Creator: David Rintoul
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1997-09-25
Price: £10.99
Review Culloden / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Timothy West
Publication date: 2003-03-03
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £20.55
Price: £9.99
Review A History of Britain: Fate of the British Empire, 1776-2001 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 2002-10-07
RRP: £5.86
Price: £4.00
Review The Vile Victorians (BBC Radio Collection: Horrible Histories) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2005-02-21
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £13.98
Price: £10.99
Review William Pitt the Younger / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Robert Hardy
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1999-03-15
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.99
Price: £6.90
Review The Letter of Marque / HarperCollins Audio:When Jack Aubrey is unfairly deprived of his commission in the Royal Navy, Stephen Maturin comes to the rescue, purchasing the captain's former ship and outfitting it as a privateer, to be commanded by none other than Jack Aubrey. Soon the Surprise is off to sea, on a mission that Aubrey hopes will redeem his good name. The author's grasp of period detail is astonishing as ever-and so is his gift for pure entertainment.
Creator: Robert Hardy
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1999-04-19
Price: £10.99
Review The Thirteen-gun Salute / HarperCollins Audio:Will Napoleon Bonaparte form an alliance with the Malay princes of the South China Sea? Not if Jack Aubrey can help it. Conveying a diplomatic mission to the Sultan's court, Aubrey and company must also contend with orangutans, typhoons, and a squadron of wily French envoys.
Creator: Fiona Shaw
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1999-10-18
Dewey code: 920
Price: £10.99
Review Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire / HarperCollins Audio:Georgiana Spencer was, in a sense, an 18th-century "It Girl". She came from one of England's richest and most landed families, and married into another. She was, beautiful, sensitive, and extravagant. Acquainted fairly young with Charles James Fox, her move from parties to Parties led her to become the intimate of ministers and princes, and she canvassed assiduously for the Whig cause, most famously in the Westminster election of 1784. By turns she was caricatured and fawned on by the press, and she provided the inspiration for Lady Teazle in Sheridan's School For Scandal. But, luckily for her biographer, she also had weaknesses that were to taint her life. As gin gripped the masses, so gambling thralled the aristocracy. By 1784 Georgiana owed "many, many, many thousands", and the creditors she acquired dogged her until her death, but the sterility of her marriage meant that she never came close to disclosing the magnitude of her debts. Amanda Foreman describes astutely the mess that was personal relationships for the aristocratic subculture (Georgiana and the Duke engaged for many years in a ménage à trois with Lady Elizabeth Fraser, who inveigled her way into his bed and her heart). She is, by her own admission, a little in love with her subject, which can lead to occasional lapses of perspective, but generally it adds zest to a narrative built on, rather than burdened by, scholarship, that is at once accessible and learned. [+]An impressive debut, in every sense. -David Vincent.
Creator: Niall Ferguson
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2003-01-09
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £12.72
Price: £6.50
Review Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World / Penguin:Niall Ferguson's compelling tour de force, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World is published to coincide with a Channel 4 TV series. Ferguson, author of The Pity of War and The Cash Nexus, does not so much provide a synoptic survey of the British empire since the 17th century, as an arresting argument about why it arose, and how it fell. Ferguson's emphasis throughout is on the pursuit of economic profit and military might. Piracy overseas and a taste for sugar and spice at home, combined with an unerring ability to vanquish rival European powers such as the Dutch and French in the dash for stash and status across the globe. But Ferguson is also alive to the peculiarities of British dominion: the manly and Christian civil service-less than a thousand strong-who ruled India, missionaries such as Livingstone, who explored and mapped as they preached and the barons of empire-Rhodes, Curzon, and Kitchener-who found in empire an outlet for their homoeroticism. The book is brilliant and persuasive on trade and buccaneering before 1750, on India, on the late Victorian imperial mentalité, and on the two world wars, but less convincing on the empire of white settlement, and strangely silent on the most difficult colony of all, Ireland. In the end, Ferguson's penchant for polemic gets the upper-hand-the book closes with a controversial balance-sheet of the gains and losses of the British imperial experience-but he provides a riveting read nonetheless. -Miles Taylor.
Creator: Fiona Shaw
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2000-08-10
Dewey code: 900
RRP: £12.72
Price: £8.35
Review Dr Johnson's London (Tape): Everyday Life in London in the Mid 18th Century / Orion:Liza Picard certainly isn't tired of London. The lives that once thronged its streets are the stuff of her books, and Dr Johnson's London updates her 1997 volume, Restoration London, by one hundred years or so. Samuel Pepys gives way to Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, though, entertainingly, she shows no affection for the pair. She pursues them solely for their era, stretching 30 years from 1740 to 1770, pivoted on the publication of Johnson's Dictionary in 1755. Starting with a "virtual" sedan-chair tour of the city, she proceeds to elucidate every aspect of urban life, with particular attention paid to the poor, and the "middling sort", a fledgling middle class. This goes some way to redressing a balance which historically has tended to favour the rich and famous, who left behind the majority of buildings and ephemera. Picard's conversational style, as bursting with rhetorical questions as a primary teacher, belies the breadth of her reading and research. Her informality breathes life into dry descriptions, and her sharp eye lends itself to shrewd selection from source passages. The familiarity of this Blackadder-esque London is borne out by its physical dimensions, with parks, hospitals and even bridges already starting to become recognisable to a contemporary eye, as well as its phenomena, such as lottery tickets and road rage. Although Picard sways between tenses with a giddy ease, adding a sprinkling of her own curious observations, her assimilation of information renders her prose sprightly, whether she be observing a meal in "real time", or delighting in the medical remedies, often involving quite the worst ingredients (though it's useful to know that powdered roast mouse is a reliable cure for incontinence). [+]Saving the best to last, the concluding pages offer a cost of living index, which, as Picard admits, almost renders the book redundant. From a 1/2d half-loaf of bread to a £64,000 reward, it evocatively summarises the victuals and commodities of the time, and closes a bustling, collective portrait of the city not just of Johnson, but also of Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett and William Hogarth. -David Vincent.
