Explore the classic and historical narrative of the 1910s with "The Stone Ship" by William Hope Hodgson. This work captures the essence of the era, blending fiction with historical context. Hodgson's rich storytelling and memorable characters make this a must-read for those who appreciate classic literature and historical works.
The debut novel, first published nearly twenty years ago, from the National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity--a luminous and moving evocation of the love between a son and his mother. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction prize, A Stone Boat is an achingly beautiful, deeply perceptive story of family, sexuality, and the startling changes wrought by grief, loss, and self-discovery. Harry, an internationally celebrated young concert pianist, travels to Paris to confront his glamorous and formidable mother about her dismay at his homosexuality. Before he can give voice to his hurt and anger, he discovers that she is terminally ill. In an attempt to escape his feelings of guilt and despair over the prospect of her death, he embarks on several intense affairs--one with a longtime female friend--that force him to question his capacity for love, and finally to rediscover it. Part eulogy, part confession, and part soliloquy on forgiveness, A Stone Boat is a luminous evocation of the destructive and regenerative, all-encompassing love between a son and his mother, by America's foremost chronicler of personal and familial resilience.
Set against the backdrop of mankinds epic space odyssey is the tale of a dream that wouldnt die and a stone boat that eventually sailed 40,000 ocean miles. Despite false starts, setbacks, and neartragedy, a boat named Fram set sail on its oceangoing adventure in 1987. This is the story of the remarkable couple who dared to dream of sailing the worlds oceans on the spark of an idea planted while mankind was aiming at the moon, and spent the next three decades completing their odyssey. Follow this amazing journey from the muddy bayous of Louisiana, to the verdant wilderness of British Columbia, and eventually to the palmgraced atolls of the South Pacific as they discover how to sail, how to build a boat, and how to live their dream.
This collection of articles helps to explain why the Bronze Age has come to hold such a fascination within modern archaeological research. By providing new theoretical and analytical perspectives on the evidence new interpretative avenues have opened, it situates the history of the Bronze Age in both a local and a global setting.
This innovative study offers an up-to-date analysis of the archaeology of the North Sea. Robert Van de Noort traces the way people engaged with the North Sea from the end of the last ice age, around 10,000 BC, to the close of the Middle Ages, about AD 1500. Van de Noort draws upon archaeological research from many countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and France, and addresses topics which include the first interactions of people with the emerging North Sea, the origin and development of fishing, the creation of coastal landscapes, the importance of islands and archipelagos, the development of seafaring ships and their use by early seafarers and pirates, and the treatments of boats and ships at the end of their useful lives.
‘Somerville is one of our finest gazetteers of the British countryside. He brings his formidable knowledge to bear on his personal quest to explore the cathedrals in this entrancing book’ The Spectator Christopher Somerville, author of the acclaimed The January Man, pictured cathedrals as great unmoving bastions of tradition. But as he journeys among Britian’s favourites, old and new, he discovers buildings and communities that have been in constant upheaval for a thousand years. Here are stories of the monarchs and bishops who ordered the construction of these buildings, the masons whose genius brought them into being, and the peasants who worked and died on the scaffolding. We learn of rogue saints exploited by holy sinners, the pomp and prosperity that followed these ships of stone, the towns that grew up in their shadows. Meeting believers and non-believers, architects and archaeologists, the cleaner who dusts the monuments and the mason who judges stone by its taste, we delve deep into the private lives and the uncertain future of these ever-voyaging Ships of Heaven. ‘Somerville paints word pictures of exquisite quality’ Church Times
Written by a geologist rather than an art historian, Inigo’s Stones has a down to earth narrative which reveals Inigo Jones as a stone expert who dealt with masons to became a shrewd businessman, bringing Portland stones to London, and founding the modern Portland stone industry.Why are so many of London’s famous buildings, for example Buckingham Palace, the British Museum, the Bank of England, the government offices in Whitehall, faced with stones from the Isle of Portland, more than a hundred miles away? Until now the reasons that prompted famous architect Inigo Jones to bring blocks of this creamy limestone all the way by sea from the Royal Manor of Portland and thereby found the modern Portland stone industry had been something of a mystery.Working with archival research specialist James Derriman, geologist Tom Williamson has now reconstructed a scenario that solves the mystery. It is a complex tale that involves the marriage of Inigo’s chief Banqueting House mason Nicholas Stone to the daughter of the City Mason of booming Amsterdam, a nasty incident at the stone-loading pier at Portland and Inigo Jones’s struggles to pay stone workers from King James’s bankrupt Treasury.The new findings presented in Inigo’s Stones also see Inigo Jones studying Roman stones and marbles in Italy with Lord and Lady Arundel, initiating the first geological study of Stonehenge, searching for Portland stones big enough to replicate the Carystian marble monoliths of the Roman temple of Antoninus and Faustina in London and procuring Irish marbles to reflect imperial glory on his friend King Charles I. Inigo emerges not just as a Court propagandist and Vitruvian architect, but also as a resourceful businessman doing his best to cope at a time when the government was even shorter of cash than it is today.Reflecting on the questions raised by Inigo’s work for the Stuart kings, the author Tom Williamson extends the story to cover the whole field of how rulers have used stones and marbles to project imperial power. Focusing on the stones of three once-mighty empires, the Roman, the Mughal and the British, the book ends with a surprising twist.