John Brewer – författare

On an April evening in 1779, a woman is shot on the steps of Covent Garden. Her murderer is a young soldier and Church of England minister; her lover, the Earl of Sandwich, one of the most powerful politicians of the day. This compelling account of murder, love and intrigue brings Georgian London to life in a spellbinding historical masterpiece.On an April evening in 1779, Martha Ray, mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, was shot on the steps of Covent Garden by James Hackman, a young soldier and minister of the Church of England. She died instantly, leaving behind a grief-stricken lover and five small children. Hackman, after trying to kill himself, was arrested, tried and hanged at Tyburn ten days later. The story was to become one of the scandals of the age.It seemed an open-and-shut case, but why had Hackman killed Ray? He claimed he suffered from ‘love’s madness’ but his motives remained obscure. And as Martha Ray shared the bed of one of the most powerful and unpopular politicians of the day (and one of Georgian London's greatest libertines), the city buzzed with the story, as every hack journalist sharpened his pen.John Brewer has written an account of this violent murder that is as thrilling and compelling as the best crime novel. Atmospheric, beautifully written, and alive with the characters and bustle of 18th-century London, the book examines in minute detail the events of a few crucial moments and gives an unforgettable account of the relationships between the three protagonists and their different places within society. However, the interest in Martha's murder did not end with the Georgians, and ‘Sentimental Murder ‘ranges over two centuries, populated by journalists, biographers and historians who tried to make sense of the killing. And so it becomes an intriguing exploration of the relations between history and fiction, storytelling and fact, past and present. John Brewer has transformed a tragic tale of murder into an historical masterpiece.

First published in 1989. `The book is a distinguished work - of importance to students of governmental development generally. It is written in a fluent, non-technical manner that should reach a wide audience.' American Historical Review.

Rethinking Leviathan offers a new approach to the history of the modern state. It concentrates on the eighteenth century and on two cases, those of Britain and Germany. These two countries have always been test-cases for historians and social scientists looking at the development of the modern state because they have been seen as presenting the two main alternatives in the state-building process. Using a comparative study of the British and German states, including Prussia, it deconstructs certain clichés about them and forces us to rethink how to study states in the early modern era. The volume is less concerned with the theory of the state or the formal constitutional conditions under which governments operate than with their actual modus operandi. The subjects covered in this volume include some which have so far been ignored in reconstructing the history of the modern state.

A vibrant, diverse history of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the age of Romanticism  “Momentous and spellbinding.”—Caroline Eden, Financial Times  “Endlessly fascinating.”—Pratinav Anil, Times (UK)  Vesuvius is best known for its disastrous eruption of 79CE. But only after 1738, in the age of Enlightenment, did the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii reveal its full extent. In an era of groundbreaking scientific endeavour and violent revolution, Vesuvius became a focal point of strong emotions and political aspirations, an object of geological enquiry, and a powerful symbol of the Romantic obsession with nature.  John Brewer charts the changing seismic and social dynamics of the mountain, and the meanings attached by travellers to their sublime confrontation with nature. The pyrotechnics of revolution and global warfare made volcanic activity the perfect political metaphor, fuelling revolutionary enthusiasm and conservative trepidation. From Swiss mercenaries to English entrepreneurs, French geologists to local Neapolitan guides, German painters to Scottish doctors, Vesuvius bubbled and seethed not just with lava, but with people whose passions, interests, and aims were as disparate as their origins.

Early Modern Conceptions of Property draws together distinguished academics from a variety of disciplines, including law, economics, politics, art history, social history and literature, in order to consider fundamental issues of property in the early modern period. Presenting diverse original historical and literary case studies in a sophisticated theoretical framework, it offers a challenge to conventional interpretations.

The study of past society in terms of what it consumes rather than what it produces is - relatively speaking - a new development. The focus on consumption changes the whole emphasis and structure of historical enquiry. While human beings usually work within a single trade or industry as producers, as, say, farmers or industrial workers, as consumers they are active in many different markets or networks. And while history written from a production viewpoint has, by chance or design, largely been centred on the work of men, consumption history helps to restore women o the mainstream.The history of consumption demands a wide range of skills. It calls upon the methods and techniques of many other disciplines, including archaeology, sociology, social and economic history, anthropology and art criticism. But it is not simply a melting-pot of techniques and skills, brought to bear on a past epoch. Its objectives amount to a new description of a past culture in its totality, as perceived through its patterns of consumption in goods and services.Consumption and the World of Goods is the first of three volumes to examine history from this perspective, and is a unique collaboration between twenty-six leading subject specialists from Europe and North America. The outcome is a new interpretation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that shapes a new historical landscape based on the consumption of goods and services.

