HardCover. Pub Date :2008-08-18 Pages: 464 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins UK The dramatic story of Lady Hester Stanhope - a wilful beauty turned bohemian adventurer - who left England as a young woman. unashamedly enjoyed a string of lovers and established her own exotic fiefdom in the Lebanese mountains where she died in 1839.Ambitious. daring and uncompromising. Lady Hester Stanhope was never cut out for a conventional life. Born into an illustrious political dynasty. she played society hostess for her uncle. William Pitt . the Younger After his death. she struck out for unchartered territory. setting sail with her lover for the Mediterranean and Constantinople - turning her back on England. as events would transpire. forever.It was in the Middle East. however. that she found her destiny. As the greatest female traveller of her age. she was the first western wo...

Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope

Biographies & Memoirs

Ellis, Kirsten

Travelers & Explorers

Harper Press

The story of Britain's colourful maritime past seen through the changing fortunes of the Cornish port of Falmouth. Within the space of few years, during the 1560s and 1570s, a maritime revolution took place in England that would contribute more than anything to the transformation of the country from a small rebel state on the fringes of Europe into a world power. Until then, it was said, there was only one Englishman capable of sailing across the Atlantic. Yet within ten years an English ship with an English crew was circumnavigating the world. At the same time in Cornwall, in the Fal estuary, just a single building - a lime kiln - existed where the port of Falmouth would emerge. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, Falmouth would be one of the busiest harbours in the world. 'The Levelling Sea' uses the story of Falmouth's spectacular rise and fall to explore wider questions about the sea and its place in history and imagination. Drawing on his own deep connection with Cornwall, award-winning author Philip Marsden writes unforgettably about the power of the sea and its ability to produce greed on a piratical scale, dizzying corruption, and grand and tragic aspirations.

The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail

Marsden, Philip

History

Italys Sorrow A Year Of War 1944 45

JAMES HOLLAND

Europe

'More than just a work of first-class scholarship, Liberty's Exile's is a deeply moving masterpiece that fulfil's the historian's most challenging ambition: to revivify past experience.' Niall Fergusson On a November day in 1783, the last British troops pulled out of New York City, bringing British rule in the United States to an end. It was the greatest British imperial defeat in generations. None felt the loss more immediately than the hundreds of thousands of Americans who had remained loyal to Britain. What would happen to them in the new United States? Would they and their families be safe? Facing grave doubts, some sixty thousand loyalists decided to leave their homes and become refugees, to rebuild their shattered lives elsewhere in the British Empire. They sailed for Britain, for Canada, for Jamaica and the Bahamas; some ventured as far as Sierra Leone and India. Wherever they went, the voyage out of America was a fresh beginning and it carried them into a dynamic if uncertain new world. 'Liberty's Exiles' tells, for the first time, the story of this extraordinary global diaspora - the most wide-ranging refugee crisis Britain had ever faced. Through painstaking archival research and vivid story-telling, award-winning historian Maya Jasanoff recreates the astonishing journeys of ordinary individuals whose lives were overturned by extraordinary events. She tells of loyalists like Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who spent nearly thirty years as a migrant, questing for a home in Britain, Jamaica, and Canada. David George, a black preacher born into slavery, found freedom and faith in the British Empire, and eventually led his followers to seek a new Jerusalem in Sierra Leone. Mohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant resettled his people under British protection in Ontario; while adventurer William Augustus Bowles tried to shape a loyal Cree Indian state in Florida. For all these figures and more it was the British Empire -not the United States - that held out the promise of 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. An exhilirating, personality-filled book, 'Liberty's Exiles' is history at its finest.

Liberty's Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire

Jasanoff, Maya

First UK Edition, 2007, first printing, 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2, an almost like-new hardcover except for slight foxing spots on the 9uter edge and two tiney scratch marks near the top of the first page where a sticker was porbably removed, with a fine unclipped (L20) dust jacket, from HarperPress. By Patrick Bishop, previously author of the bestselling Fighter Boys. 429 pages including index. ISBN 978-0-00-718986-1.

Bomber Boys - Fighting Back 1940 - 1945

Bishop, Patrick

'Dry Store Room No. 1' is an intimate biography of the Natural History Museum, celebrating the eccentric personalities who have peopled it and capturing the wonders of scientific endeavour, academic rigour and imagination. 'This book is a kind of museum of the mind. It is my own collection, a personal archive, designed to explain what goes on behind the polished doors in the Natural History Museum. The lustre of a museum does not depend only on the artefacts or objects it contains -- the people who work out of sight are what keeps a museum alive!I want to bring those invisible people into the sunlight.' Behind the public facade of any great museum there lies a secret domain: one of unseen galleries, locked doors, priceless specimens and hidden lives. Through the stories of the numerous eccentric individuals whose long careers have left their mark on the study of evolutionary science, Richard Fortey, former senior paleaontologist at London's Natural History Museum, celebrates the pioneering work of the Museum from its inception to the present day.He delves into the feuds, affairs, scandals and skulduggery that have punctuated its long history, and formed a backdrop to extraordinary scientific endeavour. He explores the staying power and adaptability of the Museum as it responds to changes wrought by advances in technology and molecular biology -- 'spare' bones from an extinct giant bird suddenly become cutting-edge science with the new knowledge that DNA can be extracted from them, and ancient fish are tested with the latest equipment that is able to measure rises in pollution. 'Dry Store Room No. 1' is a fascinating and affectionate account of a hidden world of untold treasures, where every fragment tells a story about time past, by a scientist who combines rigorous professional learning with a gift for prose that sparkles with wit and literary sensibility.

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum

Science & Math

Fortey, Richard

Biological Sciences

Re-evaluation of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Dan Jones brings to life the squalor, drama and complex hierarchies of life in the 14th century. He examines village life and the failings of government from the perspective of the revolt's key players.

Summer of Blood: The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 (AUTHOR SIGNED)

Dan Jones

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Leanda de Lisle brings the story of nine days’ queen Lady Jane Grey and her forgotten sisters, the rivals of Elizabeth I, to vivid life in her fascinating biography.”—Philippa GregoryMary, Katherine, and Jane Grey–sisters whose mere existence nearly toppled a kingdom and altered a nation’s destiny–are the captivating subjects of Leanda de Lisle’s new book. The Sisters Who Would Be Queen breathes fresh life into these three young women, who were victimized in the notoriously vicious Tudor power struggle and whose heirs would otherwise probably be ruling England today. Born into aristocracy, the Grey sisters were the great-granddaughters of Henry VII, grandnieces to Henry VIII, legitimate successors to the English throne, and rivals to Henry VIII’s daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Lady Jane, the eldest, was thrust center stage by greedy men and uncompromising religious politics when she briefly succeeded Henry’s son, the young Edward I. Dubbed “the Nine Days Queen” after her short, tragic reign from the Tower of London, Jane has over the centuries earned a special place in the affections of the English people as a “queen with a public heart.” But as de Lisle reveals, Jane was actually more rebel than victim, more leader than pawn, and Mary and Katherine Grey found that they would have to tread carefully in order to avoid sharing their elder sister’s violent fate. Navigating the politics of the Tudor court after Jane’ s death was a precarious challenge. Katherine Grey, who sought to live a stable life, earned the trust of Mary I, only to risk her future with a love marriage that threatened Queen Elizabeth’s throne. Mary Grey, considered too petite and plain to be significant, looked for her own escape from the burden of her royal blood–an impossible task after she followed her heart and also incurred the queen’s envy, fear, and wrath. Exploding the many myths of Lady Jane Grey’s life, unearthing the details of Katherine’s and Mary’s dramatic stories, and casting new light on Elizabeth’s reign, Leanda de Lisle gives voice and resonance to the lives of the Greys and offers perspective on their place in history and on a time when a royal marriage could gain a woman a kingdom or cost her everything.

The Sisters Who Would Be Queen

De Lisle, Leanda

HOUSE OF STONE is based on a remarkable series of interviews with a white farmer and black nanny, set against the backdrop of the last of Britain's colonies in Africa to become independent, and the descent into madness of one of Africa's most respected nationalist leaders. "...One bright morning, Nigel Hough, one of the few remaining white farmers, received the news he had been dreading. There was a crowd of war veterans at his gates demanding he hand over his homestead. When he returned, the mob started a fire and dragged him to an outhouse. To his shock, the leader of the invaders was the family's much-loved, nanny Aqui. "Get out or we'll kill you," she spat. "There is no place for whites in our country." Christina Lamb uncovered the astonishing human saga told in HOUSE OF STONE while traveling back and forth to report clandestinely on Zimbabwe. Her powerful narrative traces the history of the brutal Rhodesia civil war, independence, the hope then despair of the Mugabe years, through the lives of two people she met who find themselves on opposing sides. Although born within a few miles of each other, their experience growing up could not have been more different. While Nigel played cricket for his country and piloted his own plane under Victoria Falls Bridge, Aqui grew up in a mud-and-dpole hut, sleeping on the floor with her brothers and sisters. "They had cars and went shopping in South Africa. We didn't have food and had to walk an hour each day to fetch water," she remembers.

House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided In WarTorn Z

CHRISTINA LAMB

A magisterial new history of the British soldier - a man famously described by the Duke of Wellington as 'the scum of the earth'. From battlefield to barrack-room, this book is stuffed to the brim with anecdotes and stories of soldiers from the army of Charles II, through Empire and two World Wars to modern times. The British soldier forms a core component of British history. In this scholarly but gossipy book, Richard Holmes presents a rich social history of the man (and now more frequently woman) who have been at the heart of his writing for decades. Technological, political and social changes have all made their mark on the development of warfare, but have the attitudes of the soldier shifted as much we might think? For Holmes, the soldier is part of a unique tribe -- and the qualities of loyalty and heroism have continued to grow amongst these men. And while today the army constitutes the smallest proportion of the population since the first decade of its existence (regular soldier

Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors

HOLMES, Richard

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

Books by Harper Press