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In this new book royal historian Lady Colin Campbell covers The Queen's Marriage in intimate detail. Using her connections and impeccable sources she recounts details of the inside story of the monarch's relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh and her close family.

Winton Dean (1916-2013), the renowned musical scholar andcritic, gives a sparkling account of his early life – and of his disparate setof forbears. He writes of his controversial father, Basil Dean, the theatricaland film producer and founder of ENSA, his great uncle Rufus Isaacs (supplyingnew information about his first marriage) and Daisy, Countess of Warwick,mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales.  Adeeply divided personality, Winton hoped to pursue a career as a creativeartist rather than as a scholar and critic. To this extent he considered hislife at least in part a failure.  But hewas a brilliant and witty writer, as these memoirs repeatedly demonstrate.He recordshis grim years at Elstree and Harrow Schools, where however he wasoutstandingly successful academically, and the titanic family rows thatfollowed. King’s, Cambridge, where he read Classics, then English, brought animmense release of emotions and inhibitions. There are sharp pen portraits ofthe dons, including Edward Dent.  AlanTuring was his tennis partner. A trip to Greece in 1936 is described inluminous detail.  Though not a performer,he became increasingly interested in music, encouraged by a young don, PhilipRadcliffe, who became a life-long friend. On two visits to the Salzburg Festival he was bowled over by theconducting of Arturo Toscanini, especially in opera. He gives highlyentertaining accounts of the chaotic rehearsals of The Frogs ofAristophanes (in Greek) and the stage production of Handel’s Saul (inboth of which he played minor roles). The overwhelming dramatic power of Handel’smusic impelled him, after the war, to devote ten years of his life to the studyof Handel’s oratorios. Among his many interests, which encompassed trams, steamtrains, stamp collecting, old churches and naval history, Winton had a passionfor cricket (though he was an indifferent performer with the bat) and later forshooting pheasants and grouse.His firstbook, Bizet, was published in 1948; his second, the classic Handel’sDramatic Oratorios and Masques (1959), established him as a musicologist ofworld renown. Winton worked independently and held no university appointments,apart from a visiting professorship at the University of California, Berkeley,in 1965-6, which gave rise to his third book, Handel and the Opera Seria.  The last of the gentleman scholars, he playeda leading role in astonishing revival of Handel’s operas and dramatic oratoriosin recent years.Winton beganhis memoirs at the age of 72 but never finished them, breaking off at thebeginning of 1946, when his career as scholar and critic had barely begun.  His early life and young manhood were whatmattered to him. The later chapters, provided by his son Stephen, follow hiscareer as scholar and sportsman up to 1966.

With her royal insider's knowledge and historical insight, Lady Colin Campbell turns her attention to People of Colour and the Royals. She herself is strongly vested in the subject of colour, being the proud product of one of the most prominent families in the multi-racial world of Jamaica.When she was born there in 1949 that country had, although inadequate, more progressive and inclusive race relations than anywhere else. In her first eighteen years she lived through the transitional period from colonial heyday to independence in 1962, to the subsequent political and demographic changes. Jamaicans hold very dear the concept of their national motto 'Out of Many One People', and she understands the nuances whereby all Jamaicans, irrespective of colour, are regarded as members of the Black Community. Her lack of prejudice allows her to examine the sometimes difficult past with welcome objectivity and refreshing candour, and Jamaica has continued to spearhead many of the positive changes taking place in larger countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. Her book is full of welcome surprises. It takes her unique heritage, courage, insight and experience to write a book as illuminating and hopeful as People of Colour and the Royals. It is a work which she hopes will go some way to healing the divisions of the past and consolidating the unity of the present into an even more cohesive future.

