Magician of the North is the first full-scale biography of this extraordinary man. William George Armstrong was a visionary inventor engineer & businessman who bestrode the 19th-century world like a colossus bringing global renown to his great Elswick works on the Tyne while adding lustre to Britains imperial might. In its heyday Elswick employed 25 000 people in the manufacture of hydraulic cranes warships & armaments. He created Cragside in Northumberland the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity & planted in its grounds seven million trees. At Cragside his guests included the Shah of Persia the King of Siam the Prime Minister of China & the future kings Edward VII & George V. This book is much more however than the life of one man. It is the story of Britain at the height of empire riding the crest of industrial success a country awash with scientific & technological achievements bursting with hopes & dreams. It will appeal as much to lovers of romance as to more practically inclined readers. The Queen & the Prince Consort played a vital role in fostering the scientific ferment but so did characters such as Michael Faraday Charles Darwin & Thomas Huxley. It was the era of the self-made man & no one personified Samuel Smiless doctrine of self-help more clearly than William Armstrong. ...

William is always ready to offer his services to his country. But why is it that his enthusiastic contribution is so seldom appreciated? William is determined to do his bit but unfortunately no one else thinks hed make a hero.. . Ten wonderful wartime stories where William proves himself just as dangerous unpredictable & downright troublesome as the Enemy! ...

The nature of William Blakes genius is most completely expressed in his Illuminated Books. As poet/artist Blake invented a method of printing that enabled him to create works in which words & images combine to form pages uniquely rich in content & beautiful in form. It is only through the pages as originally conceived & published by the poet himself that Blakes meaning can be fully experienced. Blakes hope that his books would obtain wide circulation was unfulfilled: some exist only in unique copies & none was printed in more than very small numbers. Now some 400 plates drawn from the William Blake Trusts acclaimed six-volume Collected Edition & reproduced under their supervision provide for the first time ever in one volume what the London Review of Books hailed as sumptuous facsimiles...glorious coloured pages...like peeping into a furnace of light through a crack in the door. ...

William Burges (1827-81) was arguably the greatest of all Victorian architects. But he was more than just the creator of a modest number of fabulous & fabulously expensive buildings. He dreamed of hundreds more designed dozens & in addition created some of the most remarkable furniture & jewellery of all time. He was an art-architect. Rich clever well connected & short lived he was uncompromising profoundly learned skilled in every process of design & explosively inventive. A brilliant talker pungent critic & hilarious companion he was one of Victorian Londons great eccentrics & networkers though he was bewitched by the Middle Ages. The great buildings that he completed include Cork Cathedral Cardiff Castle & the even more eccentric Castell Coch the great Yorkshire churches of Skelton & Studley Royal the magnificent country houses of Knightshayes in Devon & Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute & his own astonishing Tower House in Kensington. His furniture fabric & jewellery designs & his unrealised projects were also hugely influential & the former are now enthusiastically collected. This book was a landmark in Victorian studies when first published in 1981 & is now completely revised & re-illustrated substantially in colour. ...

THE knight of all knights: this is William Marshal as portrayed by David Crouch in his classic biography of the Marshal. International sportsman career courtier & highly capable & professional soldier William Marshal challenges many of our assumptions about boneheaded & unfeeling warrior knights. This illustrated new edition expands & upgrades William Marshals epic life-story in light of recent discoveries about his career & character. ...

William Morris Textiles was the first comprehensive survey of the many hundreds of original colourful textiles produced by William Morris & the two commercial companies he founded & managed. To this day it remains the authority in the field & this revised edition has been completely rewritten & expanded with beautiful new photography. Linda Parry provides new insight into the embroideries printed & woven textiles carpets & tapestries produced by Morris & Co. giving in-depth information about their design & manufacture. The varied often highly specialized processes involved are discussed in detail as are Morris's working methods. ...

The award-winning biography of William Pitt the Younger by William Hague the youngest leader of the Tory Party since Pitt himself. William Pitt the Younger was one of the most extraordinary figures in British history. Prime minister at the age of twenty-four he went on to dominate British politics for two decades presiding over such complex & treacherous national crises as the madness of King George III the beleaguered union with Ireland the fallout from the French Revolution & the trauma of the Napoleonic Wars. With the keen eye of an experienced politician William Hague examines the enigmatic life & tumultuous times of a man capable of both wit & arrogance economic genius & financial mismanagement. A rich cast of characters & a vivid backdrop of global conflict make this riveting biography of Pitt the Younger compulsive reading. ...

The second Oxford edition of Shakespeares Complete Works reconsiders every detail of their text & presentation in the light of modern scholarship. The nature & authority of the early documents are re-examined & the canon & chronological order of composition freshly established. Spelling & punctuation are modernized & there is a brief introduction to each work as well as an illuminating & informative General Introduction. Included here for the first time is the play The Reign of King Edward the Third as well as the full text of Sir Thomas More. This new edition also features an essay on Shakespeares language by David Crystal & a bibliography of foundational works. ...

The extraordinary life of Englands greatest dramatist is told in fascinating detail from his rural beginnings in Stratford-on-Avon where he was born in 1564 to his phenomenal success in London where he became a favourite at the glorious court of Queen Elizabeth. The narrative describes how plays were beginning to become the popular entertainment form of the day how theatres were built & who went to them. All Elizabethan life is there & the book gives the reader not only a complete background on the life of Shakespeare but also a vivid picture of late sixteenth-century life. ...

You've probably heard of William Shakespeare. He is dead famous for:
- writing a few plays
- having a bit of a way with words
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