The Passage Merlin

Merlin, seer and wonder-worker at King Arthur's court, makes his debut in the highly inventive 'History of the Kings of Britain', written during the 1130s by an author known to posterity as Geoffrey of Monmouth. One of the most influential books of the Middle Ages, it planted Arthur himself in European minds. As for Merlin, he seems to be wholly a creation of Geoffrey's active brain. Or was he? This new book by the leading Arthurian scholar of today offers a succession of surprises. The Merlin of legend was born to be a magician. He was 'immaculately' conceived and was able to interpret dreams and utter prophecies. Even his fate was imbued with magic. Like Arthur, he acquired immortality and sleeps on Bardsey Island, in a subterranean chamber with nine companions. Geoffrey Ashe reveals the man behind the myth, establishing beyond doubt the historicity of a Welsh prophet called Myrddin Emrys. Despite his 'supernatural' status it is Merlin, of all the great characters in the Arthurian world, who has the strongest claims to having existed.

Geotourism, as a form of sustainable geoheritage tourism, was defined and developed, from the early 1990s, to contextualize modern approaches to geoconservation and physical landscape management. However, its roots lie in the late seventeenth century and the emergence of the Grand Tour and its domestic equivalents in the eighteenth century. Its participants and numerous later travellers and tourists, including geologists and artists, purposefully explored wild landscapes as‘geotourists’. The written and visual records of their observations underpin the majority of papers within this volume; these papers explore some significant geo-historical themes, organizations, individuals and locations across three centuries, opening with seventeenth century elite travellers and closing with modern landscape tourists. Other papers examine the resources available to those geotourists and explore the geotourism paradigm. The volume will be of particular interest to Earth scientists, historians of science, tourism specialists and general readers with an interest in landscape history.

Originally published in 1988, this volume contains papers from, and commissioned after, "The Passing of Arthur", a conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies in November 1986. No Arthurian story is experienced without some foreknowledge of its end, which the text acknowledges through a complex range of methods. This collection takes this as its point of origin, suggesting that all such narratives concern the passing of Arthur, even indirectly, so the chapters not only look at the death of Arthur but the passing on and development of the Arthurian literature. The figure of Arthur and the Round Table continues to fascinate contemporary readers. This interesting collection presents a wide range of Arthurian studies approaches representing some of the vast scholarship on the genre.

This complete series ebook bind-up contains all three novels in author Robert Treskillard’s Merlin Spiral series, which follows the Merlin of Arthurian legend, who as a maimed, teenaged bladesmith must fight against druids working to end Arthur’s reign before it has a chance to begin. In Merlin’s Blade, a strange meteorite strikes Merlin’s village, and only the blinded Merlin has the ability to resist its strange enchantments. And unless he can find a way to defeat the dark forces within the stone, Merlin’s family, his friends, and all of Britain could fall under its power. Merlin’s Shadow introduces Merlin’s half sister, Morgana, who is intent on destroying her brother following his attack on the stone. Given powers through her druid roots, Morgana spies on Merlin—at the same time Merlin is fighting to hide the orphaned Arthur from the new High King. In the final book, Merlin’s Nightmare, the now grown Merlin has raised Arthur as his own—though as the battle for Britain’s future intensifies, it has come time to tell the boy his true identity. But is the impetuous Arthur truly ready to take the throne?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems. “Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works. Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

The discovery of seven manuscript fragments of the Old French Suite Vulgate du Merlin in a set of early printed books in the Bristol Central Library hit global headlines in 2019. This book contains a comprehensive study of these fascinating Arthurian fragments. Beginning with an extensive contextual history, the authors reveal details of the fragments' origin, their importation to England, and their subsequent journey to a waste pile in a bookbinder's workshop, where they would be incorporated into the bindings of a four-volume edition of the works of Jean Gerson in the early sixteenth century. A full enquiry into the provenance of these host volumes sets out the possible routes from the bookbinder's workshop to their final home in Bristol Central Library. Using multi-spectral imaging to read the damaged sections of text, the authors also provide a full edition and translation of the narrative contained in the fragments.