A delightful journey through the glamorous story of the English country house party by the bestselling historian. Croquet. Parlour games. Cocktails. Welcome to a glorious journey through the golden age of the country house party - and you are invited. Our host, celebrated historian Adrian Tinniswood, traces the evolution of this quintessentially British pastime from debauched royal tours to the flamboyant excess of the Bright Young Things. With cameos by the Jazz Age industrialist, the bibulous earl and the off-duty politician - whether in moated manor houses or ornate Palladian villas - Tinniswood gives a vivid insight into weekending etiquette and reveals the hidden lives of celebrity guests, from Nancy Astor to Winston Churchill, in all their drinking, feasting, gambling and fornicating. The result is a deliciously entertaining, star-studded, yet surprisingly moving portrait of a time when social conventions were being radically overhauled through the escapism of a generation haunted by war - and a uniquely fast-living period of English history. Praise for The Long Weekend: 'Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downton Abbey never was. It is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows everyone.' Observer 'A deliciously jaunty and wonderfully knowledgeable book. Tinniswood displays a terrific insider's grasp of gossip . A meticulous, irresistible story.' Spectator 'Elegant, encyclopedic and entertaining . A confident and skilled historian who understands the mores of his era and wears his learning lightly . Deserves to be on every costume drama producer's bookshelf.' Times

'A masterpiece of social history' Daily Mail There is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes. Real life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world and shows how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs, and how the reality was so much more interesting than the dream.

Pirates of Barbary is an extraordinary record of the European renegades and Islamic sea-rovers who terrorised the Mediterranean and beyond throughout the seventeenth century. From the coast of Southern Europe to Morocco and the Ottoman states of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Christian and Muslim seafarers met in bustling ports to swap religions, to battle and to trade goods and slaves -- raiding as far as Iceland and New England in search of their human currency. Studying the origins of these men, their culture and practices -- from pirate etiquette to intimidation tactics -- Adrian Tinniswood expertly recreates the twilight world of the corsairs in fascinating detail, and uncovers a truly remarkable clash of civilisations.
Pirates of Barbary draws on an incredible wealth of material, from furious royal proclamations to the private letters of pirates and their victims, as well as recent Islamic accounts to provide a new perspective on the corsairs, both as criminals and as devout warriors engaged in a battle against European incursions. The result is a kaleidoscopic image of a wild and exotic people, place and time, and a fascinating insight into what it meant to sacrifice all you have for a life so violent, so uncertain, and so alien that it set you apart from the rest of mankind.

From the bestselling author of The Long Weekend: a wild, sad and sometimes hilarious tour of the English country house after the Second World War, when Swinging London collided with aristocratic values. 'Preposterously entertaining' Observer 'Brilliant' Daily Telegraph 'Rollicking' Sunday Times As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in twentieth-century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished. Yet - perhaps surprisingly - many of these great houses survived, as dukes and duchesses clung desperately to their ancestral seats and tenants' balls gave way to rock concerts, safari parks and day trippers. From the Rolling Stones rocking Longleat to Christine Keeler rocking Cliveden, Noble Ambitions takes us on a lively tour of these crumbling halls of power. * A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year * * Longlisted for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History *

The true story that's "bloody good entertainment" ("New York Times") about the colorful and legendary pirates of the 17th century.

If not for today's news stories about piracy on the high seas, it'd be easy to think of pirating as a romantic way of life long gone. But nothing is further from the truth. Pirates have existed since the invention of commerce itself, and they reached the zenith of their power during the 1600s, when the Mediterranean was the crossroads of the world and pirates were the scourge of Europe. Historian and author Adrian Tinniswood brings this exciting and surprising chapter in history alive, revealing that the history of piracy is also the history that has shaped our modern world.

A magnificently told and thrilling account of one of the most dramatic events in British history.
Adrian Tinniswood's magnificent new account of the Great Fire of London explores the history of a cataclysm and its consequences, from that first small blaze in a baker's house in Pudding Lane in the early hours of September 2nd, 1666 to the inferno that would devastate the third largest city in the Western world. The statistics are terrible: 436 acres of closely packed streets burned; 13,200 houses destroyed; 10 million lost at a time when 10 million represented the City's annual income for 800 years. But the Great Fire wasn't simply a tragedy of economics or architecture. It wrecked lives and destroyed livelihoods. It killed and maimed, and it drove Londoners mad in their quest for vengeance.
By Permission of Heaven pieces together the untold human story of the Fire and its aftermath -- the panic and terror, the bewilderment and violence and chaos, the search for scapegoats, the rebirth of a city. Above all, it provides an unsurpassable recreation of what happened to schoolchildren and servants, courtiers and clergymen when the streets of London ran with fire and "by ye Permission of Heaven, Hell broke loose upon this Protestant City."