Early Modern Conceptions of Property draws together distinguished academics from a variety of disciplines, including law, economics, politics, art history, social history and literature, in order to consider fundamental issues of property in the early modern period. Presenting diverse original historical and literary case studies in a sophisticated theoretical framework, it offers a challenge to conventional interpretations.

Culture does not become 'culture' until it is consumed. This is the radical new interpretation of early modern social history presented in The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800.Leading specialists from North America and Europe explore topics such as the formation of a culture consuming public, the development of a literary canon, the role of consumption in the formation of the modern state, elite and popular forms of cultural consumption and the place of women as consumers of culture. The result is an important and rich new approach to the study of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Pleasures of the Imagination examines the birth and development of English "high culture" in the eighteenth century. It charts the growth of a literary and artistic world fostered by publishers, theatrical and musical impresarios, picture dealers and auctioneers, and presented to th public in coffee-houses, concert halls, libraries, theatres and pleasure gardens. In 1660, there were few professional authors, musicians and painters, no public concert series, galleries, newspaper critics or reviews. By the dawn of the nineteenth century they were all aprt of the cultural life of the nation.John Brewer's enthralling book explains how this happened and recreates the world in which the great works of English eighteenth-century art were made. Its purpose is to show how literature, painting, music and the theatre were communicated to a public increasingly avid for them. It explores the alleys and garrets of Grub Street, rummages the shelves of bookshops and libraries, peers through printsellers' shop windows and into artists' studios, and slips behind the scenes at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. It takes us out of Gay and Boswell's London to visit the debating clubs, poetry circles, ballrooms, concert halls, music festivals, theatres and assemblies that made the culture of English provincial towns, and shows us how the national landscape became one of Britain's greatest cultural treasures. It reveals to us a picture of English artistic and literary life in the eighteenth century less familiar, but more suprising, more various and more convincing than any we have seen before.

The Pleasures of the Imagination examines the birth and development of English "high culture" in the eighteenth century. It charts the growth of a literary and artistic world fostered by publishers, theatrical and musical impresarios, picture dealers and auctioneers, and presented to th public in coffee-houses, concert halls, libraries, theatres and pleasure gardens. In 1660, there were few professional authors, musicians and painters, no public concert series, galleries, newspaper critics or reviews. By the dawn of the nineteenth century they were all aprt of the cultural life of the nation.John Brewer's enthralling book explains how this happened and recreates the world in which the great works of English eighteenth-century art were made. Its purpose is to show how literature, painting, music and the theatre were communicated to a public increasingly avid for them. It explores the alleys and garrets of Grub Street, rummages the shelves of bookshops and libraries, peers through printsellers' shop windows and into artists' studios, and slips behind the scenes at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. It takes us out of Gay and Boswell's London to visit the debating clubs, poetry circles, ballrooms, concert halls, music festivals, theatres and assemblies that made the culture of English provincial towns, and shows us how the national landscape became one of Britain's greatest cultural treasures. It reveals to us a picture of English artistic and literary life in the eighteenth century less familiar, but more suprising, more various and more convincing than any we have seen before.

First published in 1989. `The book is a distinguished work - of importance to students of governmental development generally. It is written in a fluent, non-technical manner that should reach a wide audience.' American Historical Review.

This book is a reappraisal of English politics in the first decade of George III's reign. It sets out to explain how party politics changed, and what problems that created for the parliamentary elite. The issues of party, of patriotism as it manifested itself in the elder Pitt's political career, and of the relations between the notions of ministerial responsibility and the powers of the Crown are all used to illuminate the nature of political conflict. Special emphasis is placed on Burke's notions of party. The schisms created by this reconfiguration of party politics, Dr Brewer argues, had effects beyond Westminster. He discusses extra-parliamentary forms of political expression, notably the press, and goes on to show how the career of John Wilkes and the critique of British politics developed by American radicals gave focus to a variety of political discontents, and produced new arguments in favour of parliamentary reform. Throughout his study he emphasises the interplay between popular and parliamentary politics. His work is designed to show that the 'political nation' included many other than the parliamentary classes, and that the political conflicts of the period cannot be properly understood without a full examination of political ideology.

