Download or read book The Kings of Alba written by Alasdair Ross and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The events of 1000-1130 were crucial to the successful emergence of the medieval kingdom of the Scots. Yet this is one of the least researched periods of Scottish history. We probably now know more about the Picts than the post-1000 events that underpinned the spectacular expansion of the small kingdom which came to dominate north Britain by the 1130s. This expansion included the defeat and absorption of other significant cultural and political groups to the north and south of the core kingdom, and was accompanied by the introduction of reformed monasticism. But perhaps the most momentous process amongst all these political and cultural changes was the move towards the domination of the kingship by just one segment of the royal kindred, the sons of King Mael Coluim mac Donnchada's second marriage to Queen Margaret. The story of how these sons managed to achieve political supremacy through machination, murder and mutilation runs like an unsavoury thread throughout this book. The book also investigates the building blocks from which the kingdom was constructed and the various processes which eventually allowed the kings of the different peoples of north Britain to describe themselves as Rex scottorum. It is a hugely rewarding voyage of discovery for anyone interested in the formation of the kingdom of the Scots.
Download or read book From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 written by Alex Woolf and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-26 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 780s northern Britain was dominated by two great kingdoms; Pictavia, centred in north-eastern Scotland and Northumbria which straddled the modern Anglo-Scottish border. Within a hundred years both of these kingdoms had been thrown into chaos by the onslaught of the Vikings and within two hundred years they had become distant memories. This book charts the transformation of the political landscape of northern Britain between the eighth and the eleventh centuries. Central to this narrative is the mysterious disappearance of the Picts and their language and the sudden rise to prominence of the Gaelic-speaking Scots who would replace them as the rulers of the North. From Pictland to Alba uses fragmentary sources which survive from this darkest period in Scottish history to guide the reader past the pitfalls which beset the unwary traveller in these dangerous times. Important sources are presented in full and their value as evidence is thoroughly explored and evaluated.
Download or read book The History of the Kings of Rome written by Thomas Henry Dyer and published by . This book was released on 1868 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Kinship Church and Culture written by John W. M. Bannerman and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Bannerman (1932-2008) saw the history of Scotland from a Gaelic perspective, and his outstanding scholarship made that perspective impossible to ignore. As a historian, his natural home was the era between the Romans and the twelfth century when the Scottish kingdom first began to take shape, but he also wrote extensively on the MacDonald Lordship of the Isles in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while his work on the Beatons, the notable Gaelic medical kindred, reached into the early eighteenth century. Across this long millennium, Bannerman ranged and wrote with authority and insight on what he termed the 'kin-based society', with special emphasis upon its church and culture, and its relationship with Ireland. This collection opens with Bannerman's ground-breaking and hugely influential edition and discussion of Senchus fer nAlban ('The History of the Men of Scotland'), which featured in his Studies in the History of Dalriada (1974), now long out of print. To this have been added all of his published essays, plus an essay-length study of the Lordship of the Isles which first featured as an appendix in Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture in the West Highlands (1977). The book will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the Gaelic dimension to Scotland's past and present.
Download or read book Kings Clerics and Chronicles in Scotland 500 1297 written by Simon Taylor and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten essays from a February 1999 conference in St. Andrews, Scotland, celebrate the scholar's career. Their topics include evidence of a lost Pictish source in the Historia Regum Anglorum of Symeon of Durham, the thriving of Dalriada, the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, recovering the full text of Ve
Download or read book Pictish Sourcebook written by J.M.P. Calise and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-08-30 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited and translated Medieval texts related to the Picts and Dark Age Scotland have been compiled for the first time in this one volume collection. Recorded texts include Pictish Origin Legends written in Medieval Irish and Pictish and Scottish Regnal Lists, many of which have never previously been edited. Students and scholars will also find appendices containing lists, tables, and charts of supplemental information related to the Picts. Dictionaries of 500 personal, place, and population names associated with the Picts provide further innovative analysis of these texts. Calise has compiled a useful tool which allows scholars and students to compare and contrast the content of these texts in one handy reference book. There are no written documents attributable to the Picts, leaving their history to be created mainly by non-Picts. This refence work is an attempt to find historical truths within the mythological with the use of the available Medieval documentary sources.
Download or read book King Hereafter written by Dorothy Dunnett and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-08-11 with total page 1219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in print by popular demand--"A stunning revelation of the historical Macbeth, harsh and brutal and eloquent." --Washington Post Book World. With the same meticulous scholarship and narrative legerdemain she brought to her hugely popular Lymond Chronicles, our foremost historical novelist travels further into the past. In King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett's stage is the wild, half-pagan country of eleventh-century Scotland. Her hero is an ungainly young earl with a lowering brow and a taste for intrigue. He calls himself Thorfinn but his Christian name is Macbeth. Dunnett depicts Macbeth's transformation from an angry boy who refuses to accept his meager share of the Orkney Islands to a suavely accomplished warrior who seizes an empire with the help of a wife as shrewd and valiant as himself. She creates characters who are at once wholly creatures of another time yet always recognizable--and she does so with such realism and immediacy that she once more elevates historical fiction into high art.