Creator: Simon Jones
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1998-12-31
Dewey code: 423
Price: £14.00
Review The Professor and the Madman / HarperAudio:
Publication date: 1982-12
RRP: £12.93
Price: £12.93
Review First Industrial Revolution 1760-1830 / Sussex Publications:
Creator: Robert Powell
Publication date: 1999-09-16
Dewey code: 941
Price: £10.75
Review This Sceptred Isle: Nelson, Wellington and Napoleon 1792-1815 v. 8 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 2001-01-08
Dewey code: 791
RRP: £10.76
Price: £2.80
Review Young Victoria: Full Cast Dramatisation (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 1982-12
RRP: £12.93
Price: £12.93
Review Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution / Sussex Publications:
Creator: Serena Gordon
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 1999-02-15
RRP: £10.99
Price: £9.95
Review Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, 1750-1832 / HarperCollins Audio:Alive with the details of upper-class life in the 1700s, and sparkling with extracts from the letters of Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox and their offspring, Aristocrats: The Illustrated Companion to the Television Series takes the reader on a Grand Tour of their 18th-century experience. Stella Tillyard's completely new text (the series Aristocrats is based on her highly acclaimed book of the same name), breathes intelligence and accessibility. Divided into themed chapters: Beginnings and Marriages; Town Life; Country Life; Travel and Endings, Aristocrats is gorgeously illustrated with informatively captioned paintings, photos of artefacts and stills from the television series. Helpfully, the book kicks off with a Dramatis Personae section, which explains who everyone is, tells us how they relate to each other, what they were like and fits them snugly into their context like the elegant, idiosyncratic pieces of a lavish three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Throughout, Tillyard's affectionately vivid prose combines with the stunning illustrations to recreate the opulence in which the Lennox sisters lived, loved, married, took lovers, raised children, survived scandals, played at architecture and design, and lived high politics. A book which combines gossip, art and history to terrific effect. Buy it even if you've read Tillyard's original book. Actually-buy two copies. Keep one and give one to someone you love as a present. -Lisa Gee.
Authors
- Queen of Great Britain Victoria
Publication date: 1996-09
RRP: £8.80
Price: £8.80
Review Leaves from the Journal of "Our Life in the Highlands": Starring Virginia McKenna. Abridged by Lissa Demetriou (The classic diary collection) / Mr Punch Audio Books:
Authors
- Horatio Nelson,Viscount Nelson
Publication date: 1997-04
Price: £8.80
Review The Letters and Journals of Lord Nelson / Mr Punch Audio Books:
Publication date: 1982-12
RRP: £12.93
Price: £12.93
Review Century of Change 1730-1830 / Sussex Publications:
Publication date: 2001-10-01
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.99
Review G.W. Hegel: (1770-1831) (Philosophers) / Talking Points:
Creator: Hannah Gordon
Publication date: 2002-10-21
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £13.98
Price: £11.98
Review The Lost King of France: Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XVII / HarperCollins Audio:Even casual French history readers will notice a discrepancy in the numbering of their kings-Louis XVI goes to the guillotine in the French Revolution; Louis XVIII returns after the defeat of Napoleon. What happened to Louis XVII? That's the subject of Deborah Cadbury's The Lost King of France. Louis-Charles, heir to Louis XVI, automatically became king, in the eyes of French royalists, when his father was guillotined in 1793. He was, however, an eight-year-old boy and at the mercy of the Revolutionary government. Cadbury's vivid and sympathetic account of his imprisonment and the appallingly abusive treatment he received makes for painful reading. In 1795 the boy king died, still in prison. Or did he? For decades afterward pretender after pretender to the throne appeared, claiming that he was the real Louis. He had been rescued and a substitute child had died in the hands of the revolutionaries. Some claimants were ludicrous. (One was a mixed-race Native American from New York. [+]) Others were so convincing that their descendants still have supporters today. "Karl Wilhelm Naundorff" persisted with his claim to his deathbed and beyond. His gravestone boldly states that he was the son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. In the second half of her book, Cadbury turns from the sad narrative of Louis the Seventeenth's apparently short life to the mystery of his claimed survival. Finally her book becomes a scientific detective story as the tools of modern DNA testing are used to pinpoint the identity of the boy who died in prison and to investigate the genetic make-up of Naundorff. As both the story of a tragic and short life and a record of how science solved one of the greatest puzzles in French history, The Lost King of France works brilliantly. -Nick Rennison.
| Models & Brands:
Culloden, A History of Britain: Fate of the British Empire, 1776-2001 (BBC Radio Collection), The Vile Victorians (BBC Radio Collection: Horrible Histories), William Pitt the Younger, The Letter of Marque, The Thirteen-gun Salute, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World, Dr Johnson's London (Tape): Everyday Life in London in the Mid 18th Century, The Professor and the Madman, First Industrial Revolution 1760-1830, This Sceptred Isle: Nelson, Wellington and Napoleon 1792-1815 v. 8 (BBC Radio Collection), Young Victoria: Full Cast Dramatisation (Radio Collection), Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution, Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, 1750-1832, Leaves from the Journal of "Our Life in the Highlands": Starring Virginia McKenna. Abridged by Lissa Demetriou (The classic diary collection), The Letters and Journals of Lord Nelson, Century of Change 1730-1830, G.W. Hegel: (1770-1831) (Philosophers), The Lost King of France: Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XVII |
