Rachel King – författare

A new title in the British Museum’s Object in Focus series that tells the remarkable story of an enamelled gold necklace pendant associated with Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon. This book tells the remarkable story of a spectacular chance find of a pendant associated with Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon, as well as Mary, their only surviving child. Known as the Tudor Heart, the object comprises a heart-shaped pendant with enamelled motifs, suspended from a chain by an enamelled clasp. Over 3 metres of gold wire have been used to make the chain, the oldest known example of its type to survive, and together the pendant, chain and clasp weigh over 0.3 kilograms and are largely 24 carat gold. The pendant and chain have been dated to the last years of the 1510s based on the motifs used and archival evidence. This book argues that the object is an important witness to Henry’s ambitions in the early years of his long reign, marking his first and longest marriage to a princess of higher birth, commemorating his daughter’s betrothal to the infant son of the king of France, and showing the magnificence of Henry’s court before the arrival of Hans Holbein the Younger changed its expression completely. Readers will learn about a masterfully crafted work using the most luxurious of materials, as well as its place as important historical evidence for pivotal years in English history. This publication explores the sensational finding of the artefact, but its central aim is to establish the details of object’s making, its broader historical context and to tell its own extraordinary story.

Could you forgive the murderer of your husband? Your mother? Your son?Families of murder victims are often ardent and very public supporters of the death penalty. But the people whose stories appear in this book have chosen instead to forgive their loved ones’ murderers, and many have developed personal relationships with the killers and have even worked to save their lives. They have formed a nationwide group, Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (MVFR), to oppose the death penalty.MVFR members are often treated as either saints or lunatics, but the truth is that they are neither. They are ordinary people who have responded to an extraordinary and devastating tragedy with courage and faith, choosing reconciliation over retribution, healing over hatred. Believing that the death penalty is a form of social violence that only repeats and perpetuates the violence that claimed their loved one’s lives, they hold out the hope of redemption even for those who have committed the most hideous crimes.Weaving third-person narrative with wrenching first-hand accounts, King presents the stories of ten MVFR members. Each is a heartrending tale of grief, soul searching, and of the challenge to choose forgiveness instead of revenge. These stories, which King sets in the context of the national discussion over the death penalty debate and restorative versus retributive justice, will appeal not only to those who oppose the death penalty, but also to those who strive to understand how people can forgive the seemingly unforgivable.

Those who support capital punishment often claim that they do so because it provides justice and closure for the victims’ families. In Capital Consequences, attorney Rachel King reminds us that there are other families and other victims who must be considered in the debate over the death penalty.Combining a narrative voice with vivid, passionate, and painful accounts of the families of death row inmates, the book demonstrates that crimes that lead to death sentences also devastate the families of those convicted. These families, King argues, are the unseen victims of capital punishment.King challenges readers to question the morality of a punishment that victimizes families of the condemned and ripples out through future generations. Chapters tell the stories of families that have lost life savings supporting an accused loved one, endured intense public scrutiny, been subjected to harassment by the media, and are struggling to live with the inhumane treatment that their loved ones receive on death row.  The author also explores the unique nature of the grief that these families suffer. Because their pain tends to elicit less attention and empathy than that of the crime victims’ families, King shows how it becomes much more desperate and isolating.On a human level, this book is a powerful reminder that tragic events have tragic consequences that far outreach their immediate victims. At the same time, the accounts illustrate many of the flaws inherent in the judicial system-racial and economic bias, incompetent counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, the execution of juveniles, and wrongful convictions, some of which are only now being overturned because of recent advances in DNA technology.Regardless of which side of the death penalty issue you are on, this book will lead you to pause and consider that all acts-criminal and retributive-have broader human implications than we are sometimes willing to realize.

The landscape of heritage on the African continent is the product of neoliberal economic and social interventions from the 1980s-2000s: the prevalence and influence of heritage NGOs; aid for cultural programmes contingent on government reforms; the use of national heritage policies and projects to signal ready capital; experiments in custodianship and private enterprise that balance conservation with consumerism; and so on. This Element synthesises literature from anthropology, archaeology, history, and geography to describe a significant period of heritage policy and discourse on the African continent - its historical situation, on-the-ground realities, and continuing legacies in the era of sustainable development and climate crises.

The landscape of heritage on the African continent is the product of neoliberal economic and social interventions from the 1980s-2000s: the prevalence and influence of heritage NGOs; aid for cultural programmes contingent on government reforms; the use of national heritage policies and projects to signal ready capital; experiments in custodianship and private enterprise that balance conservation with consumerism; and so on. This Element synthesises literature from anthropology, archaeology, history, and geography to describe a significant period of heritage policy and discourse on the African continent - its historical situation, on-the-ground realities, and continuing legacies in the era of sustainable development and climate crises.

This volume critically examines sources of evidence and material from the archive that historically have been used to tell southern Africa's pre-colonial story.

This volume critically examines sources of evidence and material from the archive that historically have been used to tell southern Africa's pre-colonial story.

Linked stories trace the vocational and emotional bargains made by workers at a Colorado sausage factory.It’s almost a decade after the Great Recession, and in Colorado, St. Anthony Sausage has not recovered. Neither have its employees: a laid-off railway engineer, an exiled computer whiz, a young woman estranged from her infant daughter, an older man with cancer who lacks health care. As these low-wage workers interact under the supervision of the factory’s owner and his quietly rebellious daughter, they come to understand that in America’s postindustrial landscape, although they may help or comfort each other, they also have to do what’s best for themselves.Over the course of these twelve interrelated stories, Rachel King gives life to diverse, complex, and authentic characters who are linked through the sausage factory and through their daily lives in a vividly rendered small town in Boulder County. The internal and external struggles ofBratwurst Haven’s population are immediately and intimately relatable and resonant: these people seek answers within the world they inhabit while questioning what it means to want more from their lives.

This book explores how objects, landscapes, and architecture were at the heart of how people imagined outlaws and disorder in colonial southern Africa.