A stunningly illustrated history of Venice, from its beginnings as 'La Serenissima' – 'the Most Serene Republic' – to the Italian city that continues to enchant visitors today. 'Everything about Venice,' observed Lord Byron, 'is, or was, extraordinary – her aspect is like a dream, and her history is like a romance.' Dream and romance have conditioned myriad encounters with Venice across the centuries, but the city's story embodies another kind of experience altogether – the hard reality of an independent state built on conquest, profit and entitlement and on the toughness and resilience of a free people. Masters of the sea, the Venetians raised an empire through an ethos of service and loyalty to a republic that lasted a thousand years. In this new and beautifully illustrated study of key moments in Venice's history, from its half-legendary founding amid the collapse of the Roman empire to its modern survival as a fragile city of the arts menaced by saturation tourism and rising sea levels, Jonathan Keates shows us just how much this remarkable place has contributed to world culture and explains how it endures as an object of desire and inspiration for so many.

Jonathan Keates's passion for collecting historic guidebooks has resulted in a beguiling work of cultural archaeology, which explores the experience of travel for the British before the First World War. Unlike Lucy Honeychurch in E.M.Forster's A Room with a View, he revels in Baedeker, Murray and other Victorian examples, taking us on a poignant, funny and often revealing tour through this undiscovered genre.

In 1847, Italy is on the brink of revolution. In Jonathan Keates' highly acclaimed first novel, a young Englishman, Edward Rivers, arrives in the small town of Villafranca and an intriguing tale of passion, jealousy and betrayal unfolds. 'An unusual historical novel of love and death in nineteenth century Italy ... Jonathan Keates' analysis of conflicting passions is so graciously wrought, and with so careful an attention to psychology, that it is hard to believe The Strangers' Gallery is a first novel; a comparison with Stendhal's Scarlet and Black would not go amiss.' Independent This is a rich novel ... an extraordinary feat of imaginative transference into another age and culture.' Financial Times 'It is surely close to another nineteenth century novel written in the twentieth century - Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard.' Spectator 'Italy before a revolution is described in exquisite miniature with every detail of place and mannerism picked out and placed under glass... perfect and faultless' Sunday Times

In the chaos of the English Civil War and Puritan Commonwealth, churches were defaced and organs broken, but the tradition of fine music survived. When Charles II returned from exile in 1660, one of the first things he demanded was music, sacred and profane, anthems and motets, pavannes and gavottes. In 1659 Henry Purcell was born, and his genius would give the period and nation an unforgettable voice. Jonathan Keates traces Purcell's development against the turbulent movements of his time - political, religious, theatrical and social. He shows him growing up in the shadow of Westminster Abbey and follows him as a chorister in the Chapel Royal, copying the innovative and colourful style of Matthew Locke; beginning to composer for the theatre, and for State occasions; writing his great settings of sacred music, his chamber sonatas, and his triumphant Dido and Aeneas, the first British opera. In the background are the heady politics of Restoration England, which expelled the Stuart James II and brought William and Mary to the throne. But almost more important is the rich musical history, the influence of French and Italian composers, blending with and modifying the native tradition. We know and love Purcell through his work; his songs were sung in taverns, his psalms in churches; he was urbane and witty, impassioned and profound. This engrossing biography is as remarkable for its sensitive critical appreciation of Purcell's music, in all its forms, as it is for its vivid portrait of the man, and the boisterous age in which he lived.

On the evening of 22 March 1842, Henri Marie Beyle collapsed on a Parisian pavement and died a few hours later. In death, as in his life, the writer we now know as Stendhal remained ignored and underestimated by his contemporaries. Why this should be is explored by the award-winning writer, Jonathan Keates, in this major biography. Taking us from Stendhal's childhood in Grenoble through his varied careers to his death at fifty-nine, Keates examines the author's personal life, his many friendships and his work. 'Exact and illuminating ... Keates, like his subject, loves Italy and music and he loves Stendhal wisely and not too well. He is clear-eyed in appraising his faults.' Sunday Times Jonathan Keates manages to transmit both his own enthusiasm for his subject, and Stendhal's own enthusiasm for varied experience.' Independent 'Keates proves to be an alarmingly erudite guide.' Sunday Telegraph 'Keates has captured the historical sweep of his career and has a sure feel for the social milieux in which Stendhal lived ... A biography of admirable pace and geniality.' Evening Standard