Download or read book The Kings Queens of Britain written by John Ashton Cannon and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The King in the North written by Gordon Noble and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some years ago a revolution took place in Early Medieval history in Scotland. The Pictish heartland of Fortriu, previously thought to be centred on Perthshire and the Tay found itself relocated through the forensic work of Alex Woolf to the shores of the Moray Firth. The implications for our understanding of this period and for the formation of Scotland are unprecedented and still being worked through. This is the first account of this northern heartland of Pictavia for a more general audience to take in the full implications of this and of the substantial recent archaeological work that has been undertaken in recent years. Part of the The Northern Picts project at Aberdeen University, this book represents an exciting cross disciplinary approach to the study of this still too little understood yet formative period in Scotland's history.
Download or read book Scotland written by Jenny Wormald and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-08-25 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scotland has long had a romantic appeal which has tended to be focused on a few over-dramatized personalities or events, notably Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Highland Clearances - the failures and the sad - though more positively, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce have also got in on the act, because of their heroism in resisting English aggression. This has had its satisfaction, and has certainly been very good for the tourist industry. But, fuelled by the explosion of serious academic studies in the last half-century, there has grown up a keen desire for a better-informed and more satisfying understanding of the Scottish past - and not only in Scotland. The vague use of 'Britain' in books and television series which are in fact about England has begun to provoke adverse comment; there is clearly a growing desire for knowledge about the history of the non-English parts of the British Isles and Eire, already well established in Ireland and becoming increasingly obvious in Scotland and Wales. This book brings together a series of studies by well-established scholars of Scottish history, from Roman times until the present day, and makes the fruits of their research accessible to students and the general reader alike. It offers the opportunity to go beyond the old myths, legends, and romance to the much more rewarding knowledge of why Scotland was a remarkably successful, thriving, and important kingdom, of international renown.
Download or read book The Duke of Alba written by Henry Kamen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing biography that attempts to fathom the motivations of an infamous sixteenth-century Spanish general Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, the third duke of Alba (1507-82), is known to history as "the butcher of Flanders." The general who carried out Philip II's repressive policies in the Netherlands, he was responsible for the massacre of thousands of men, women, and children, considering it better to lay waste an entire country than leave it in the hands of heretics. Alba came to represent for contemporaries as well as for future generations the unacceptable face of Spanish imperialism. In this intriguing re-evaluation, Henry Kamen narrates the duke's personal history, looking beyond the conventional image to reveal motives and to explain rather than simply to condemn. Kamen examines the early years of Alba's life, his travels over the whole of Europe, and the complex military and political career that made him Spain's leading general of the imperial age. Drawing on the duke's rich and expressive surviving correspondence, Kamen explores Alba's beliefs and considers his infamous actions within the contexts of his time and of the monarchs--Emperor Charles V and King Philip II of Spain--whom he served.
Download or read book ed n of the Gaels written by Keith Coleman and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-03-24 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full-length work devoted to Áedán mac Gabráin, 6th century king of Dál Riata in Scotland. An associate of the famous St. Columba, he was the first recorded king to be ordained in the British Isles and was the most powerful ruler in his generation. His astonishing military reach took him from Orkney, Pictland, Ireland, Northumbria and the Isle of Man. This book details his dominant career, which came to a shattering end after decades of warfare at the Battle of Degsaston in AD 603. Beyond the record of warfare, there is a unique and tantalising accumulation of legend concerning Áedán, from stories about his birth, to tales of him in battle with Irish heroes. English sources mention him and he is one of the few Gaelic kings to feature prominently in Welsh tradition, where he is remembered as a uniquely powerful player in the north of Britain. Modern writers highlight Áedán as the father of a prince named Arthur, which has led to his place in Arthurian studies. Áedán’s prominence in his era qualifies him as a fascinating figure, whose life and legend are accessibly explored in this exciting account of this unique ruler.
Download or read book The Golden Bough written by Sir James George Frazer and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic 1890 study of cults, rites, and myths of antiquity helped define terms of social anthropology, influencing generations of thinkers. Abridgment omits footnotes, occasionally condenses text; all main principles remain intact.
Download or read book The Golden Bough written by Sir James George Frazer and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Golden Bough written by Sir James George Frazer and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2019-12-18 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1890 study offers a monumental exploration of the cults, rites, and myths of antiquity and their parallels with those of early Christianity. Abridged by the author from his 12-volume work.
Download or read book The Golden Bough written by James George Frazer and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Golden Bough" describes our ancestors' primitive methods of worship, sex practices, strange rituals and festivals. Disproving the popular thought that primitive life was simple, this monumental survey shows that savage man was enmeshed in a tangle of magic, taboos, and superstitions. Revealed here is the evolution of man from savagery to civilization, from the modification of his weird and often bloodthirsty customs to the entry of lasting moral, ethical, and spiritual values."--Goodreads.com
Download or read book The Golden Bough written by J.G. Frazer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir James George Frazer originally set out to discover the origins of one ancient custom in Classical Rome - the plucking of the Golden Bough from a tree in the sacred grove of Diana, and the murderous succession of the priesthood there - and was led by his invetigations into a twenty-five year study of primitive customs, superstitions, magic and myth throughout the world. The monumental thirteen-volume work which resulted has been a rich source of anthropological material and a literary masterpiece for more than half a century. Both the wealth of his illustrative material and the broad sweep of his argument can be appreciated in this very readable single volume.
