The Discovery Of Britain

First published in 1964, this book examines the Tour of Britain. It focuses, neither on foreign tourists coming to Britain, nor on British tourists travelling abroad, but on British people exploring their native land in the three centuries from 1540 to 1840. During this period, it became a popular pastime amongst gentlemen of leisure to travel for weeks, even months, in discovery of their own country and this book describes both the pleasure taken by tourists of Britain and the hardships they endured. Tracking these journeys over three centuries, the book presents a changing English landscape, a changing economy, and a change in people’s tastes as the interests and concerns of the tourists evolve over the timeframe covered.

From ancient bloody battles and colonial conquests to the Industrial Revolution and Beatlemania, this visual guide leads you through major moments in British and Irish history. Discover the pivotal political, military, and cultural events that shaped British and Irish history, from the Stone Age to the present day. Combining over 700 photographs, maps, and illustrations with accessible text, History of Britain and Ireland is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to learn more about the British Isles. Spanning six distinct periods of English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish history, the book tells you how Britain transformed with Norman rule, fought two World Wars in the 20th century, and finally came to terms with a new status in a fast-changing economy. This comprehensive volume places key figures – from Alfred the Great to Winston Churchill – and major events – from Caesar's invasion to the Battle of the Somme – in their wider context. This makes it easier than ever before to learn how certain charismatic leaders, political factions, and specific events influenced Britain and Ireland's development through the Age of Empires and into the modern era. Beautifully illustrated, History of Britain and Ireland is sure to delight history buffs of all ages.

Sited at the furthest limits of the Neolithic revolution and standing at the confluence of the two great sea routes of prehistory, Britain and Ireland are distinct from continental Europe for much of the prehistoric sequence. In this landmark 2007 study - the first significant survey of the archaeology of Britain and Ireland for twenty years - Richard Bradley offers an interpretation of the unique archaeological record of these islands based on a wealth of current and largely unpublished data. Bradley surveys the entire archaeological sequence over a 4,000 year period, from the adoption of agriculture in the Neolithic period to the discovery of Britain and Ireland by travellers from the Mediterranean during the later pre-Roman Iron Age. Significantly, this is the first modern account to treat Britain and Ireland on equal terms, offering a detailed interpretation of the prehistory of both islands.

Eighteenth-century Britain saw an explosion of interest in its own past, a past now expanded to include more than classical history and high politics. Antiquaries, men interested in all aspects of the past, added a distinctive new dimension to literature in Georgian Britain in their attempts to reconstruct and recover the past. Corresponding and publishing in an extended network, antiquaries worked at preserving and investigating records and physical remains in England, Scotland and Ireland. In doing so they laid solid foundations for all future study in British prehistory, archaeology and numismatics, and for local and national history as a whole. Naturally, they saw the past partly in their own image. While many antiquaries were better at fieldwork and recording than at synthesis, most were neither crabbed eccentrics nor dilettanti. At their best, as in the works of Richard Gough or William Stukeley, antiquaries set new standards of accuracy and perception in fields ranging from the study of the ancient Britons to that of medieval architecture. Antiquaries is the definitive account of a great historical enterprise.

The Discovery of Islands consists of a series of linked essays in British history, written by one of the world's leading historians of political thought and published over the past three decades. Its purpose is to present British history as that of several nations interacting with - and sometimes seceding from - an imperial state. The commentary presents this history as that of an archipelago, expanding across oceans to the Antipodes. Both New Zealand history and the author's New Zealand heritage inform this vision, presenting British history as oceanic and global, complementing (and occasionally criticising) the presentation of that history as European. Professor Pocock's interpretation of British history has been hugely influential in recent years, making The Discovery of Islands a resource of immense value for historians of Britain and the world.

Who first described our native plants? This book attempts to answer that question, starting from almost the dawn of printing, with William Turner's Libellus of 1538. Of course there were medieval herbals in the five centuries or more before Turner, and also there is a vast body of folk-lore, but Turner was the first to describe more than a handful and to do so in print. Thus printed sources are the cornerstone of this work, and the first date is given for each of the 1670 species or aggregates of all the indisputably natives and archaeophytes, including 40 or so species that some have argued as native in the last half-century. But this is supplemented by information from manuscripts and herbaria which enable the display of an earlier date, a date of first evidence, for just under half of that total. The names of the discoverers and the counties where each was first recorded are also given, where known. Though the primary purpose of the book is to show the details of the discovery and recording of each species, it will also show the progress of discovery, leading to somewhat surprising conclusion that most (+/- 85%) of our flora had been described by the 1720s, once the critical, non-lowland and doubtful natives have been omitted. Indeed, the main achievement of these last three centuries has been a consolidation of our knowledge. The very extensive appendices cover the key herbals and floras, the relevant journals, the important works on the history of botany, some of the national herbaria and have a major section of the botanists who actually discovered the plants.--Back cover.