Massacre and revolution in the mountains of Calabria, passion and betrayal in a Venetian opera house, a web of baffled desire spun during a summer in Verona, a world where exile kills more swiftly than death itself, where innocence becomes a lethal weapon, where lies are saving graces - this is the brittle, bizarre and menacing background to Allegro Postillions. Jonathan Keates's prize-winning collection gathers together four stories of haunting and magnetic brilliance set in 19th-century Italy, a war-torn, emerging nation of secrets and enigmas, of sudden violence and muted anguish, a land where the sought-after beauties of art clash with the unavoidable truth of life as it is lived. 'Keates's florid tales of revolution and love, passion and exile, innocence and death create a highly charged atmosphere ... an exciting, adventurous book.' Sunday Times 'A dream object ... pre-eminently, wonderfully solid and [it] has the aura of palpable accomplishment ... a virtuoso performance.' Literary Review 'Morn Advancing ...alone justifies this book, and leaves an imprint on the memory like a Breughel landscape.' Times Literary Supplement 'Clever and extremely stylish.' Daily Telegraph

In 1741, in just 24 days, the German-born, British-naturalized composer George Frideric Handel wrote an oratorio rich in tuneful arias and choruses of robust grandeur. Coolly received in London at first, after Handel's death Messiah enjoyed an extraordinary surge in popularity: it was performed at festivals across England; other composers rushed to rearrange it; it would be commercially recorded on more than 100 occasions. Jonathan Keates tells the story of the composition and musical afterlife of Handel's masterpiece: he considers the first performances and its place in Handel's output; he looks at the oratorio itself and its relationship with spirituality in the age of the Enlightenment; and he examines why Messiah became such an essential element in the national culture of Britain. Illustrated with beautiful images, including the original score of the work, Messiah is a richly informative and affectionate celebration of a high-point of Britain's Georgian golden age.

In 1741, in just 24 days, the German-born, British-naturalized composer George Frideric Handel wrote an oratorio rich in tuneful arias and choruses of robust grandeur. Coolly received in London at first, after Handel's death Messiah enjoyed an extraordinary surge in popularity: it was performed at festivals across England; other composers rushed to rearrange it; it would be commercially recorded on more than 100 occasions. Jonathan Keates tells the story of the composition and musical afterlife of Handel's masterpiece: he considers the first performances and its place in Handel's output; he looks at the oratorio itself and its relationship with spirituality in the age of the Enlightenment; and he examines why Messiah became such an essential element in the national culture of Britain. Illustrated with beautiful images, including the original score of the work, Messiah is a richly informative and affectionate celebration of a high-point of Britain's Georgian golden age.

Jonathan Keates original biography of Handel was hailed as a masterpiece on its publication in 1985. This fully revised and updated new edition - published to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composers death - charts in detail Handel's life, from his youth in Germany, through his brilliantly successful Italian sojourn, to the opulence and squalor of Georgian London where he made his permanent home. For over two decades Handel was absorbed in London's heady but precarious operatic world. But even his phenomenal energy and determination could not overcome the public's growing indifference to Italian opera in the 1730s, and he turned finally to oratorio, a genre which he made peculiarly his own and in which he created some of his finest works, such as Saul, Messiah, Belshazzar and Jephtha. Over the last two decades a complete revolution in Handel's status has taken place. He is now seen both as a titanic figure in music, whose compositions have found a permanent place in the international repertoire, and as one of the world's favourite composers, with snatches of his work accompanying weddings, funerals and television commercials the world over. Skillfully interwoven with the account of Handel's life are commentaries on all his major works, as well as many less familiar pieces by this most inventive, expressive and captivating of composers. Handel was an extraordinary genius whose career abounded in reversals that would have crushed anyone with less resilience and will power, and Jonathan Keates writes about his life and work with sympathy and scrutiny.

This publication incorporates a radically new presentation of the cathedral and its history. By means of a careful interaction of text and images, the guide conveys the sense of the Cathedral as a working institution and brings to life dynamically the history of the Cathedral.

If you're familiar with the basics of Flash, then The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 will take you further in all aspects of the application, animation, sound, 3D, inverse kinematics, the drawing tools, ActionScript, and much more. This book takes all the good bits of Flash CS4 and demonstrates them in methodical and intuitive exercises full of hints and tips for streamlining the creative process. Jump straight into Flash CS4 and start working on real life examples that you can customize to suit your needs.Demystifies Flash CS4explaining new features deep diving through old favorites Streamlines the production of cutting-edge Flash CS4 animations and applications Provides a unique commercial perspective in compelling Flash productions

This book is for intermediate Flash CS4 users as well as the more advanced user who wants to learn about using Flash CS4's awesome new capabilities, such as motion tweening and kinematics poses.

