Cornwall is quintessentially a maritime region. Almost an island, nowhere in it is further than 25 miles from the sea. Cornwall’s often distinctive history has been moulded by this omnipresent maritime environment, while its strategic position at the western approaches—jutting out into the Atlantic—has given this history a global impact.It is perhaps surprising then, that, despite the central place of the sea in Cornwall’s history, there has not yet been a full maritime history of ...

The city of Exeter was one of the great provincial capitals of late medieval and early modern England, possessing a range of civic amenities fully commensurate with its size and importance. Among the most impressive of these was its highly sophisticated system of public water supply, including a unique network of underground passages. Most of these ancient passages still survive today.Water in the City provides a richly illustrated history of Exeter's famous undergr...

Henry VIII, renowned for his command of power and celebrated for his intellect, presided over one of the most magnificent-and dangerous-courts in Renaissance Europe.Never before has a detailed, personal biography of this charismatic monarch been set against the cultural, social, and political background of his glittering court. Now Alison Weir brings to vibrant life the turbulent, complex figure of the King. Packed with colourful description, meticulous in historic...

"It will be very reasonably asked why I should consent, though upon a sort of challenge, to write even a popular essay in English history, who make no pretence to particular scholarship and am merely a member of the public. The answer is that I know just enough to know one thing: that a history from the standpoint of a member of the public has not been written. What we call the popular histories should rather be called the anti-popular histories. They are all, nearly without exception, wri...

In this vivid account, the author punctures some generally held assumptions: despite slaughter and famine, the province on the eve of the Plantation was not completely depopulated as was often asserted at the time; the native Irish were not deliberately given the most infertile land; some of the most energetic planters were Catholic; and the Catholic Church there emerged stronger than before. Above all, natives and newcomers fused to a greater degree than is widely believed: apart from rec...

Ranging over a quarter of a millennium and four continents, Captives uncovers the experiences and writings of those tens of thousands of men and women who took part in Britain's rise to imperial pre-eminence, but who got caught and caught out. Here are the stories of Sarah Shade, a camp follower imprisoned alongside defeated British legions in Southern India; of Joseph Pitts, white slave and pilgrim to Mecca; of Florentia Sale, captive and diarist in Afghanistan; of those individu...

Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, through the never-before-told story of how one priory was saved and become Durham's mighty cathedralWhat happened to the monks, their orders and the communities they served after Henry VIII's break with Rome in 1536? In THE LAST OFFICE Geoffrey Moorhouse reveals how the Dissolution of the Monasteries affected the great Benedictine priory at Durham, drawing for his sources on material that has lain forgotten in the recess...

The English navy inflicted a narrow defeat on the Armada, but it was the Irish coast that encompassed its downfall. 'Heed that coast!' The Duke of Medina Sidonia wanted only to guide La Felissima Armada home safely. In the North Sea he issued sailing instructions, which, if they had been followed, would have given the Armada a safety margin of at least 300 miles. He particularly ordered them to '...take great heed lest you fall upon the island of Ireland for fear of the harm that may happe...

Colm Lennon's Sixteenth-Century Ireland, the second instalment in the New Gill History of Ireland series, looks at how the Tudor conquest of Ireland by Henry VIII and the country's colonisation by Protestant settlers led to the incomplete conquest of Ireland, laying the foundations for the sectarian conflict that persists to this day. In 1500, most of Ireland lay outside the ambit of English royal power. Only a small area around Dublin, The Pale, was directly administered by the crown. The...

In Seventeenth-Century Ireland, Professor Raymond Gillespie, one of Ireland's most eminent historians, tries to understand Ireland in the seventeenth century in a new way. Most surveys of seventeenth-century Ireland approach the period using war, conquest, plantation and colonisation as their organising themes. It does not see Ireland as a passive receptor of colonial ideas imposed from above. In fact, Professor Gillespie argues that the seventeenth century was a uniquely creative moment i...

Drained by a half-dozen major watersheds, cut by a network of deep ravines and fronting on a Great Lake, Toronto is dominated by water. Like most cities, though, Toronto has mismanaged its water, from the decades-long transformation of the citys creeks into sewersheds to the alteration of Torontos waterfront. Recently, the trend of fettering Torontos water and putting it underground has been countered by persistent citizen-led efforts to recall and restore the citys surface water. In H...

Fluoride is more toxic than lead, yet it is routinely added to the drinking water of Ireland and Britain. In Fluoride: Drinking Ourselves to Death?, Barry Groves presents an array of convincing and persuasive arguments that dismantle the commonly held belief that the fluoridation of water is beneficial to our health. The fluoridation of water has been used for the prevention of tooth decay for over fifty years. During this time little research has been done to ascertain whether it works. T...