"From the Hardcover edition.

As WWI drew to a close, change reverberated through the halls of England's country homes. As the sun set slowly on the British Empire, the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes. In The Long Weekend, historian Adrian Tinniswood introduces us to the tumultuous, scandalous and glamourous history of English country houses during the years between World Wars. As estate taxes and other challenges forced many of these venerable houses onto the market, new sectors of British and American society were seduced by the dream of owning a home in the English countryside. Drawing on thousands of memoirs, letters, and diaries, as well as the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and bibulous butlers, Tinniswood brings the stately homes of England to life as never before, opening the door to a world by turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, and forever wrapped in myth. We are drawn into the intrigues of legendary families such as the Astors, the Churchills and the Devonshires as they hosted hunting parties and balls that attracted the likes of Charlie Chaplin, T.E. Lawrence, and royals such as Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. We waltz through aristocratic soirees, and watch as the upper crust struggle to fend off rising taxes and underbred outsiders, property speculators and poultry farmers. We gain insight into the guilt and the gingerbread, and see how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs. Through the glitz of estate parties, the social tensions between old money and new, the hunting parties, illicit trysts, and grand feasts, Tinniswood offers a glimpse behind the veil of these great estates--and reveals a reality much more riveting than the dream.

Behind the Throne is, above all, a history of family life. They ate, entertained their friends and worried about money. Henry VIII kept tripping over his dogs. George II threw his son out of the house. James I had to cut back on the drink bills. The great difference is that royal families had more help with their lives than most. Charles I maintained a household of 2,000. Victoria's medical establishment alone consisted of thirty doctors, three dentists and a chiropodist. Even today, Elizabeth II keeps a full-time staff of 1,200. A royal household was a community, a vast machine. Everyone, from James I's Master of the Horse down to William IV's Assistant Table Decker, was there to smooth the sovereign's path through life while simultaneously confirming their status. Here, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking you on a remarkable journey, exploring life as it was lived by clerks and courtiers and clowns and crowned heads. Behind the Throne is a true domestic history of the royal household, a reconstruction of life behind the throne. 'The most interesting and informative book on British royalty for many years' Literary Review

?A lively, almost novelistic account of an aristocratic family?("The New Yorker") drawn from an unprecedented number of personal papers.
The Verneys had a country estate, a seat in Parliament, and an astonishing habit: for four centuries generations of the family saved every piece of correspondence that came into their possession. The result is the largest private collection of letters and documents in the world?an extraordinary foundation for Adrian Tinniswood's family chronicle, one that ?breathes life into the turbulent history of an entire century? (Ross King, author of "Brunelleschi's Dome").

Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was the greatest architect Britain has ever known.

But he was more than that. A founder of the Royal Society, he mapped the moon and the stars, investigated the problem of longitude and the rings of Saturn, and carried out groundbreaking experiments into the circulation of the blood. His observations on comets, meteorology and muscular action made vital contributions to the developing ideas of Newton, Halley and Boyle. His Invention So Fertile presents the first complete picture of this towering genius: the Surveyor-General of the King's Works, running the nation's biggest architectural office and wrestling with corruption and interference; the pioneering anatomist; the mathematician, devising new navigational instruments and lecturing on planetary motion. It also shows us the man behind the legend. Wren was married and widowed twice, he fathered a mentally handicapped child, quarrelled with his colleagues and fell foul of his employers. He scrambled over building sites and went to the theatre and drank in coffee-houses.

The book explores what it was like to be at Oxford during the Commonwealth, as a generation struggled to make sense of a society in chaos; it recreates the tensions which tore apart the court of James II; it brings to life the petty jealousies that formed an integral part of both the building world and scientific milieu of the Royal Society. Above all, His Invention So Fertile makes clear to the general reader and the art historian just why Wren remains a cultural icon - both a creation and a creator of the world he lived in.