A humorous account of the demise of British royalty, the dynasty of massive repute.'There was nothing very funny to write about his death except to say it was much appreciated.'From the tragic to the humorous, the unexpected to the almost unbelievable, And Then the King Died recalls the fascinating history of royal demises in Great Britain, from Alfred the Great to George VI. Murder, madness, unfortunate accidents and toilet problems all feature in this absorbing and at times hilarious account of the deaths of our nation's monarchs.The book takes each royal character in turn and deals with their end. A chapter by chapter, summary of the causes of death in the royal lineage, and full of human interest.The characters in this book are all well known to the potential readers. They have entered our mythology and the fabric of our society and moulded the British identity. They are known for their exploits and for the achievements of the citizens who contributed during their lifetimes. This book describes another side to their existence, their frailty and vulnerability, their final conflict.The book is a light-hearted and sometimes irreverent study of the human side of well-known leaders. Some may see the content as an allegory for the present state of the monarchy. Others may worry that the topic could be given more consideration in the forthcoming months.

Meghan and Harry The Real Story: Persecutors or Victims presents the reader with a strikingly forthright analysis of what happens when a vulnerable male, raised in the traditions of the Old World and protected by a lifetime of privilege, falls head over heels in love with a steely and ambitious doyenne of the New, who is careless of tradition, ignorant of its purpose, contemptuous of its consequences, and convinced that her own way is the best way even as the evidence to the contrary mounts. Exposing as she does a titanic clash of two civilisations, mores, and attitudes divided by a common language, Sunday Times best-selling author Lady Colin Campbell scrutinises with insight, clarity and precision the evidence of the circumstances, actions and motives of Meghan and Harry with an impeccable and aristocratically experienced vision honed by five decades in the public eye. She catalogues in depth how this apparently brilliantly-favoured couple came to lose their way, how they exhibited profound contemptuousness for practices built up by a treasured institution over a millennium, and how they were unable to understand the potential benefits of their destiny to such an extent that they managed to turn their fate on its head. Contrary to their statements, Meghan and Harry prove through their own actions that they are ill-judged characters, unable to bring the dynamism of the New to the Old or represent the dignity of the Old to the New. Falling between these two stools, they conspire time and again against themselves and others, inviting nothing but unnecessary controversy and unintended failure, despite the fact that the vast majority of onlookers, who would ultimately become critics, originally wished them well and hoped they would successfully forge a unique way forward in their ground-breaking union. Lady Colin's pen allows the couple no escape from the consequences of their actions, whether these be royal and aristocratic customs governed by tradition, precedence, and conservation; the racial furore they unleashed and the damage they wrought throughout the Commonwealth; the speculation they engendered with regards even to something as straightforward as pregnancy; the very different laws on each side of the Atlantic and how these affect inheritance as well as other important factors; the differing attitudes to money of those who have had it for many a year and those for whom it is newly minted; the merits of position versus celebrity; the benefits of freedom of the press and the efforts of the couple to curtail them; the dangers of suppression of civil liberties or even simply the choice of everyday activities which Meghan and Harry have shown time and again will involve themselves and onlookers in controversy after controversy. With her unrivalled access to a variety of worlds closed to most writers, Lady Colin Campbell provides the reader with the opinions of diplomatic and political figures from all over the Commonwealth as well as representatives of royalty, aristocracy, functionaries in the political spectrum, and members of the general public to whom she has access through her professional activities as a writer and broadcaster. In the process, she demonstrates how the couple's desire for freedom from accepted restraints allied to ambitions of a very mixed nature have led to the inevitable clashes which have characterized their activities and brought about their descent from being the most popular royal couple at the time of their marriage to the most unpopular now. Meghan may well have brought her Prince in shining armour to a home in Montecito, California, but the author provides the reader with genuine insight into the consequences of the couple's choices through her recognition of what it has taken them to get there, including infuriating the late Queen and jettisoning close family as well as friends and colleagues, and she concludes that Harry and Meghan are truly their own worst enemies: persecutors who present themselves as victims, when a more constructive and positive approach to life would have assured them of an entirely different and more positive outcome.

Tudor monarchs have consistently attracted more popular and scholarly attention than any other royal dynasty in British history. The peculiar origins of the Tudor family and the improbable saga of their rise and fall and rise again in the centuries before the Battle of Bosworth have, however, received far less attention.Based on original sources from Britain and France, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty sets the record straight by providing the only authoritative account of the ancestors of the Tudor family in North Wales at the start of the thirteenth century; their royal English and French connections in the fifteenth century; their unique role in the Wars of the Roses; and Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth Field in 1485.

