Download or read book The King at the Edge of the World written by Arthur Phillips and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queen Elizabeth’s spymasters recruit an unlikely agent—the only Muslim in England—for an impossible mission in a mesmerizing novel from “one of the best writers in America” (The Washington Post) “Evokes flashes of Hilary Mantel, John le Carré and Graham Greene, but the wry, tricky plot that drives it is pure Arthur Phillips.”—The Wall Street Journal NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE WASHINGTON POST The year is 1601. Queen Elizabeth I is dying, childless. Her nervous kingdom has no heir. It is a capital crime even to think that Elizabeth will ever die. Potential successors secretly maneuver to be in position when the inevitable occurs. The leading candidate is King James VI of Scotland, but there is a problem. The queen’s spymasters—hardened veterans of a long war on terror and religious extremism—fear that James is not what he appears. He has every reason to claim to be a Protestant, but if he secretly shares his family’s Catholicism, then forty years of religious war will have been for nothing, and a bloodbath will ensue. With time running out, London confronts a seemingly impossible question: What does James truly believe? It falls to Geoffrey Belloc, a secret warrior from the hottest days of England’s religious battles, to devise a test to discover the true nature of King James’s soul. Belloc enlists Mahmoud Ezzedine, a Muslim physician left behind by the last diplomatic visit from the Ottoman Empire, as his undercover agent. The perfect man for the job, Ezzedine is the ultimate outsider, stranded on this cold, wet, and primitive island. He will do almost anything to return home to his wife and son. Arthur Phillips returns with a unique and thrilling novel that will leave readers questioning the nature of truth at every turn.

Download or read book The Shakespeare Secret written by J. L. Carrell and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2010-01-07 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern serial killer - hunting an ancient secret. A woman is left to die as the rebuilt Globe theatre burns. Another woman is drowned like Ophelia, skirts swirling in the water. A professor has his throat slashed open on the steps of Washington's Capitol building. A deadly serial killer is on the loose, modelling his murders on Shakespeare's plays. But why is he killing? And how can he be stopped? A gripping, shocking page turner, The Shakespeare Secret masterfully combines modern murder and startling true revelations from the life of Shakespeare. It has been acclaimed as one of the most compulsively readable thrillers of recent years.

Download or read book Shakespeare s England written by R. E Pritchard and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2003-04-24 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of some of the best, wittiest and most unusual excerpts from 16th- and 17th-century writing. "Shakespeare's England" brings to life the variety, the energy and the harsh reality of England at this time. Providing a portrait of the age, it includes extracts from a wide variety of writers, taken from books, plays, poems, letters, diaries and pamphlets by and about Shakespeare's contemporaries. These include William Harrison and Fynes Moryson (providing descriptions of England), Nicholas Breton (on country life), Isabella Whitney and Thomas Dekker (on London life), Nashe (on struggling writers), Stubbes (with a Puritan view of Elizabethan enjoyments), Harsnet and Burton (on witches and spirits), John Donne (meditations on prayer and death), King James I (on tobacco) and Shakespeare himself.

Download or read book Daily Life in Elizabethan England written by Jeffrey L. Forgeng and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an experiential perspective on the lives of Elizabethans—how they worked, ate, and played—with hands-on examples that include authentic music, recipes, and games of the period. Daily Life in Elizabethan England: Second Edition offers a fresh look at Elizabethan life from the perspective of the people who actually lived it. With an abundance of updates based on the most current research, this second edition provides an engaging—and sometimes surprising—picture of what it was like to live during this distant time. Readers will learn, for example, that Elizabethans were diligent recyclers, composting kitchen waste and collecting old rags for papermaking. They will discover that Elizabethans averaged less than 2 inches shorter than their modern British counterparts, and, in a surprising echo of our own age, that many Elizabethan city dwellers relied on carryout meals—albeit because they lacked kitchen facilities. What further sets the book apart is its "hands-on" approach to the past with the inclusion of actual music, games, recipes, and clothing patterns based on primary sources.

Download or read book The Elizabethans written by A. N. Wilson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this Elizabethan exploration, Wilson follows the stories of privateer Francis Drake, political intriguers like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham; and Renaissance literary geniuses from Sir Philip Sidney to Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

Download or read book God s Traitors written by Jessie Childs and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England through the eyes of one remarkable family: the Vauxes of Harrowden Hall.

Download or read book This Orient Isle written by Jerry Brotton and published by Penguin Press. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1570, after plots and assassination attempts against her, Elizabeth I was excommunicated by the Pope. It was the beginning of cultural, economic and 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 and 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 and The Merchant of Venice. This Orient Isle shows that England's relations with the Muslim world were far more extensive, and often more amicable, than we have ever appreciated, and that their influence was felt across the political, commercial and domestic landscape of Elizabethan England.

Download or read book Shakespeare s Lost Kingdom written by Charles Beauclerk and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A book for anyone who loves Shakespeare . . . One of the most scandalous and potentially revolutionary theories about the authorship of these immortal works.” —Mark Rylance, First Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre It is perhaps the greatest story never told: the truth behind the most enduring works of literature in the English language, perhaps in any language. Who was William Shakespeare? Critically acclaimed historian Charles Beauclerk has spent more than two decades researching the authorship question, and if the plays were discovered today, he argues, we would see them for what they are—shocking political works written by a court insider, someone with the monarch’s indulgence, shielded from repression in an unstable time of armada and reformation. But the author’s identity was quickly swept under the rug after his death. The official history—of an uneducated merchant writing in near obscurity, and of a virginal queen married to her country—dominated for centuries. Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom delves deep into the conflicts and personalities of Elizabethan England, as well as the plays themselves, to tell the true story of the “Soul of the Age.” “Beauclerk’s learned, deep scholarship, compelling research, engaging style and convincing interpretation won me completely. He has made me view the whole Elizabethan world afresh. The plays glow with new life, exciting and real, infused with the soul of a man too long denied his inheritance.” —Sir Derek Jacobi

