WINNER OF THE HISTORICAL WRITERS ASSOCIATION NON-FICTION CROWNAS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4' Fabulous timely a marvellous achievement' Spectator'A richly resonant work which recasts our understanding of the Elizabethan era' Daily Telegraph In 1570 after plots & assassination attempts against her Elizabeth I was excommunicated by the Pope It was the beginning of cultural economic & political exchanges with the Islamic world of a depth not again experienced until the modern age England signed treaties with the Ottoman Porte received ambassadors from Morocco & shipped munitions to Marrakech in the hope of establishing an accord which would keep the common enemy of Catholic Spain at bay This awareness of the Islamic world found its way into many of the great English cultural productions of the day
- especially of course Shakespeare's Othello & The Merchant of Venice This Orient Isle shows that England's relations with the Muslim world were far more extensive & often more amicable than we have ever appreciated & that their influence was felt across the political commercial & domestic landscape of Elizabethan England
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SEMI DETACHEDIf the end of the world is nigh then surely it's only sensible to make alternative arrangements All he cares is that his movie gets made & that there's somebody left to see it In marketing terms the end of the world will be very big 400 pages Elton Ben ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Andrew Kötting&s deliciously eccentric film is a touching portrait of his daughter Eden as a young woman in their tumbledown Pyrenean farmhouse Last seen in Gallivant (1996) as a plucky kid touring the coastline of Britain with her big Granny Eden now 23 is here shown painting still lifes & singing along to the radio as the seasons ebb & flow around her Reminiscent of Stan Brakhage&s Dog Star Man (1964) this lo-fi marvel features music by Scanner&s Robin Rimbaud & a range of voices from Köttings sound archive to explore notions of nostalgia memory & place ...

A disarmingly tender funny & honest memoir of grief illness & finding your way in life 272 pages Edelstein Jean Hannah ...

Kate Harker & August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city a grisly metropolis where the violence has begun to create real & deadly monsters All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father who lets the monsters roam free & makes the inhabitants pay for his protection August just wants to be human as good-hearted as his own father-but his curse is to be what the humans fear The thin truce that keeps the Harker & Flynn families at peace is crumbling & an assassination attempt forces Kate & August into a tenuous alliance But how long will they survive in a city where no one is safe & monsters are real ...

The Far Seers among the Sidhe of Eifhame Avalon have seen two visions of the future In one an evil queen will take the throne & welcome the Inquisition in debauching the nation & threatening even the elf strongholds throughout the land In another a red-haired child will grow up to take the throne & usher in a golden age of literature music & art The evil Unseleighe Sidhe who draw power from pain & misery welcome the coming of a ruler of humans who will increase their strength & are determined to prevent the red-haired child from coming to the throne Unless the good Sidhe can find the child & protect her from the evils & dangers of both the human & elven worlds she will never grow up to become Elizabeth Queen of England in the Sixteenth Century ...

1837-1901 The Age of Victoria Victoria's 64-year reign encompasses huge social changes; Narrated by Anna Massey with extracts from Sir Winston Churchill's A History of the English-speaking Peoples read by Peter Jeffrey this is the definitive radio account of the events & personalities that have shaped our nation Lee Christopher ...

Jessica Hart has never forgotten Matthew Landley After all he was her first love when she was fifteen years old But he was also her school maths teacher & their affair ended in scandal with his arrest & imprisonment Now seventeen years later Matthew returns to Norfolk with a new identity & a long-term girlfriend & a daughter 480 pages Done Rebecca ...

These sumptuous new hardback editions mark the 70th anniversary of Fitzgerald's death Increasingly disillusioned by the rejection slips that studded the walls of his room & his onoff engagement to Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald began his third revision of the novel that was to become This Side of Paradise The story of a young man's painful sexual & intellectual awakening that echoes Fitzgerald's own career it is also a portrait of the lost generation that followed straight on from the First World War 'grown up to find all Gods dead all wars fought all faiths in man shaken' & wanting money & success more than anything else ...

With an Introduction & Notes by Lionel Kelly University of Reading This Side of Paradise tells the story of Amory Blaine the only child of wealthy parents whose journey from adolescence to adulthood follows him from prep school through to Princeton University where his literary talents flourish in contrast to his academic failure A sequence of love affairs with beautiful young women are fatally damaged by the collapse of his family's fortune & the novel ends with him poised to face the challenge of making his own way in the world Composed in an unconventional narrative mode the novel is a rich fusion of satiric & romance idioms & found a captivated audience on its publication in 1920 It made Fitzgerald rich & famous overnight The Beautiful & Damned is a bleaker version of the corrosive power of wealth & its privileges one of Fitzgerald's abiding subjects Anthony Patch is heir to a huge fortune whose marriage to the beautiful & indolent Gloria is increasingly shadowed by Anthony's fall into alcoholism Though he wins a lawsuit to gain his inheritance of millions of dollars it is a pyrrhic victory for he is now a physically & morally broken man ...