Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Dixon" in All Categories

The rose is bursting with meaning: Over the centuries, it has come to represent love and sensuality, deceit, death, and the mystical unknown. Today the rose enjoys unrivalled popularity across the globe, ever present at life's seminal moments.

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer uncovers the story of an unpublished and previously unknown book by the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked between 1922 and 1928 on his Clarendon edition Selections from Chaucer's Poetry and Prose, and though never completed, its 160 pages of commentary reveals much of his thinking about language and storytelling when he was still at the threshold of his career as an epoch-making writer of fantasy literature.

Long-term social and demographic changes - and the conflicts they create - continue to transform British politics. In this accessible and authoritative book, Sobolewska and Ford show how deep the roots of this polarization and volatility run, drawing out decades of educational expansion and rising ethnic diversity as key drivers in the emergence of new divides within the British electorate over immigration, identity, and diversity.

The historical Merlin was no rough magician: he was a learned figure from the cutting edge of medieval science and adept in astrology, cosmology, prophecy, and natural magic, as well as being a seer and a proto-alchemist. His powers were convincingly real—and useful, for they helped to add credibility to the "long-lost" history of Britain which first revealed them to a European public. Merlin's prophecies reassuringly foretold Britain's path, establishing an ancient ancestral line and linking biblical prophecy with more recent times. Merlin helped to put British history into world history.

Combining searing personal accounts of battles and betrayals with moving portraits of the ordinary Afghans who were caught up in the conflict for more than a decade, The Wrong Enemy is a sweeping account of a war brought by American leaders against an enemy they barely understood and could not truly engage.

One of the earliest creative approaches to feminist literature, this sinister horror story tells of a woman's mental anguish and unconscious struggle with conformity in a society that generally viewed women as weak and hysterical creatures unable to think for themselves. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), a prominent American feminist, paved the way for other authors like Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker. She suffered mental illness during her life and ultimately committed suicide.

In the fall of 1947, an eighty-four-year-old woman receives an extraordinary invitation. Within is the end of a long journey seeking vindication for a husband who gave his life to the service of the Royal Navy and received, in return, ingratitude. Thus begins the story of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Victoria, the eldest daughter of Princess Alice and Prince Ludwig of Hesse, was born in April 1863.

Charles Lutwidge Dodson, a professor of mathematics at Magdalen (Maudlin) College, Oxford, originally wrote these charming children's stories for young Alice, the daughter of his friend, Henry George Liddell, the dean of Christ Church. After publication, these children's books rapidly became popular with adults because of the extraordinary mixture of rationalism and fantasy, irony, and absurdity viewed through the looking glass of a child's dreams.

Published in 1905 by Frances Hodgson Burnett - author of the beloved The Secret Garden - this is the story of Sara Crewe, the adored and pampered daughter of a wealthy widowed father. Sara suffers great losses but taps in to her "inner princess", and with strength, imagination, and storytelling, she triumphs over her sad circumstances while at the same time inspiring her fellow school companions.

The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps, lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger's greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English history and almost destroyed his own family. The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.

Anthony Trollope is among the best-loved novelists in the English language. This Very Short Introduction will place Trollope's work in the context of his life and times, drawing on recent scholarship to illuminate his central interests and literary strategies. The major series of novels (the six novels located in the fictional Barsetshire, and the six Palliser novels) are explored alongside the novels set in Ireland, his travel writing, and his less well-known fiction.

Suzanne Morse, a midwife in Watertown, moves to a remote frontier town with her husband and two children in 1666. A hands-on, practical woman who needs people, she bonds with the first two women she meets. The minister's new wife, Abigail Willard, wants to learn Suzanne's trade. At the same time, Dancing Light, a medicine woman across the river, calls her to heal her sister, dying of a white man's disease, with white medicine. In no time, Suzanne becomes known as an effective healer among Groton settlers. However, her friendship with Dancing Light arouses the town's approbation.

If the news about Harry, William, Kate, Meghan, and the rest of the British royals has you wondering about how this latest generation of princes, princesses, dukes, and duchesses got their start, you're not alone. Queen Elizabeth II For Dummies takes you on a fascinating journey through the life of Great Britain's longest-serving monarch.

We live in an age of displacement. Refugee numbers are increasing due to a proliferation of fragile states. And yet, rising populist nationalism has undermined the political willingness of rich countries to accept migrants and asylum seekers. Given these contradictory trends, how can we create sustainable refugee policies that enable displaced people to live in safety and dignity, while operating at scale? The Wealth of Refugees draws upon a decade of original qualitative and quantitative research to offer practical solutions.

Beaten and left for dead in the English countryside, clergyman and reformer Tom Cross is rescued and nursed back to health by Miranda and Simon Thorne, reclusive siblings who seem to have as many secrets as he does. Tom has spent years helping the downtrodden in London while lying to everyone he meets, but now he's forced to slow down and confront his unexamined life.

Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was a man of many talents - a sculptor, painter, architect, writer, and scholar - but he is best known for Lives of the Artists, which singlehandedly established the canon of Italian Renaissance art. Before Vasari's extraordinary book, art was considered a technical skill, and artists were mere decorators and craftsmen. It was through Vasari's visionary writings that Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo came to be regarded as great masters of life as well as art, their creative genius celebrated as a divine gift.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1737-1809), originally published anonymously (by "an Englishman") in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776. This revised edition was published on February 14, 1776. It had a great influence at the time, particularly with regard to the colonies becoming completely independent of Great Britain as well as bringing about the issuance of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress in July 1776.

Supernatural short story written especially for the young Anne (Nannie) Wynne. It was originally published as "The Ghost's Touch" in The Irish Fireside, 30 September-14 October 1885; Harper's Weekly, 23 October 1885; and in The Ghost's Touch and Other Stories (with "My Lady's Money" and "Percy and the Prophet", Harper's Handy Series, no. 30, 1885).

Considered the pioneer of modern inspirational thought and motivation, James Allen (1864 - 1912) published As a Man Thinketh in 1903. This is a powerful little self-help treatise, which essentially discusses how, by adjusting the way we think in response to external circumstances, we can shape our lives, personally, professionally, physically, and psychologically, towards the ultimate goal of inner peace and serenity.

Queen Elizabeth II's address in Philadelphia on July 6th, 1976, where she presented a new Liberty Bell inscribed with "Let Freedom Ring" in honor of the bicentennial of the USA.