Each chapter has a number of exercises that contribute to an overall project. The exercises are fun and compelling and allow you to place your own creative stamp on them, while still following the steps to completion.

The final chapter focuses on bringing the exercise output together in an overall campaign consisting of a website featuring advanced flash components and advertising banners.

An underlying theme of the book is marketing a website online. It discusses industry standards for banner campaigns (banner weight, frames per second, etc), effective website marketing techniques, and delves into search engine optimization and search engine marketing. What you'll learn The unique capabilities of Flash CS4 and how to apply them in real life scenarios How to partner Flash CS4 with open source programs and international publisher standards to create compelling and rich user experiencesHow to incorporate different technologies into Flash CS4 applications seamlessly to make the overall Flash build less arduousHow to harness your creativity to make your ideas come to lifeHow to ensure that these ideas will have marketing legs and adhere to W3C standardsHow to get the edge above your competitors Who this book is for

This book is for designers and developers who are familiar with Flash but want to push the boundaries of what Flash CS4 is capable of. You have the vision and the ideas of what you want to do, but you are unsure of just how to do it.

This book explores in depth the effects of partnering Flash CS4 with other Adobe products, such as Fireworks and Photoshop, but also delves deeply into partnering Flash CS4 with cutting edge open source programs, such as Papervision, and how to create unique rich media executions in partnership with companies such as EyeBlaster. Table of Contents Welcome to Flash CS4 Getting Creative: How to Make Your Ideas Come to Life Through Project Planning Getting Your Hands Dirty: Layers, Masks, and Photoshop Draw Me a Picture: Using the Drawing Tools Filters and Blends Let's Get Animated Achieving Lifelike Motion with Inverse Kinematics Lights, Camera, ActionScript Using 3D Space in Flash CS4 Seeing and Hearing Are Believing Utilizing Best Practices to Get the Most Out of Your Flash CS4 Movies The End of the Beginning

During its three-thousand-year history Rome has been an imperial metropolis, the capital of a nation and the spiritual core of a great world religion. For writers from antiquity to the present, however, the place holds an alternative significance as a realm of fantasy, aspiration and desire. Captivating and lethal at one and the same moment, its fatal gift of beauty both transfigures and betrays those in thrall to it. Rome Stories explores the city's fateful impact through the writing of classical historians, a Renaissance sculptor, 18th-century tourists, American, British and French novelists and the authors of modern Rome, each testing and unravelling the city's ageless paradoxes. Gibbon admires the Last of the Tribunes, Goethe decodes the mysteries of the Carnival and Stendhal's subversive aristocrats mingle revolution with a little cross-dressing amid their gilt mirrors and frescoed ceilings From Plutarch to Pasolini, from Hawthorne to Wharton, the city of Caesars and popes, of dreamers, chancers and hustlers confronts the questing imagination with its eternally unflinching gaze.

The sublime city of Venice has long offered inspiration to the world's storytellers. This anthology gathers a dazzling variety of stories with Venetian settings, including Daphne du Maurier's haunting "Don't Look Now," Anthony Trollope's wartime romance "The Last Austrian Who Left Venice," Vernon Lee's spine-chilling "A Wicked Voice," and a scene from The Wings of the Dove, Henry James's tale of passion and betrayal in a Gothic palazzo on the Grand Canal. The famed Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova weighs in with escapades from his notorious Memoirs, alongside enthralling selections by Baron Corvo, Marcel Proust, Camillo Boito, and Jeanette Winterson. In its multifaceted portrait of La Serenissima, Venice Stories showcases a lineup of literary classics worthy of the magnificent city they celebrate.

'How deeply I envy any reader coming to her for the first time!' Elizabeth Jane Howard * A finely nuanced exploration of responsibility, snobbery and culture clash from one of the twentieth century's finest novelists. When Amy is suddenly left widowed and alone while on holiday in Istanbul, Martha, an American traveller, comforts her and accompanies her back to England. Upon their return, however, Amy is ungratefully reluctant to maintain their relationship, recognising that, under any other circumstances, the two women would not be friends. But guilt is a hard taskmaster, and Martha has away of getting under one's skin ... * 'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' Elizabeth Bowen 'No writer has described the English middle classes with more gently devastating accuracy' Rebecca Abrams, Spectator 'A Game of Hide and Seek showcases much of what makes Taylor a great novelist: piercing insight, a keen wit and a genuine sense of feeling for her characters' Elizabeth Day, Guardian