This is the fantastic true story of the infamous pirate; Coxinga who became king of Taiwan and was made a god - twice.From humble origins, Coxinga's father became the richest man in China and Admiral of the Emperor's navy during the Ming Dynasty. As his eldest son, Coxinga was given the best education and developed a love of poetry and the study of Confucius. From this unlikely beginning, it took the invasion of south China by the Manchu and the subsequent loss of both his parents - his father defected to the Manchu and his mother, a Japanese Samurai, died in battle - to turn Coxinga from scholar to warrior.Fiercely loyal to his exiled Emperor, Coxinga fought against overwhelming odds until his defeat drove him out to sea and over to Taiwan - at the time a lawless set of islands inhabited by cannibals. Self-styled king of Taiwan, Coxinga died at the moment of his triumph. His descendants ruled the island for two decades.

Following Alan Watts' acclaimed book on Zen Buddhism The Way of Zen, he tackles the Chinese philosophy of Tao. The Tao is the way of man's cooperation with the natural course of the natural world. Alan Watts takes the reader through the history of Tao and its interpretations by key thinkers such as Lao-Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching. Watts goes on to demonstrate how the ancient and timeless Chinese wisdom of Tao promotes the idea of following a life lived according to the natural world and goes against our goal-oriented ideas by allowing time to quiet our minds and observe the world rather than imposing ourselves on it. By taking in some of the lessons of Tao, we can change our attitude to the way we live. Drawing on ancient and modern sources, Watts treats the Chinese philosophy of Tao in much the same way as he did Zen Buddhism in his classic The Way of Zen. Including an introduction to the Chinese culture that is the foundation of the Tao, this is one of Alan Watts' best-loved works.

Born into the wealth and splendour of the Russian imperial family as the shy fourth child of the Tsarevich, Xenia might well have expected to play only a minor role in the Romanov story. Yet when she was just six years old, the assassination of her grandfather, Alexander II, moved her father and his family into the centre. She became a key witness to the events of the tumultuous years that followed, seeing her brother Nicholas crowned as Emperor; the Revolution; and the 'terrible. horror' as the first rumours of the imperial family's capture and death began to circulate. She endured her own, and her family's, exile to Europe.Previously unpublished photographs and correspondence are used to reveal the intimate private life of the sister of the last Tsar, making this essential reading for anyone interested in the ill-fated Romanov dynasty.

The Thirty Years War claimed more lives proportionately than either the First or Second World Wars – not only from battle and the endemic violence of marauding armies, but also from famine and plague. The bitter struggle encompassed the entire political and religious future of Europe and involved all the major players of the Continent. As the turmoil unfolded, vast mercenary armies exacted an incalculable toll upon helpless civilian populations, while their commanders and the men who equipped them frequently grew rich on the profits, leaving rulers perched on the brink of catastrophe. When peace came in 1648, the underlying tensions were far from wholly resolved.In Europe in Flames John Matusiak provides a compelling account of this most tumultuous time, exploring the causes, course and outcomes of a conflict that not only produced one of the greatest manmade calamities of its kind, but changed the direction of European history forever.

This book investigates the English translations and adaptations of the sixteenth century classic Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei. Acclaimed the ‘No.1 Marvellous Book’ of the Ming dynasty, Jin Ping Mei was banned soon after its appearance, due to the inclusion of graphically explicit sexual descriptions. So far there have been more than a dozen English adaptations and translations of the novel. Working within the framework of descriptive translation studies, this book provides a translational history of the English versions of Jin Ping Mei, supported by various paratexts, including book covers, reviews, and archival materials. It also conducts textual comparisons to uncover the translation norms at work in the only two complete renditions, namely The Golden Lotus by Clement Egerton and The Plum in the Golden Vase by David Roy, respectively. The notions of agency, habitus and capital are introduced for the examination of the transference of linguistic, literary and cultural aspects of the two translations. The book represents the first systematic research effort on the English Translations of Jin Ping Mei. Given its pioneering status and interdisciplinary nature, the data, structure and findings of this book will potentially enrich the fields of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, Chinese Studies, Cultural Studies and Book History.

