The Pilgrimage of Grace, a popular uprising in the north of England against Henry VIII's religious policies, has long been recognised as a crucial point in the fortunes of the English Reformation. Historians have long debated the motives of the rebels and what effects they had on government policy. In this new study, however, Michael Bush takes a fresh approach, examining the wealth of textual evidence left by the pilgrimage of grace to reconstruct the wider social, political and religious...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.“Offline” is a warm, clever and slightly ironic story about love in times of constant connectivity – about how much of a relationship can be captured in data, and what remains when you stop relying on memory and start trusting the person. The perfect listening experience for all those who still believe in the one connection that cannot be erased.

'A rare gift . . . The story he has to tell may be a thrilling one but not every historian could tell it so thrillingly.' Financial Times'Magnificently rip-roaring history . . . Bursting with colour and excitement.' Dominic SandbrookAs remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasc...

An intriguing look inside the mind of the Renaissance geniusLeonardo da Vinci stood on a bridge between medieval thought and the modern mind. In this selection of entries from his dozens of coded notebooks and unpublished manuscripts, his unending curiosity in the universe and deep knowledge come through in his energetic style. The self-educated da Vinci developed a philosophical system that set him apart from his contemporaries and marked him as the oracle of a ne...

Johan Huizinga's *The Waning of the Middle Ages* is a brilliant cultural history of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Burgundy, France, and the Low Countries, an era poised between medieval forms and Renaissance transformations. Rather than narrating political events alone, Huizinga reconstructs the period's sensibility through religious devotion, chivalry, courtly love, violence, symbolism, art, and popular festivals. His method is synthetic and interpretive: literary texts, chronicles, p...

This is an accessible, illustrated history of the Stewart royal family, kings and queens of the Scots from Robert II (1371-90) to James VI (1567-1625), the last Stewart monarch to really know and understand the Scots.

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power.Astonishing in its candor, The Prince even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince . . . a king . . . a president. When, in 1512, Machiavelli was removed from his post in his beloved Florence, he resolved to set down a treatise on leadership that was practical, not idealistic. In The Prince what he envisioned would be unencum...

John Foxe wrote the first English history of the Ottoman Empire in his magnum opus, The Acts and Monuments. He exceeds contemporary representations in his extremely negative image of Islam and the «Turks,» who are identified as Antichrist and the epitome of wickedness. By juxtaposing Foxe’s work with that of his sources, fascinating conclusions can be drawn. The author analyzes the factors prompting Foxe to insert a lengthy digression on a topic that does not directly concern the ...

For thousands of years, societies have fallen under the reign of a single leader, ruling as chief, king, or emperor. In this fascinating global history of medieval and early modern dynastic power, Jeroen Duindam charts the rise and fall of dynasties, the rituals of rulership, and the contested presence of women on the throne. From European, African, Mughal, Ming-Qing and Safavid dynasties to the Ottoman Empire, Tokugawa Japan and Chosŏn Korea, he reveals the tension between the ideals of k...

Probably the first authoritative study of one of the most colourful characters in Indian history Farzana tells the rags-to-riches story of one of the most colourful characters in Indian history. In a life spanning the chaotic years between the collapse of the Mughal empire and advent of the British, this child of the streets beguiled her way to command of a private army, confidante of the emperor and ruler of the most progressive principality in northern India. Her troops often held the ba...

This original book presents a global approach to eighteenth century warfare. Emphasis is placed on the importance of conflict in the period and the capacity for decisiveness in impact and development in method. Through this Jeremy Black extends the view beyond land to naval conflict.European Warfare in a Global Context offers a comparative approach, in the sense of considering Western developments alongside those elsewhere, furthermore it puts emphasis on conflict between ...

The Reformation was a seismic event in history, whose consequences are still working themselves out in Europe and across the world. The protests against the marketing of indulgences staged by the German monk Martin Luther in 1517 belonged to a long-standing pattern of calls for internal reform and renewal in the Christian Church. But they rapidly took a radical and unexpected turn, engulfing first Germany and then Europe as a whole in furious arguments about how God's will was to be 'saved...