The greatest of medieval monarchs, Charles the Great (742-814) towers over every notion we have of national heroes & semi-mythical champions. His military conquests exceeded those of Julius Caesar. He had the sagacity & dedication to public service of a Marcus Aurelius. In ruthlessness, as in dedication to personal culture, he was reminiscent of Augustus. Yet Charlemagne was a semi-civilised barbarian chief, with no knowledge of classical culture.

This looming monolith was a man of contradictions: a champion of the Christian Church who sat loose to its rules; an enthusiast for scholarship who never learned to write; a great conqueror whose empire barely survived his own death; a pietist (later canonized) who freely indulged his animal passions & sired a score of bastards; an affable companion & a tyrant who could order the execution of 4, 500 prisoners of war. His life & achievements form an enthralling narrative.

But that is only the beginning. Charlemagne was a phenomenon & phenomena do not die. Later European leaders from Frederick Barbarossa & Charles V to Louis XIV, Napoleon I & Hitler took Charlemagne as their model. His growing mythology inspired the Crusades, fed the concept of chivalry, bolstered absolutist regimes, excited nineteenth-century liberals & emerges today among those who claim Charles the Great as the founder of European unity.

Charlemagne is one of the most remarkable figures in European history: only by understanding him in all his complexity can we begin to understand Europe today.





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The greatest of medieval monarchs, Charles the Great (742-814) towers over every notion we have of national heroes & semi-mythical champions. His military conquests exceeded those of Julius Caesar. He had the sagacity & dedication to public service of a Marcus Aurelius. In ruthlessness, as in dedication to personal culture, he was reminiscent of Augustus. Yet Charlemagne was a semi-civilised barbarian chief, with no knowledge of classical culture.

This looming monolith was a man of contradictions: a champion of the Christian Church who sat loose to its rules; an enthusiast for scholarship who never learned to write; a great conqueror whose empire barely survived his own death; a pietist (later canonized) who freely indulged his animal passions & sired a score of bastards; an affable companion & a tyrant who could order the execution of 4, 500 prisoners of war. His life & achievements form an enthralling narrative.

But that is only the beginning. Charlemagne was a phenomenon & phenomena do not die. Later European leaders from Frederick Barbarossa & Charles V to Louis XIV, Napoleon I & Hitler took Charlemagne as their model. His growing mythology inspired the Crusades, fed the concept of chivalry, bolstered absolutist regimes, excited nineteenth-century liberals & emerges today among those who claim Charles the Great as the founder of European unity.

Charlemagne is one of the most remarkable figures in European history: only by understanding him in all his complexity can we begin to understand Europe today.





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An enlightening historical commentary on Britain & British football in the first half of the twentieth century, this engrossing autobiography, originally published in the 1950s, is sure to inform a new generation of football supporters about a character once synonymous with the game in its more boisterous, yet more innocent, days.

Born in London in 1891, Buchan enjoyed a successful playing career with Sunderland before enlisting as a soldier in the First World War, during which he saw action both at the front & on the pitch. War over, he picked up his playing career with Sunderland before being capped by his country & transferring to Arsenal. Gradually he moved into journalism, writing the first football coaching manual & reporting on the sport for the BBC. Then, in 1951, Charles Buchan

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An enlightening historical commentary on Britain & British football in the first half of the twentieth century, this engrossing autobiography, originally published in the 1950s, is sure to inform a new generation of football supporters about a character once synonymous with the game in its more boisterous, yet more innocent, days.

Born in London in 1891, Buchan enjoyed a successful playing career with Sunderland before enlisting as a soldier in the First World War, during which he saw action both at the front & on the pitch. War over, he picked up his playing career with Sunderland before being capped by his country & transferring to Arsenal. Gradually he moved into journalism, writing the first football coaching manual & reporting on the sport for the BBC. Then, in 1951, Charles Buchan

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' Fear makes me a writer, fear & a lack of confidence'

Charles Bukowski chronicled the seedy underside of the city in which

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Few lives of great men offer so much interest
- & so many mysteries
- as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of

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Few lives of great men offer so much interest
- & so many mysteries
- as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of

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'I never saw a more striking coincidence, ' said Darwin unhappily in 1858. Unknown to him, Alfred Russel Wallace had arrived independently at the same theory of evolution by natural selection. This concluding volume of Janet Browne's biography covers the transformation in Darwin's life after the first unexpected announcement of his & Wallace's theory, followed by publication of Darwin's influential The Origin of Species a year afterwards in 1859. Always a private man by nature, Darwin suddenly found himself a controversial figure, reviewed & discussed in circles that stretched far beyond the boundaries of Victorian science, one of the leading thinkers of the nineteenth century. The second half of Darwin's life was inextricably interwoven with the story of The Origin of Species, & this biography looks closely at the wider publishing world of Victorian England & the different audiences which responded to his ideas. Darwin relied heavily on his friends & family, his publishing contacts, his correspondence network, & the expanding geographical & economic horizons of Victorian Britain to distribute his views to the furthest corners of Empire. This biography considers the Darwinian revolution from Darwin's point of view
- & what it was like to become a scientific celebrity.
...

'I never saw a more striking coincidence, ' said Darwin unhappily in 1858. Unknown to him, Alfred Russel Wallace had arrived independently at the same theory of evolution by natural selection. This concluding volume of Janet Browne's biography covers the transformation in Darwin's life after the first unexpected announcement of his & Wallace's theory, followed by publication of Darwin's influential The Origin of Species a year afterwards in 1859. Always a private man by nature, Darwin suddenly found himself a controversial figure, reviewed & discussed in circles that stretched far beyond the boundaries of Victorian science, one of the leading thinkers of the nineteenth century. The second half of Darwin's life was inextricably interwoven with the story of The Origin of Species, & this biography looks closely at the wider publishing world of Victorian England & the different audiences which responded to his ideas. Darwin relied heavily on his friends & family, his publishing contacts, his correspondence network, & the expanding geographical & economic horizons of Victorian Britain to distribute his views to the furthest corners of Empire. This biography considers the Darwinian revolution from Darwin's point of view
- & what it was like to become a scientific celebrity.
...