This powerful interpretation of English history provides a completely new framework for understanding how Britain emerged in the eighteenth century as a major international power. John Brewer’s brilliant analysis makes clear that the drastic increase in Britain's military involvement (and success) in Europe and the expansion of her commercial and imperial interests would not have happened without a concurrent radical increase in taxation, along with a surge in deficit financing and the growth of a substantial public administration. Warfare and taxes reshaped the English economy, and at the heart of these dramatic changes lay an issue that is still very much with us today: the tension between a nation's aspirations to be a major power and fear of the domestic consequences of such an ambition—namely, the loss of liberty.

500 Races, Routes and Adventures contains all the information and practical advice needed to enjoy the best and most unusual running experiences around the world--all gathered in one place, a veritable bucket list for runners. Taking an exciting journey around the world, the book details the best routes, locations, and races worth running on all seven continents (including Antarctica!).Each run is described in vivid detail and presented alongside impressive full-color photography with route/race stats. Entries are written by runningexperts from around the world and categorized into type: road, trail, mountain, desert, winter, nighttime, multi-terrain, urban as well as team and relay runs in addition to novelty runs and festivals. Each entry is plotted onto continent maps as well as easy to use month-by-month race finders.Races are indexed both by type and location, for easy navigation. Whether planning a 5k charity fun run in the local park, a first marathon, a solitary off-road mountain adventure, or an extreme round-the-world ultramarathonchallenge, this information-packed, heavily illustrated book is a one-stop source of inspiration for runners at every level.

How ungovernable were seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Englishmen? Certainly, the historical evidence attests to an unruly and contumacious populace: riot was widespread, such criminal activities as the counterfeiting of coin flourished, disorder pervaded even London’s gaols, and men at all levels of authority were often hard pressed to enforce the law. On the other hand, the ruling elite had a powerful instrument—the courts—for regulating not only crime but also numerous aspects of social and economic life. Moreover, belief in the value of ‘the rule of law’ was widespread, even among lawbreakers. Knowledge of the law extended far beyond the patrician class, and men from all classes had recourse to the courts.First published in 1980, An Ungovernable People investigates these paradoxes. Each chapter focusses on a particular source of conflict—village regulation, the price and shipment of grain, the building of turnpike roads, the imprisonment of debtors, the circulation of counterfeit coin—to assess attitudes to ‘the law’ and to authority.Particular emphasis is placed on the judicial process—how the legal system actually worked; on how often popular protest was an attempt to remind authority of its duties rather than to challenge its legitimacy; and on the way in which law-breaking frequently formed part of a negotiative process between rulers and ruled. These chapters contribute to our understanding of the conflicts that arose when popular notions of what was just or legitimate clashed with authority and the letter of law.

Over the last 10 years, the concept of value has emerged in both business and public life as part of an important process of measuring, benchmarking, and assuring the resources we invest and the outcomes we generate from our activities. In the context of public life, value is an important measure on the contribution to business and social good of activities for which strict financial measures are either inappropriate or fundamentally unsound.A systematic, interdisciplinary examination of public value is necessary to establish an essential definition and up-to-date picture of the field. In reflecting on the ‘public value project’, this book points to how the field has broadened well beyond its original focus on public sector management; has deepened in terms of the development of the analytical concepts and frameworks that linked the concepts together; and has been applied increasingly in concrete circumstances by academics, consultants, and practitioners. This book covers three main topics; deepening and enriching the theory of creating public value, broadening the theory and practice of creating public value to voluntary and commercial organisations and collaborative networks, and the challenge and opportunity that the concept of public value poses to social science and universities. Collectively, it offers new ways of looking at public and social assets against a backdrop of increasing financial pressure; new insights into changing social attitudes and perceptions of value; and new models for increasingly complicated collaborative forms of service delivery, involving public, private, and not-for-profit players.

The study of past society in terms of what it consumes rather than what it produces is - relatively speaking - a new development. The focus on consumption changes the whole emphasis and structure of historical enquiry. While human beings usually work within a single trade or industry as producers, as, say, farmers or industrial workers, as consumers they are active in many different markets or networks. And while history written from a production viewpoint has, by chance or design, largely been centred on the work of men, consumption history helps to restore women o the mainstream.The history of consumption demands a wide range of skills. It calls upon the methods and techniques of many other disciplines, including archaeology, sociology, social and economic history, anthropology and art criticism. But it is not simply a melting-pot of techniques and skills, brought to bear on a past epoch. Its objectives amount to a new description of a past culture in its totality, as perceived through its patterns of consumption in goods and services.Consumption and the World of Goods is the first of three volumes to examine history from this perspective, and is a unique collaboration between twenty-six leading subject specialists from Europe and North America. The outcome is a new interpretation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that shapes a new historical landscape based on the consumption of goods and services.