Death, Danes and disaster in Dark Age Ipswich! The castles are burning! Attacks, rebellions, battles and wars in ancient Suffolk! Queen of Blood and Fire! The dark days of Bloody Mary revealed! Sea of blood! Smugglers, sea battles, U-Boats and invasions along the Suffolk coast! The Zeppelins are coming! Bombs and bodies in the First World War! Suffolk has one of the most amazing histories of any British county. Betrayals, conspiracies and invasions have left their mark on this eastern frontier. Discover how vicious power struggles between the Danes and the Vikings shaped the history of not just the county, but the United Kingdom as a whole. Read of the troublesome Bigod dynasty, the Suffolk city under the sea and the strange story of the thousands of burnt corpses that washed up on the county’s beaches during the Second World War. Discover the dark truth inside!

The Other Tudor Princess brings to life the story of Margaret Douglas, a shadowy and mysterious character in Tudor history – but who now takes centre stage in this tale of the bitter struggle for power during the reign of Henry VIII.Margaret is Henry’s beloved niece, but she defies the king by indulging in two scandalous affairs and is imprisoned in the Tower of London on three occasions ‘not for matters of treason, but for love’. Yet, when Henry turns against his second wife Anne Boleyn and declares his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, bastards, it is Margaret he appoints as his heir to the throne. The arrangement of the marriage of Margaret’s son, Lord Darnley, to his cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots unites their claim to the throne and infuriates Queen Elizabeth. Yet this match brings tragedy, as Margaret’s son is brutally murdered. As Margaret reaches old age, her place in the dynasty is still not safe, and she dies in mysterious circumstances – was Margaret poisoned on the orders of Queen Elizabeth?Mary McGrigor tells this compelling and exciting part of Tudor history for the first time with all the passion and thrill of a novel, but this is no fiction – the untold story runs through the course of history, and Margaret secured the throne for her Stuart ancestors for years to come.

Chelsea FC, as someone once observed, has always done what other clubs have done, but not necessary in the same order. A stone’s throw from the King’s Road, draped with showbiz connections, and not even based in the borough from which it takes its name, Chelsea is an enigma. Run by the entrepreneurial Mears dynasty, Ken ‘electric fence’ Bates and now the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the club has enough entertaining quirks and anecdotes to keep you entertained for ages. It is also a club whose history is filled with glorious games, unique facts, bizarre statistics, larger-than-life players and a special brand of supporter. And, as this book proves, far from being the imposters Kipling suggested, triumph and disaster make for a fantastically entertaining read.

The Wars of the Roses were not just fought by men on the battlefield. Behind the scenes, there were daughters, wives, mistresses, mothers and queens whose lives and influences helped shape the most dramatic of English conflicts.This book traces the story of women on the Lancastrian side, from the children borne by Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, through the turbulent fifteenth century to the advent of Margaret Beaufort’s son in 1485 and the establishment of the Tudor dynasty. From the secret liaisons of Katherine Swynford and Catherine of Valois to the love lives of Mary de Bohun and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, to the queenship of Joan of Navarre and Margaret of Anjou, this book explores their experiences as women. What bound them to their cause? What real influence did they wield?Faced with the dangers of treason and capture, defamation and childbirth, read how these extraordinary women survived in extraordinary times.

In 1465, the Nevills must have thought they’d reached the pinnacle of power and influence in England. Richard Nevill was the king’s right-hand man and married to the richest woman in the kingdom; John Nevill was an accomplished soldier who’d done much to stabilise the new dynasty; and George Nevill was not only chancellor but newly enthroned as Archbishop of York. The Nevill women were as active as their male counterparts. As sisters and wives, daughters and daughters-in-laws, they had the ears of the elite in England and were not afraid of wielding their influence. And they were not always on the same side. Cracks in the stability of the most powerful family in England began to show. Rivalries led to serious conflict that worsened when King Edward IV impulsively married Elizabeth Wydeville, a choice of bride that did not please everyone. The Nevills had already lost a great deal for the Yorkist cause. Within six years, as the Wars of the Roses turned into one of the bloodiest periods of English history, they’d lose even more for the Lancastrians.

