal proclamations to the private letters of pirates and their victims, as well as recent Islamic accounts to provide a new perspective on the corsairs, both as criminals and as devout warriors engaged in a battle against European incursions. The result is a kaleidoscopic image of a wild and exotic people, place and time, and a fascinating insight into what it meant to sacrifice all you have for a life so violent, so uncertain, and so alien that it set you apart from the rest of mankind.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The enthralling history of one English family who changed the world through the turbulent years of the Civil War and birth of the New World.      The Rainborowes bridges two generations and two worlds, weaving together the lives of the Rainborowe clan as they struggle to forge a better life for themselves and a better future for humankind in the New World and in the Old.      We follow William Rainborowe, a prominent merchant-mariner and shipmaster, and his equally formidable sons and daughters between 1630 and 1660 -- a time which shattered England and shaped America. The Rainborowes explains America and mourns England's failed revolution. It spans oceans and ideologies and encompasses personal tragedies and triumphs, the death of kings and the birth of nations.     Using rare printed material from the period and unpublished manuscripts from collections in Britain and America The Rainborowes recreates day-to-day life on both sides of the Atlantic during one of the most tumultuous periods in Western history. In their efforts to build a paradise on earth, the Rainborowes and their friends encounter pirates and witches, prophets and princes, Moslem militants and Mohican Indians. They build new societies. They are ordinary men and women, and they do an extraordinary thing.     They change the world.

‘[A] fantastically readable and endlessly fascinating book… Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downtown Abbey never was.’ Rachel Cooke, Observer A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year There is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes. Real life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world. In a definitive social history which combines anecdote and narrative with scholarship, it brings the stately homes of England to life, giving readers an insight into the guilt and the gingerbread, and showing how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs, and how the reality was so much more interesting than the dream.

The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Tinniswood, Adrian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Tinniswood, Adrian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Tinniswood, Adrian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean

The Rainborowes

Long Weekend

His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren

His Invention So Fertile

By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London

The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England

Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean

The Rainborowes

The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars