18 History


started planning his new capital St Petersburg. Gradually he defeated the opposition from the reactionary prince Alexis within Russia and from the Swedish King Charles XII who controlled the Baltic. The end of his life was dominated by scandal. 236pp, b/w photos. $29.99 NOW £7


69079 MUSSOLINI’S BARBER: And Other Stories of the Unknown Players Who


Made History Happen by Graeme Donald This unusual book reveals the stories of 45 of military history’s bit players. They include the actor, Norman Shelley, who was said to have voiced some of Churchill’s most famous speeches during World War II. Here, too is Luigi Galbani,


Mussolini’s Barber, who knew his client’s worst secrets - but did he keep them to himself? There is also Tsutomu Yamaguchi who, incredibly, survived the atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as Boston Corbett, the man who shot the man who shot President Lincoln! 288 pages illus in b/w. £9.99 NOW £3


69758 THE PIRATE GOW by Daniel Defoe Defoe (1660-1731) is affectionately known as the father of the English novel and wrote nearly 500 books including Robinson Crusoe. Reputedly written by him and first published in 1725, Nigel Rigby (Head of Research at the National Maritime Museum) recounts how the true story of John Gow unfolded against the backdrop of the closing years of the Golden Age of piracy. After seizing his ship and murdering the captain and three officers, Gow embarked on a short but notorious piratical cruise off the coasts of Spain and Portugal in 1724. 118pp with the spelling from the 1725 original. £8.99 NOW £3


69837 HEROES, RASCALS AND ROGUES by Rupert Matthews and John Birdsall Shameless libertines, infamous architects, controversial artists, dastardly train robbers, marauding pirates cheek by jowl with intrepid explorers, inspirational war heroes and military martyrs. If you know little about Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Attila the Hun, Billy the Kid, Cassius Clay, Geronimo, Edwin Hubble or Amelia Earhart now is the time to learn, in the easiest and most enjoyable way ever. 256 pages 23 x 17.5mm illus in colour and b/w. £17.99 NOW £4


69110 HEART AND


STOMACH OF A KING: Elizabeth I, The Wiles of a Virgin Queen


by English Heritage


The celebrated Virgin Queen was the last of the Tudor monarchs and the blood of her father, Henry VIII, flowed vigorously through her


veins. Whether she was heroically exhorting her troops at Tilbury to repulse the Spanish Armada or dealing with a high-handed courtier, her manner and expression seldom failed to leave their mark. 92 pocket-sized pages illus in b/w.


£7.99 NOW £2


69111 AUGUSTUS HERVEY'S JOURNAL: The Adventures Afloat and Ashore of a Naval Casanova by David Erskine


Born into the wildly eccentric Earls family of Bristol in 1724, the Hon. Augustus John Hervey knew scandal from an early age. His father was the infamous cross- dressing courtier lampooned by Alexander Pope as "Lord Fanny", and following a secret marriage and notorious bigamy trial he was happy to escape to sea. Augustus was soon to prove that true Hervey blood coursed through his veins. He proved himself a surprisingly effective officer, achieving independent command by 1746, which is the point at which these journals begin. Clearly proud of his bedchamber triumphs, he happily relates in candid detail the often elaborate tactics employed by himself and his nymphomaniac prizes, and he claims his rightful place as the English Casanova. Never intended for publication, his journal is unique in its forthright descriptions of the sailor's life ashore and afloat. 349pp, paperback. £12.95 NOW £4


69969 CAESAR’S WIVES: Sex, Power and


Politics in the Roman Empire by Annelise Freisenbruch


There have always been scandalous tales about the wives, mistresses, mothers, sisters and daughters of the Caesars, but who were they really and what were their true roles in the rise, decline and fall of the Roman Empire? Starting in the year 30 BC when Cleopatra, Octavia and Livia stood at the cusp of Rome’s change from a republic to an autocracy, ending in the 5th century AD with Galla Placidia, who was captured by Goth invaders and married to one of their kings. Here is Julia, a wisecracking daughter who disgraced her father by getting drunk in the Roman forum and having sex with strangers on the speaker’s platform, Poppea, a vain and beautiful mistress who persuaded the emperor to kill his mother so that they could marry, Domitia, a wife who had a flagrant affair with an actor before conspiring in her husband’s assassination and Fausta, who tried to seduce her own stepson, plotted to have him executed and was boiled to death as a punishment. 337 pages illus in b/w. £17.99 NOW £6


70388 READ MY HEART: A Love Story in


England’s Age of Revolution by Jane Dunn Sir William Temple (1628-99), the handsome, scientifically-minded son of staunch Parliamentarians, became a celebrated essayist and diplomat in the reign of Charles II. Dorothy Osborne (1627-1695) was an intellectual romantic from a family of committed Royalists. They lived through England’s age of revolution: civil war, regicide, republicanism and restoration. Not surprisingly, their love was bitterly opposed by both families, but they finally married in 1654. Both were gifted and strikingly modern writers, and 77 letters from Dorothy to William, written during their clandestine courtship, still survive. William’s extant essays and correspondence reveal his interests and preoccupations in everything from love to gardening. Both were confidants of William and Mary - in fact, they can be said to have enabled the Glorious Revolution by inspiring their marriage. Colour plates, 414pp. Roughcut pages, small remainder mark. $30 NOW £5


HISTORY


History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.


- Maya Angelou 70579 THE GREAT


PYRAMID OF GIZA: History


and Speculation by James Bonwick First published under the title Pyramid Facts and Fancies in 1877, here is a bargain paperback facsimile reprint. One of the ancient world’s legendary Seven Wonders, only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains. The final resting place of Egyptian royalty, this awesome feat of engineering along the Nile’s


West Bank has survived to inspire thousands of years of admiration and speculation. How did they build it and why? Noted British Egyptologist of the 19th century James Bonwick was among the first authors to attempt to explain its construction, symbolism, design and purpose. The world’s tallest building for more than 43 centuries, the pyramid’s two million blocks of stone, each weighing more than two tons, were assembled with an astonishing degree of accuracy. Bonwick looks at its steps, passages, chambers and inscriptions, the red granite walls of the king’s burial chamber, monumental tombs, obelisks and the Great Sphinx. 224pp in paperback.


£10.99 NOW £3.50


70736 MOTHERLAND: A Philosophical History of


Russia by Leslie Chamberlain From 1815-1991, Russia was a country which sat uncertainly on the Western fringe in an alternative cultural space. What is this Russia that is a ‘Motherland’ to itself and an ‘otherland’ to outsiders? The Russian Revolution and Russian philosophy share a common origin. They begin not with an idea but with a political class and its discontents. That class


was the 19th century Russian intelligentsia which defines itself by agitating for social reform. Its members were critical thinkers who regretted the primitive political state of their country under Tsarism. The first generation were active in the 1820s and the second was marked by the ‘beautiful souls’ of 1838-48. After 1848 the Populists arrived and in all these periods there were writers and also religious thinkers who fitted under no single heading. Since many of the ideas current in 19th century Russia are still with us, this must indicate that there is a European treasury to rediscover. It was not until the eve of revolution in 1917 that Russian philosophers came to grips with individualism, only for this endeavour to be fragmented and forced underground by the totalitarian century that followed. The end of Communism and the rediscovery of that semi-concealed world have allowed us to see a continuous Russian philosophical tradition. 331pp in large paperback. £14.99 NOW £6


70474 HOUSE OF WISDOM: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization by Jonathan Lyons


Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe became a backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy and frequent violent conflict. However, in lands from Spain to Persia, Islamic culture was in full bloom, dazzling the few Europeans who travelled to see the scientific


advances coming from Baghdad, Antioch and Toledo. Philosophers, astronomers and mathematicians were steadily pushing back the frontiers of scientific knowledge, and central to this was the royal library in Baghdad. Known as the House of Wisdom, an army of scholars worked there at the behest of the Abbasid caliphs, painstakingly recording and cataloguing the discoveries, theories and ideas of the great Muslim thinkers, men like al-Khwarizmi, the pioneer of algebra, Avicenna, the physician and philosopher, Gaber, the


70816 NATIVE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE by Jay Wertz


Native Americans have fascinated the world ever since European explorers discovered the Western hemisphere and here is their story from migration during the Ice Age to the influence of Native American culture today examining their tribal history and turbulent relationship with the West. In a large clamshell box, this set includes a 64 page book with over 200 illustrations and 15 rare and newly researched removable facsimile documents of historical importance. These include an issue of The Cherokee Phoenix newspaper from 1828, a 17th century map of the New World, President Lincoln’s handwritten pardon of 38 Dakota warriors, top-secret Navajo Code Talker documents from the Second World War, and a full size replica of the painting of ‘God Give the World to Arapaho Children’ by America Meredith. Discover the Conquistadors and the tribes of the South West, the effects of English and French colonisation, the Spanish colonisation of New Mexico, the California mission system, encounters by Lewis and Clarke, the first reservations, gold, ranchers and farmers, Alaskan and Arctic tribes, allotment and reform. With superb maps, hundreds of artefacts photographed, no expense has been spared in the production of this lavish publication.


£20 NOW £7 Bibliophile Books Unit 5 Datapoint, 6 South Crescent, London E16 4TL TEL: 020 74 74 24 74


70537 ENGLAND’S SEA FISHERIES: The Commercial Sea Fisheries of England and Wales Since 1300 edited by David J. Starkey,


Chris Reid and Neil Ashcroft We were overwhelmed by the first photo in this thoroughly researched and informative book, which captures the tense and thrilling moment when the net disgorges its cargo on to the deck of a fishing vessel. And the rest of the images and stories are just as captivating. Since time immemorial, fish and fishermen have played the most fundamental role in the provision of food in England and Wales, and this definitive work reaches to the heart of every aspect of the nation’s fisheries. No previous publication has tackled this immense subject in such detail and in so accessible a manner. It brings alive the history of a livelihood, once central to our way of life but now facing extinction. Fishing has always been a complex human activity and its story involves myriad themes: seafood and diet, the curing and preservation of fish and its distribution, fish farming - from monastic institutions to the modern hi-tech methods and aquaculture - boats and gear, catching methods, the social structures of fishing communities, the Missions to deep-sea fishermen, the development of harbours and docks, fish


protection against the background of ecological collapse, and the fishermen’s skills set against such a dangerous occupation. These are just some of the subjects which are covered in this important work. 272 pages 25cm by 29.5cm illustrated with archive b/w photos.


£35 NOW £14


chemist, and Averroes, whose writings expounded and extended Aristotle’s great works of logic. Even while their countrymen were waging bloody Crusades against Muslims, a few Christian scholars travelled east to seek out the great minds of the Arab world at immense personal risk, most famously Adelard of Bath, who in 1109 returned to England with priceless jewels of astronomical and mathematical science which would transform European scientific understanding. Adelard and those like him used the knowledge they brought back to lay the foundation for the Renaissance. Lyons’ important book presents for the first time the Western debt owed to the medieval Arabs. With eight pages of spectacular colour plates, a timeline and useful list of important figures. 248pp. $26 NOW £8


70542 HISTORY’S WORST PREDICTIONS: And The


People Who Made Them by Eric Chaline


‘If the past is another country, the future is another galaxy’, writes the author of this fascinating investigation into the forecasters’ almost supernatural ability to get things completely wrong! Since its earliest beginnings, civilisation has


had its prophets, but the only difference between our modern-day seers and their predecessors of two millennia ago, whether they cast runes or cut up a goat to see the future, or back up their predictions with complex computerized models, is that their forecasts are no less inaccurate. Every technological innovation from the railroads to the personal computer has been derided as a flop, a fad or a pointless waste of money. Conversely, such inventions as the atomic vacuum cleaner and the robot-servant in every home have failed to materialize. Cultural commentators and critics have managed not only to slam the most successful artists of their generation but also to reject the technological age’s most influential mass media: radio, movies and TV. Organised chronologically from antiquity to modern times, this book exposes the credulity and absurdity of humanity’s prophetic utterances, while providing hours of fun. We leave you with a quote from Niels Bohr, physicist: ‘Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!’ 256 pages illustrated in colour and b/w with maps. ONLY £11


70596 SCENES FROM A


GEORGIAN LIFE by Margaret Willes


Caricatures and cartoons occupied the place of the popular press in 18th century Britain. They are graphic pictorial renderings of the flow of events, fashions and moods


of society. Nearly 150 examples have been pasted to the walls of the Caricature Room at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire, including many by our favourites Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray and George Cruickshank. The full heading and publishing details are given at the beginning of the text for each caricature. 48 page large softback with colour. £4.99 NOW £2


70595 STORM AND CONQUEST: The Clash of the Empires in the Eastern Seas,


1809 by Stephen Taylor In the wars against Napoleon Bonaparte a supply of saltpetre, the principal ingredient of gunpowder, was crucial, and in 1808 the East India Company was contracted to supply the government with Bengali saltpetre. To guard the cargo there was a navy escort, and meanwhile


the French frigates and privateers which had formerly plied the Mediterranean had removed to the island of Mauritius and were preying on merchant ships in the Bay of Bengal. In the course of the next year, 15 of the East India Company’s ships came to grief and what followed was the Mauritius campaign, a fight against Bonaparte on the other side of the world. The author tells the story of this dramatic period in English history using Admiralty and East India Company logbooks and dispatches. Two


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figures stand out: Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, commander of the East Indies Squadron, and the brutal captain Robert Corbet based in the Cape. Apart from the military and the merchants, passengers aboard the East Indiamen included the lively Lady Barlow, wife of the governor of Madras but looking elsewhere for entertainment, and her daughter Eliza, whom she hoped to marry to a wealthy husband. A terrific read. 380pp, 37 reproductions in b/w and colour plates. £20 NOW £7


