Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704) was one of the most remarkable, significant and colourful figures in seventeenth-century England. Whilst there has been regular, if often cursory, scholarly interest in his activities as Licenser and Stuart apologist, this is the first sustained book-length study of the man for almost a century. L'Estrange's engagement on the Royalist side during the Civil war, and his energetic pamphleteering for the return of the King in the months preceding the Restoration earned him a reputation as one of the most radical royalist apologists. As Licenser for the Press under Charles II, he was charged with preventing the printing and publication of dissenting writings; his additional role as Surveyor of the Press authorised him to search the premises of printers and booksellers on the mere suspicion of such activity. He was also a tireless pamphleteer, journalist, and controversialist in the conformist cause, all of which made him the bAte noire of Whigs and non-conformists. This collection of essays by leading scholars of the period highlights the instrumental role L'Estrange played in the shaping of the political, literary, and print cultures of the Restoration period. Taking an interdisciplinary approach the volume covers all the major aspects of his career, as well as situating them in their broader historical and literary context. By examining his career in this way the book offers insights that will prove of worth to political, social, religious and cultural historians, as well as those interested in seventeenth-century literary and book history.

For more than fifty years Beth Lynch has been drawn back, over and over again, to a rocky nook on the North Cornwall coast. Her earliest memories of the place are of idyllic trips on family holidays. But as she grows older she begins to feel a unique and powerful connection with the cove. This slippery place of sheer edges and ledges, strange rock formations and eroding, tumbling slate becomes her place of safety from childhood anxiety and, later, the terror of school bullying. Around the time of her parents' deaths, odd things start to happen at the cove. Is it the cove, or is it her? The place that she thought she knew inside out becomes increasingly strange. She discovers that her wild cove has a very populated past. A new acquaintanceship with the place begins, shared with her husband, and friends, and the farmers who live there and befriend her. But maybe the cove does not want to be known. And, one day, in her safe recess, she will find herself in danger and come close to death. By telling the story of an ineluctable relationship with a place, this literary memoir tells a story of human relationships. It is a lyrical meditation on fear; on what happens when our fears come true; and on ways of being in danger. On mortality, and how we do or don't take leave of our dead. On haunting and being haunted: on memory, and love.

What do you do when you find yourself living as a stranger? When Beth Lynch moved to Switzerland, she quickly realised that the sheer will to connect with people would not guarantee a happy relocation. Out of place and lonely, Beth knows that she needs to get her hands dirty if she is to put down roots. And so she sets about making herself at home in the way she knows best - by tending a garden, growing things. The search for a garden takes her across the country, through meadows and on mountain paths where familiar garden plants run wild, to the rugged hills of the Swiss Jura. In this remote and unfamiliar place of glow worms and dormice and singing toads she learns to garden in a new way, taking her cue from the natural world. As she plants her paradise with hellebores and aquilegias, cornflowers and Japanese anemones, these cherished species forge green and deepening connections: to her new soil, to her old life in England, and to her deceased parents, whose Sussex garden continues to flourish in her heart. WHERE THE HORNBEAM GROWS is a memoir about carrying a garden inwardly through loss, dislocation and relocation, about finding a sense of wellbeing in a green place of your own, and about the limits of paradise in a peopled world. It is a powerful exploration by a dazzling new literary voice of how, in nurturing a corner of the natural world, we ourselves are nurtured.