Princess Diana was the most famous woman in the world, celebrated across the globe for her poise and glamour. But before stepping out of the royal carriage at St. Paul’s Cathedral she spent nineteen years as the shy, awkward Lady Diana Spencer. How did the aristocratic ugly duckling become a beautiful royal swan? Bestselling author …
Over the course of four years from 2017, ( after after completing the restoration of the historic Ilen ) boatbuilder Liam Hegarty set to work on the keel of a full replica of the Saoirse , an mammoth task that was documented by photographer Kevin O’Farrell in this book
The original Saoirse was the first Irish flagged vessel to circumnavigate the world , was built in Baltimore, Cork in 1921-23.
Signed, BRAND NEW, 2023.
Ernest Shackleton was the quintessential Edwardian hero. A contemporary – and adversary – of Scott, he sailed on the ‘Discovery’ expedition of 1900, and went on to mount three expeditions of his own. Like Scott, he was a social adventurer; snow and ice held no particular attraction, but the pursuit of wealth, fame and power did.
Yet Shackleton, and Anglo-Irishman who left school at 16, needed status to raise money for his own expeditions. At various times he was involved in journalism, politics, manufacturing and City fortune-hunting – none of them very effectively. A frustrated poet, he was never to be successful with money, but he did succeed in marrying it.
At his height he was feted as a national hero, knighted by Edward VII, and granted GBP20,000 by the government for achievements which were, and remain, the very stuff of legend. But the world to which he returned in 1917 after the sensational ‘Endurance’ expedition did not seem to welcome surviving heroes. Poverty-stricken by the end of the war, he had to pay off his debts through writing and endless lecturing.
He finally obtained funds for another expedition, but dies of a heart attack, aged only 47, at it reached South Georgia.
In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world s leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history and not just of humankind. Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present.
In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, we learn about the origins of our species: about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming. Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.
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