‘War,’ wrote Cardinal Richelieu, ‘is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men’. Yet the prelate’s mournful observation scarcely begins to encapsulate the full complexity and unspeakable horror of the greatest man-made calamity to befall Europe before the twentieth century. Claiming far more lives proportionately than either the First or Second World Wars, it was a contest involving all the major powers of Europe, in which vast mercenary armies extracted an incalculable toll upon helpless civilian populations as their commanders and the men who equipped them frequently grew rich on the profits. Swedish troops alone are said to have destroyed some 2,000 German castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns, while other vast armies in the pay of Spain, France, the Holy Roman Emperor and a host of pettier princelings brought death to as many as 8 million souls. Rarely has such a perplexing tale been more in need of a new account that is both compelling and informed, and no less comprehensible than comprehensive.

This seminal period of British history is a far-off world in which poverty, violence and superstition went hand-in-hand with opulence, religious virtue and a thriving cultural landscape, at once familiar and alien to the modern reader.John Matusiak sets out to shed new light on the lives and times of the Tudors by exploring the objects they left behind. Among them, a silver-gilt board badge discarded at Bosworth Field when Henry VII won the English crown; a signet ring that may have belonged to Shakespeare; the infamous Halifax gibbet, on which some 100 people were executed; scientific advancements such as a prosthetic arm and the first flushing toilet; and curiosities including a ladies’ sun mask, ‘Prince Arthur’s hutch’ and the Danny jewel, which was believed to be made from the horn of a unicorn. The whole vivid panorama of Tudor life is laid bare in this thought-provoking and frequently myth-shattering narrative, which is firmly founded upon contemporary accounts and the most up-to-date results of modern scholarship.

Isabella de Valois was 3 years old when, on a hot August day in 1392, her father suddenly went mad. Less than four years later, she was married by proxy to the English King Richard II and arrived in England with a French retinue and her doll’s house. Richard’s humiliating deposition and brutal murder by his cousin, the future Henry IV, forced Isabella’s desperate return to France where she found her country fatally divided. Isabella’s sister, Catherine de Valois, became the beautiful young bride of Henry V and is unique in history for being the daughter of a king, the wife of a king, the mother of a king and the grandmother of a king. Like her sister, Catherine was viewed as a bargaining chip in times of political turmoil, yet her passionate love affair with the young Owain Tudor established the entire Tudor dynasty and set in motion one of the most fascinating periods of British history. The Sister Queens is a gripping tale of love, exile and conflict in a time when even royal women had to fight for survival.

After the Second World War, war crimes prosecutors charged two of King George VI’s closest German relatives with ‘crimes against humanity’. American soldiers discovered top-secret documents at Marburg Castle that exposed treacherous family double-dealing inside the Royal Family. Two of the King’s brothers had flirted dangerously with the Nazi regime in duplicitous games of secret diplomacy.To avert a potential public relations catastrophe, George VI hid incriminating papers and, with Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt’s help, whitewashed history to protect his family. Three of Philip Mountbatten’s sisters were banned from Westminster Abbey and the wedding of their brother to Princess Elizabeth because their husbands were senior Nazi officers.This dilemma was Queen Victoria’s fatal legacy: she had hoped to secure peace in Europe through a network of royal marriages, but her plan backfired with two world wars.Tea With Hitler is a family saga of duty, courage, wilful blindness and criminality, revealing the tragic fate of a Saxe-Coburg princess murdered as part of the Nazi euthanasia programme and the story of Queen Victoria’s Jewish great-grand-daughter, rescued by her British relatives.

