'Ackroyd makes history accessible to the layman' - Ian Thomson, Independent The penultimate volume of Peter Ackroyd's masterful History of England series, Dominion begins in 1815 as national glory following the Battle of Waterloo gives way to post-war depression, spanning the last years of the Regency to the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901. In it, Ackroyd takes us from the accession of the profligate George IV whose government was steered by Lord Liverpool, who was firmly set against reform, to the reign of his brother, William IV, the 'Sailor King', whose reign saw the modernization of the political system and the abolition of slavery. But it was the accession of Queen Victoria, aged only eighteen, that sparked an era of enormous innovation. Technological progress - from steam railways to the first telegram - swept the nation and the finest inventions were showcased at the first Great Exhibition in 1851. The emergence of the middle classes changed the shape of society and scientific advances changed the old pieties of the Church of England, and spread secular ideas across the nation. But though intense industrialization brought boom times for the factory owners, the working classes were still subjected to poor housing, long working hours and dire poverty. It was a time that saw a flowering of great literature, too. As the Georgian era gave way to that of Victoria, readers could delight not only in the work of Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth but also the great nineteenth-century novelists: the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Thackeray, and, of course, Dickens, whose work has become synonymous with Victorian England. Nor was Victorian expansionism confined to Britain alone. By the end of Victoria's reign, the Queen was also an Empress and the British Empire dominated much of the globe. And, as Ackroyd shows in this richly populated, vividly told account, Britannia really did seem to rule the waves.

In this biography, the acclaimed author of "Sons of Providence," winner of the 2007 George Wash- ington Book Prize, recovers an immensely important part of the founding drama of the country in the story of Robert Morris, the man who financed Washington's armies and the American Revolution.
Morris started life in the colonies as an apprentice in a counting house. By the time of the Revolution he was a rich man, a commercial and social leader in Philadelphia. He organized a clandestine trading network to arm the American rebels, joined the Second Continental Congress, and financed George Washington's two crucial victories--Valley Forge and the culminating battle at Yorktown that defeated Cornwallis and ended the war.
The leader of a faction that included Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Washington, Morris ran the executive branches of the revolutionary government for years. He was a man of prodigious energy and adroit management skills and was the most successful businessman on the continent. He laid the foundation for public credit and free capital markets that helped make America a global economic leader. But he incurred powerful enemies who considered his wealth and influence a danger to public "virtue" in a democratic society.
After public service, he gambled on land speculations that went bad, and landed in debtors prison, where George Washington, his loyal friend, visited him.
This once wealthy and powerful man ended his life in modest circumstances, but Rappleye restores his place as a patriot and an immensely important founding father.

In this celebrated, landmark history of the Balkans, Misha Glenny investigates the roots of the bloodshed, invasions and nationalist fervour that have come to define our understanding of the south-eastern edge of Europe. In doing so, he reveals that groups we think of as implacable enemies have, over the centuries, formed unlikely alliances, thereby disputing the idea that conflict in the Balkans is the ineluctable product of ancient grudges. And he exposes the often-catastrophic relationship between the Balkans and the rest of Europe, raising profound questions about recent Western intervention. Updated to cover the last decade's brutal conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia, the surge of organised crime in the region, the rise of Turkey and the rocky road to EU membership, The Balkans remains the essential and peerless study of Europe's most complex and least understood region.

'I read the book with enormous appreciation. Tessa Boase brings all these long-ago housekeepers so movingly to life and her excitement in the research is palpable.' Fay Weldon: Novelist, playwright - and housekeeper's daughter Revelatory, gripping and unexpectedly poignant, this is the story of the invisible women who ran the English country house. Working as a housekeeper was one of the most prestigious jobs a nineteenth and early twentieth century woman could want - and also one of the toughest. A far cry from the Downton Abbey fiction, the real life Mrs Hughes was up against capricious mistresses, low pay, no job security and gruelling physical labour. Until now, her story has never been told. Revealing the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers, and delving into secret diaries, unpublished letters and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households. From Dorothy Doar, Regency housekeeper for the obscenely wealthy 1st Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire, to Sarah Wells, a deaf and elderly Victorian in charge of Uppark, West Sussex. From Ellen Penketh, Edwardian cook-housekeeper at the sociable but impecunious Erddig Hall in the Welsh borders to Hannah Mackenzie who runs Wrest Park in Bedfordshire - Britain's first country-house war hospital, bankrolled by playwright J. M. Barrie. And finally Grace Higgens, cook-housekeeper to the Bloomsbury set at Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex for half a century - an era defined by the Second World War. Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-GBX-NONEX-NONE