Download or read book The Shakespeare Stealer written by Gary Blackwood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-07-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightful adveture full of humor and heart set in Elizabethan England! Widge is an orphan with a rare talent for shorthand. His fearsome master has just one demand: steal Shakespeare's play "Hamlet"--or else. Widge has no choice but to follow orders, so he works his way into the heart of the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare's players perform. As full of twists and turns as a London alleyway, this entertaining novel is rich in period details, colorful characters, villainy, and drama. * "A fast-moving historical novel that introduces an important era with casual familiarity." --School Library Journal, starred review "Readers will find much to like in Widge, and plenty to enjoy in this gleeful romp through olde England" --Kirkus Reviews "Excels in the lively depictions of Elizabethan stagecraft and street life." --Publishers Weekly An ALA Notable Book

Download or read book How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain written by Ruth Goodman and published by Michael O'Mara Books. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian and popular BBC TV presenter Ruth Goodman, author of How to Be a Tudor, offers up a history of Renaissance Britain - the offensive language, insulting gestures, insolent behaviour, brawling and scandal of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - with practical tips on just how to horrify the Tudor neighbours.

Download or read book The Elizabethan Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World written by John Wagner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No period of British history generates such deep interest as the reign of Elizabeth I, from 1558 to 1603. The individuals and events of that era continue to be popular topics for contemporary literature and film, and Elizabethan drama, poetry, and music are studied and enjoyed everywhere by students, scholars, and the general public. The Historical Dictionary of the Elizabeth World provides clear definitions and descriptions of people, events, institutions, ideas, and terminology relating in some significant way to the Elizabethan period. The first dictionary of history to focus exclusively on the reign of Elizabeth I, the Dictionary is also the first to take a broad trans-Atlantic approach to the period by including relevant individuals and terms from Irish, Scottish, Welsh, American, and Western European history. Editors' Choice: Reference

Download or read book The Time Traveller s Guide to Elizabethan England written by Ian Mortimer and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A fresh and funny book that wears its learning lightly' Independent Discover the era of William Shakespeare and Elizabeth I through the sharp, informative and hilarious eyes of Ian Mortimer. We think of Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603) as a golden age. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time? In this book Ian Mortimer reveals a country in which life expectancy is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language, some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth's subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world. 'Vivid trip back to the 16th century...highly entertaining book' Guardian

Download or read book The Elizabethan Puritan Movement written by Patrick Collinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1967, this book is a history of church puritanism as a movement and as a political and ecclesiastical organism; of its membership structure and internal contradictions; of the quest for ‘a further reformation’. It tells the fascinating story of the rise of a revolutionary moment and its ultimate destruction.

Download or read book The Elizabethan Country House Entertainment written by Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-04 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full-length critical study of country house entertainment, a genre central to late Elizabethan politics. It shows how the short plays staged for the Queen at country estates like Kenilworth Castle and Elvetham shaped literary trends and intervened in political debates, including whether women made good politicians and what roles the church and local culture should play in definitions of England. In performance and print, country house entertainments facilitated political negotiations, rethought gender roles, and crafted regional and national identities. In its investigation of how the hosts used performances to negotiate local and national politics, the book also sheds light on how and why such entertainments enabled female performance and authorship at a time when English women did not write or perform commercial plays. Written in a lively and accessible style, this is fascinating reading for scholars and students of early modern literature, theatre, and women's history.

Download or read book This Is Shakespeare written by Emma Smith and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An electrifying new study that investigates the challenges of the Bard’s inconsistencies and flaws, and focuses on revealing—not resolving—the ambiguities of the plays and their changing topicality A genius and prophet whose timeless works encapsulate the human condition like no other. A writer who surpassed his contemporaries in vision, originality, and literary mastery. A man who wrote like an angel, putting it all so much better than anyone else. Is this Shakespeare? Well, sort of. But it doesn’t tell us the whole truth. So much of what we say about Shakespeare is either not true, or just not relevant. In This Is Shakespeare, Emma Smith—an intellectually, theatrically, and ethically exciting writer—takes us into a world of politicking and copycatting, as we watch Shakespeare emulating the blockbusters of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd (the Spielberg and Tarantino of their day), flirting with and skirting around the cutthroat issues of succession politics, religious upheaval, and technological change. Smith writes in strikingly modern ways about individual agency, privacy, politics, celebrity, and sex. Instead of offering the answers, the Shakespeare she reveals poses awkward questions, always inviting the reader to ponder ambiguities.

Download or read book Shakespeare and Trump written by Jeffrey R. Wilson and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-17 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should we draw an analogy between Shakespeare’s tyrants—Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and King Lear—and Donald Trump? In Shakespeare and Trump, Jeffrey Wilson applies literary criticism to real life, examining plot, character, villainy, soliloquy, tragedy, myth, and metaphor to identify the formal features of the Trump phenomenon, and its hidden causes, structure, and meanings. Wilsonapproaches his comparison prismatically. He first considers two high-concept (read: far-fetched) Shakespeare adaptations penned by Trump’s former chief political strategist Steve Bannon. He looks at University of Pennsylvania students protesting Trump by taking down a monument to Shakespeare. He reads Trump’s first 100 days in office against Netflix’s House of Cards. Wilson also addresses the summer 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar wherein an assassination of a Trump-ian leader caused corporations to withdraw sponsorship. These stories reveal a surprising—and bizarre—relationship between the provincial English playwright and the billionaire President of the United States, ostensibly a medieval king living in a modern world. The comparison reveals a politics that blends villainy and comedy en route to tragedy.