Culture does not become 'culture' until it is consumed. This is the radical new interpretation of early modern social history presented in The Consumption of Culture 1600-1800.Leading specialists from North America and Europe explore topics such as the formation of a culture consuming public, the development of a literary canon, the role of consumption in the formation of the modern state, elite and popular forms of cultural consumption and the place of women as consumers of culture. The result is an important and rich new approach to the study of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Scarcity in the Modern World brings together world-renowned scholars in an open access book to examine how concerns about the scarcity of environmental resources such as water, food, energy and materials have developed, and subsequently been managed, from the 18th to the 21st century. These multi-disciplinary contributions situate contemporary concerns about scarcity within their longer history, and address recent forecasts and debates surrounding the future scarcity of fossil fuels, renewable energy and water up to 2075. This book offers a fresh way of tackling the current challenge of meeting global needs in an increasingly resource-stressed environment.By bringing together scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, this volume provides an innovative multi-disciplinary perspective that corrects previous scholarship which has discussed scientific and cultural issues separately. In doing so, it recognizes that this challenge is complex and cannot be addressed by a single discipline, but requires a concerted effort to think about its political and social, as well as technical and economic dimensions. This volume is essential for all students and scholars of environmental and economic history.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Scarcity in the Modern World brings together world-renowned scholars in an open access book to examine how concerns about the scarcity of environmental resources such as water, food, energy and materials have developed, and subsequently been managed, from the 18th to the 21st century. These multi-disciplinary contributions situate contemporary concerns about scarcity within their longer history, and address recent forecasts and debates surrounding the future scarcity of fossil fuels, renewable energy and water up to 2075. This book offers a fresh way of tackling the current challenge of meeting global needs in an increasingly resource-stressed environment.By bringing together scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, this volume provides an innovative multi-disciplinary perspective that corrects previous scholarship which has discussed scientific and cultural issues separately. In doing so, it recognizes that this challenge is complex and cannot be addressed by a single discipline, but requires a concerted effort to think about its political and social, as well as technical and economic dimensions. This volume is essential for all students and scholars of environmental and economic history.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Renowned marathon expert and leading sports scientist Professor John Brewer reveals why many of the concepts surrounding marathon training and running are wrong ­- and suggests how the latest sports science research transforms the way marathons should be approached.Run Smart uses the latest scientific research to show how preparing for, and running, marathons can be made easier, and in doing so challenges many of the myths that surround marathon running. The book will draw on the author’s experience as one of the UK’s leading sports scientists, his extensive research background in marathon running, and his experience as a marathon runner, to provide credible advice to runners to support their preparation for a marathon.The book will challenge many current concepts, myths and ideas, and provide science-based alternatives in areas such as training and nutrition that will optimise and ease a runner’s preparation for, and completion of, the 26.2 mile distance.This highly accessible book will use the latest scientific findings to support new runners training for their first marathon and help more experienced athletes improve and train smarter.

Globalization and consumerism are two of the buzzwords of the early twenty-first century. In Consuming Cultures, renowned scholars explore the links between modernity and consumption. The book fills a gap in contemporary thinking on the subject by approaching it from a truly global point-of-view. It draws on case studies from around the world, with Africa, Asia and Central America featuring as prominently as Western countries. A transnational perspective allows the authors to investigate the diversity of consumer cultures and the interaction between them. The authors look at the genealogy of the modern consumer and the development of consumer cultures, from the porcelain trade and consumption in Britain and China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to post Second World War developments in America and Japan, and the contemporary consumer politics of cosmopolitan citizenship. Challenging and pioneering, Consuming Cultures problematizes popular accounts of globalization and consumerism, decentring the West and concentrating on putting history back into these accounts.

Globalization and consumerism are two of the buzzwords of the early twenty-first century. In Consuming Cultures, renowned scholars explore the links between modernity and consumption. The book fills a gap in contemporary thinking on the subject by approaching it from a truly global point-of-view. It draws on case studies from around the world, with Africa, Asia and Central America featuring as prominently as Western countries. A transnational perspective allows the authors to investigate the diversity of consumer cultures and the interaction between them. The authors look at the genealogy of the modern consumer and the development of consumer cultures, from the porcelain trade and consumption in Britain and China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to post Second World War developments in America and Japan, and the contemporary consumer politics of cosmopolitan citizenship. Challenging and pioneering, Consuming Cultures problematizes popular accounts of globalization and consumerism, decentring the West and concentrating on putting history back into these accounts.