Edge Of England

Lincolnshire is England’s second-largest county–and one of the least well-known. Yet its understated chronicles, unfashionable towns and undervalued countryside conceal fascinating stories, and unique landscapes: its Wolds are lonely and beautiful, its towns characterful; its marshlands and dynamic coast are metaphors of constant change. From plesiosaurs to Puritans, medieval ghosts to eighteenth-century explorers, poets to politicians, and Vikings to Brexit, this marginal county is central to England’s identity. Canute, Henry IV, John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford all called Lincolnshire home. So did saints, world-famed churchmen and reformers–Etheldreda, Gilbert, Guthlac and Hugh, Robert Grosseteste, John Wycliffe, John Cotton, John Foxe and John Wesley–as well as Isaac Newton, Joseph Banks, John Harrison and George Boole. Lincolnshire explorers went everywhere: John Smith to Jamestown, George Bass and Matthew Flinders to Australia, and John Franklin to a bitter death in the Arctic. Artists and writers have been inspired–including Byrd, Taverner, Stukeley, Stubbs, Eliot and Tennyson–while Thatcher wrought neo-liberalism. Extraordinary architecture testifies to centuries of both settlement and unrest, from Saxon towers to sky-piercing spires; evocative ruined abbeys to the wonder of the Cathedral. And in between is always the little-known land itself–an epitome of England, awaiting discovery.

England on Edge deals with the collapse of the government of Charles I, the disintegration of the Church of England, and the accompanying cultural panic that led to civil war. Focused on the years 1640 to 1642, it examines stresses and fractures in social, political, and religious culture, and the emergence of an unrestrained popular press. Hundreds of people not normally seen in historical surveys make appearances here, in a drama much larger than the struggle of king and parliament. Historians commonly assert that royalists and parliamentarians parted company over issues of principle, constitutional scruples, and religious belief, but a more complex picture emerges from the environment of anxiety, mistrust, and fear. Rather than seeing England's revolutionary transformation as a product of the civil war, as has been common among historians, David Cressy finds the world turned upside down in the two years preceding the outbreak of hostilities. The humbling of Charles I, the erosion of the royal prerogative, and the rise of an executive parliament were central features of the revolutionary drama of 1640-1642. The collapse of the Laudian ascendancy, the splintering of the established church, the rise of radical sectarianism, and the emergence of an Anglican resistance all took place in these two years before the beginnings of bloodshed. The world of public discourse became rapidly energized and expanded, in counterpoint with an exuberantly unfettered press and a deeply traumatized state. These linked processes, and the disruptive contradictions within them, made this a time of shaking and of prayer. England's elite encountered multiple transgressions, some more imagined than real, involving lay encroachments on the domain of the clergy, lowly intrusions into matters of state, the city clashing with the court, the street with institutions of government, and women undermining the territories of men. The simultaneity, concatenation, and cumulative, compounding effect of these disturbances added to their ferocious intensity, and helped to bring down England's ancien regime. This was the revolution before the Revolution, the revolution that led to civil war.

This book discusses the prejudices that have distorted understandings of the city of Milton Keynes and focuses upon the original thinking that went into the planning of Milton Keynes.

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.

An epic adventure: from the Vikings to the Enlightenment, from barbaric outpost to global hub, this book tells the dazzling history of northern Europe's transformation by sea. 'Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent' Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps ______________ This is a story of saints and spies, of anglers and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know. When the Roman Empire retreated, northern Europe was a barbarian outpost at the very edge of everything. A thousand years later, it was the heart of global empires and the home of science, art, enlightenment and money. We owe this transformation to the tides and storms of the North Sea. Boats carried food and raw materials, but also new ideas and information. The seafarers raided, ruined and killed, but they also settled and coupled. With them they brought new tastes and technologies - books, science, clothes, paintings and machines. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of learning and packed with human stories and revelations, this is the epic drama of how we came to be who we are. ______________ 'A closely-researched and fascinating characterisation of the richness of life and the underestimated interconnections of the peoples all around the medieval and early modern North Sea' Chris Wickham, author of The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 'Elegant writing and extraordinary scholarship . . . Miraculous' Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of Periodic Tales and Anatomies 'Bristling, wide-ranged and big-themed . . . at its most meaningful, history involves a good deal of art and storytelling. Pye's book is full of both' Russell Shorto, New York Times 'For anyone, like this reviewer, who is tired of medieval history as a chronicle of kings and kingdoms, knights and ladies, monks and heretics, The Edge of the World provides a welcome respite' Prof Patrick J Geary, Wall Street Journal

'A richly textured comic masterpiece' - Thomas Fleming Present day Dublin. Ambrose Sheehy-O'Connor is an unlikely protagonist whose wayward energy and imagination explode in unpredictable directions in a country consuming itself in culture wars. Ambrose is a 23 year old misfit, who has an otherworldly encounter, and becomes convinced he has a mission to convert a secularizing Ireland to his own bizarre religion. His strange appearance, gaucherie and naivety - plus a theology blended from medieval Christianity, fantasy novels and computer games - horrify his mother and spark ridicule and violent hatred. But he also finds devotees looking for any kind of leader. His quest brings him into confused, comical and calamitous contact with believers and unbelievers from disillusioned nuns to glamorous socialites, leftist chat-show hosts to sleazy New Age healers - all brought together in a fable of change and continuity. A Modern Journey is a compelling, complex and well-written literary novel. It is about one man's journey from obscurity to notoriety and indifference to enlightenment in modern Ireland. Praise for A Modern Journey "Catholic conservatives and modernizers, disillusioned nuns, glamorous socialites, ultra-nationalists, leftist chat-show hosts, sleazy New Age healers, pious Travellers - what's not to like in such an irresistible mix!" - Ruth Dudley Edwards, author of Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure "Finely written, deft characterization, funny, compulsive...Turner's concerns are philosophical and portentous, in the European tradition of social movement and ideas, yet he cloaks this evisceration of a corner of our contemporary world in adept drollery. A comic tour de force of import, Joycean in its magnificent flow." - Stoddard Martin , author of Wagner to the Waste Land "A richly textured comic masterpiece that manages to satirize the post-Christian West.... Derek Turner pulls no punches as he takes us on his magic carpet ride through the Irish landscape...This novel... has something to offend every postmodern sensibility." - Thomas Fleming, author of The Morality of Everyday Life "I know of no other living novelist who produces such taut sentences, so barbed, so seamlessly invested with classic references...and so satirically murderous...an author of quicksilver intelligence and X-ray eyes." - Tito Perdue, author of William's House Derek Turner has written for The Times, Daily Mail, Sunday Telegraph, Literary Review, Country Life, and many other journals in Europe and America. He is also the author of the novel Sea Changes and Displacement which is a Kindle Single.

*MATT HAIG’S NEW NOVEL THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW * FROM THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR Meet the Hunter family: Adam, Kate, and their children Hal and Charlotte. And Prince, their Labrador. Prince is an earnest young dog, striving hard to live up to the tenets of the Labrador Pact (Remain Loyal to Your Human Masters, Serve and Protect Your Family at Any Cost). Other dogs, led by the Springer Spaniels, have revolted. As things in the Hunter family begin to go badly awry – marital breakdown, rowdy teenage parties, attempted suicide – Prince’s responsibilities threaten to overwhelm him and he is forced to break the Labrador Pact and take desperate action to save his Family.

An attempt at illegal immigration goes disastrously wrong, and dozens of dead bodies (and one survivor) - some bearing gunshot wounds - are washed up on England's remote east coast. _Sea Changes_ is the story of how they got there, and how Britain becomes engulfed in pity, guilt, political machinations and acute social tension.