Shakepeare's "lass unparallel", the mistress of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, Cleopatra was born in 69 BC and died before she reached the age of forty, when Alexandria fell to Octavian-Augustus in 30 BC. She is portrayed as the supreme seductress, beautiful, unprincipled and licentious. These aspects of her character have been handed down to us through the centuries as a result of propaganda spread by her enemies in Rome. In reality Cleopatra was not beautiful in appearance, but it was her natural grace, intelligence and lively conversation that made her attractive. She was a wise judge of men and a shrewd and ambitious politician. She was charming, clever, courageous, cunning and chaste; despite her reputation for immorality. She had only two lovers, Caesar and Antony, the foremost Romans of their day, who helped her to keep her throne and her kingdom intact. The last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, she was the seventh queen to bear her name, but for most people there is only one Cleopatra.

As the first volume of a multivolume set on Chinese phonetics, this book gives a full picture of the historical development of the Chinese language and studies the phonetics of the early form of Chinese, that is, Old Chinese.Chinese language history is generally split into three phases: (1) Old Chinese, the form of the Chinese language spoken between the 18th century BCE and the 3rd century CE; (2) Middle Chinese, between the 4th century CE to around the 12th century CE; and (3) Modern Chinese, since the 13th century. In this volume, the author first introduces basic issues in Chinese language study, including research objectives, methodology, existing scholarship, periodization, and the distinctive linguistic characteristics of each period. The core chapters then describe and analyze the phonetical systems of Old Chinese, covering the initials system and related eight aspects, two types of rhyme groups, ancient finals, and the tonal system.This comprehensive groundwork on Chinese phonetical history will be a must read for scholars and students studying Chinese language, linguistics and especially for those wishing to become acquainted with Old Chinese phonetics.

This book investigates how British contemporary artists who work with clay have managed, in the space of a single generation, to take ceramics from niche-interest craft to the pristine territories of the contemporary art gallery. This development has been accompanied (and perhaps propelled) by the kind of critical discussion usually reserved for the 'higher' discipline of sculpture. Ceramics is now encountering and colliding with sculpture, both formally and intellectually. Laura Gray examines what this means for the old hierarchies between art and craft, the identity of the potter, and the character of a discipline tied to a specific material but wanting to participate in critical discussions that extend far beyond clay.

This book examines the history of the press in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir under the British Raj.Based on extensive archival data, the author meticulously traces and documents the history of freedom of the press, speech and assembly, as well as the restrictions imposed in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir during British colonialism. Structured chronologically, the book presents a historical narrative of the press in the state during the Dogra period (1846–1947) and further shows the continuities during the decade of Partition (1947–1957). It analyses a novel aspect of communication by examining symbolic resources and the communication history of the region. The book sheds light on the significant role of culture as a form of political and mass communication, particularly in the absence of newspapers, bringing forth previously undisclosed aspects to the public domain.Presenting a comprehensive legal history of the press in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, the book will be of interest to those intrigued by the history of South Asia, Media and Communication Studies and Journalism.

This book investigates how British contemporary artists who work with clay have managed, in the space of a single generation, to take ceramics from niche-interest craft to the pristine territories of the contemporary art gallery. This development has been accompanied (and perhaps propelled) by the kind of critical discussion usually reserved for the 'higher' discipline of sculpture. Ceramics is now encountering and colliding with sculpture, both formally and intellectually. Laura Gray examines what this means for the old hierarchies between art and craft, the identity of the potter, and the character of a discipline tied to a specific material but wanting to participate in critical discussions that extend far beyond clay.

The collaborative effort of nearly 100 China scholars from around the world, this unique one-volume reference provides 89 in-depth biographies of important Chinese women from the fifth century B.C.E to the early twentieth century.

Although the idea of class is again becoming politically and culturally charged, the relationship between media and class remains understudied. This diverse collection draws together prominent and emerging media scholars to offer readers a much-needed orientation within the wider categories of media, class, and politics in Britain, America, and beyond. Case studies address media representations and media participation in a variety of platforms, with attention to contemporary culture: from celetoids to selfies, Downton Abbey to Duck Dynasty, and royals to reality TV. These scholarly but accessible accounts draw on both theory and empirical research to demonstrate how different media navigate and negotiate, caricature and essentialize, or contain and regulate class.