70545 LAST COMANCHE CHIEF: The Life and Times of


Quanah Parker by Bill Neeley This moving and compelling portrayal of the history of Native Americans and the American West has been approved by Quanah Parker’s grandson. He describes it as ‘positive written’ and has honoured the author with the Comanche name of Chatuhbohtuh meaning ‘good writer’. It is to be


hoped, he says, that this book will cause others to realise there is ‘another side of Comanche life that is beautiful and caring’. Born in 1850, Quanah was the fiercest and bravest of the Comanches who fought desperately to preserve their culture. He resisted to the last, still heading a band of Quahadas after the majority of the tribe had acquiesced to resettlement on a reservation. But even the Comanches, those legendary horsemen of the plains, who had held off Spanish and Mexican expansion for two centuries, could not turn back the massive influx of people and weaponry from the east. Faced with the bitter choice between extermination or compromise, Quanah sat down at the bargaining table. He learned English and diplomacy and, struggling to bridge two very different worlds, he fought endlessly to gain a better deal for his people. With a foreword by James M. Cox, grandson of Quanah Parker and former chairman of the Comanche Tribe. 276 pages with b/w archive photos, maps and notes. $24.95 NOW £8.50


70924 LOST TO THE WEST by Lars Brownworth Subtitled The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilisation. If you like your history gory, then buy this book. It is packed with stories of assassination, mass mutilation and execution, sexual scheming, ruthless grasping for power, and clashing armies that soaked battlefields with the blood of slain warriors numbering in the tens of thousands! The Byzantine


Empire was what was left of the Roman Empire when, in the 5th century, its western half fell. However, unlike its western counterpart, the eastern empire would endure and flourish for another eleven centuries. For more than a thousand years, Byzantium was to reign as the glittering seat of Christian civilisation. When literacy all but vanished in the west, Byzantium made primary education available to both sexes. It was this empire that preserved the great gifts of the classical world. Some 40,000 ancient Greek texts were transmitted to us by Byzantine scribes. The eastern empire also shielded Western Europe from invasion until it was ready to take its own place at the centre of the world stage. Filled with unforgettable stories, this volume reveals how much we owe to Byzantium. 329 pages with maps and appendix: Emperors of Constantinople. $26 NOW £6.50


67498 BARBARIANS TO ANGELS: The Dark


Ages Reconsidered by Peter Wells The kingdoms of Christendom that emerged, starting with the reign of Charlemagne in the late 8th century, sprang from a robust, previously little-known European culture, which reached new heights in artistry, technology, architecture, craft production, commerce and learning, engineers and universities. A large number of new cities and urban centres were founded like Gudme in modern Denmark, Helgo in Sweden, Ralfwiek in Germany and Staraja Ladoga in Russia and these, are just a few of these previously unknown cities. 240pp, illus. £17.99 NOW £3.50


69587 TRAITOR TO THE CROWN


by James Long and Ben Long King Charles II always trod a very perilous line between his nation’s Protestantism and his personal affinity for Catholic France. The King’s sympathies made him vulnerable and by 1679 fear of Catholic conspiracy against the King had provoked panic in politicians and an over-zealous reaction from


the legal system. In the midst of all this, Samuel Pepys, celebrated diarist and now Secretary of the Admiralty, found himself accused, along with the country’s finest shipwright, Sir Anthony Deane, of high treason for selling naval secrets to France. Imprisoned in the Tower, abandoned by the king, he served loyally for many years and facing a show trial and public execution, Pepys set about investigating his mysterious accuser, one Colonel John Scott. He soon uncovered a life of ambition, greed, forgery, treason and murder, the last of which he was able to prove, which ultimately secured his own pardon. Colour and b/w plates, 322pp US paperback edition. $16.95 NOW £4.50


69838 HIEROGLYPH DETECTIVE by Nigel Strudwick


This chunky user-friendly book is designed to help the keen museum-goer to decipher basic meanings on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. Part one is an introduction to the different types of script and some basic grammar, including how to look up a word or sign, breaking up words and sentences, pronunciation and numbers and dates. Part two consists of 23 examples of actual texts on display in world museums or on the walls of tombs and temples. First of all there is a paragraph on the context of such scripts as the Abydos King List, the tomb of Rameses I or the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut, then a translation and transliteration, and finally a stage- by-stage commentary on the translation process. The last section of the book has lists of signs, shapes and vocabulary. Plus history and culture, including burial rituals, the priesthood, spells for the dead. 160pp, softback, illus.


$16.95 NOW £4.50 www.bibliophilebooks.com


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