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

While the French Revolution has been much discussed and studied, its impact on religious life in France is rather neglected. Yet, during this brief period, religion underwent great changes that affected everyone: clergy and laypeople, men and women, Catholics, Protestants and Jews. The "Reigns of Terror" of the Revolution drove the Church underground, permanently altering the relationship between Church and State. In this book, Nigel Aston offers a guide to these tumultuous events. While the structures and beliefs of the Catholic Church are central, it does not neglect minority groups like Protestants and Jews. Among other features, the book discusses the Constitutional Church, the end of state support for Catholicism, the "Dechristianization" campaign and the Concordat of 1801-2. Key themes discussed include the capacity of all the Churches for survival and adaptation, the role of religion in determining political allegiances during the Revolution, and the turbulence of Church-State relations. In this study, based on the latest evidence, Aston sheds new light on a dynamic period in European history and its impact on the next 200 years of religious life in France.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

"Francis Jeffrey is celebrated as the editor of the Edinburgh Review, but little is known of his remarkable visit to America and his enthusiastic reception by American readers. Elliott and Hook have produced a marvellous edition of Jeffrey's record of his journey between New York and Washington during the second Anglo-American War. Historians will be fascinated by Jeffrey's account of his discussion of British-American differences with President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, which furnish remarkable first hand accounts of these men's beliefs about the origins and nature of the conflict. Literary scholars will be intrigued by the unsuspected romantic sensibilities evident in Jeffrey's descriptions of the American environment. This is an excellent edition of Jeffrey's engaging account of the new American republic." -- Simon P. Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Professor of American Studies, University of Glasgow. Clare Elliott is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Northumbria University and has taught at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, recently completing a post at Teesside University. Her research interests lie in Transatlantic Literary Studies, Transnationalism and Transatlantic Romanticisms. Clare has published on William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and is reviewer of American literature to 1900 for the Years Work in English Studies. The long eighteenth century in Scotland is increasingly recognized as a period of outstanding cultural achievement. In these years both the Scottish Enlightenment and Scottish Romanticism made lasting contributions to Western intellectual and cultural life. This series is designed to further our understanding of this crucial era in a range of ways: by reprinting less familiar but important works by writers in the period itself; by producing new editions of key out-of-print books by modern scholars; and by publishing new research and criticism by contemporary scholars. Perspectives: Scottish Studies of the long Eighteenth Century Series Editor: Andrew Hook

Tracing the interwoven traditions of modern welfare states in Europe over five centuries, Thomas McStay Adams explores social welfare from Portugal, France, and Italy to Britain, Belgium and Germany. He shows that the provision of assistance to those in need has faced recognizably similar challenges from the 16th century through to the present: how to allocate aid equitably (and with dignity); how to give support without undermining autonomy (and motivation); and how to balance private and public spheres of action and responsibility. Across two authoritative volumes, Adams reveals how social welfare administrators, critics, and improvers have engaged in a constant exchange of models and experience locally and across Europe. The narrative begins with the founding of the Casa da Misericordia of Lisbon in 1498, a model replicated throughout Portugal and its empire, and ends with the relaunch of a social agenda for the European Union at the meeting of the Council of Europe in Lisbon in 2000. Volume 1, which focuses on the period from 1500 to 1700, discusses the concepts of 'welfare' and 'tradition'. It looks at how 16th-century humanists joined with merchants and lawyers to renew traditional charity in distinctly modern forms, and how the discipline of religious reform affected the exercise of political authority and the promotion of economic productivity. Volume 2 examines 18th-century bienfaisance which secularized a Christian humanist notion of beneficence, producing new and sharply contested assertions of social citizenship. It goes on to consider how national struggles to establish comprehensive welfare states since the second half of the 19th century built on the power of the vote as politicians, pushed by activists and advised by experts, appealed to a growing class of industrial workers. Lastly, it looks at how 20th-century welfare states addressed aspirations for social citizenship while the institutional framework for European economic cooperation came to fruition

This book: covers the essential content in the new specifications in a rigorous and engaging way, using detailed narrative, sources, timelines, key words, helpful activities and extension material helps develop conceptual understanding of areas such as evidence, interpretations, causation and change, through targeted activities provides assessment support for A level with sample answers, sources, practice questions and guidance to help you tackle the new-style exam questions. It also comes with three years' access to ActiveBook, an online, digital version of your textbook to help you personalise your learning as you go through the course - perfect for revision.