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While walking through a cliff-top graveyard in the town of
Morwenstow on the coast of Cornwall, the author encounters a wooden
Scottish figurehead that once adorned the "Caledonia," a ship
wrecked on the English coast in 1842. Through further
investigation, Seal begins to suspect the townspeople, and chiefly
the town's parson, Robert Hawker, for the "Caledonia"'s demise on
the jagged shores below. Though no one has ever been brought to
court for "wrecking"--luring ships ashore to loot the cargo--it's a
commonly held belief that this sort of cruelty did take place. But,
is that what happened in Morwenstow?
Having meticulously researched maritime logs, broadsides of the
day, and other first-hand documents, Seal weaves history,
travelogue, and imaginative reconstruction in this marvelous piece
of detective work, bringing us a mystery of the best kind--the sort
that really did happen.
Snakes are Jeremy Seal's fascination, and his greatest fear. In an
attempt to overcome his phobia, he decides to journey into America,
Australia, Africa and India in search of the most notorious and
deadly snakes, and to meet the people who live among them. His
travels take him to Kenya's snake man, whose entire life seems like
a preparation for a bite from the terrible black mamba, and to
witch doctors, who use snakes as instruments of vengeance. He
recalls the stories of Australian convicts condemned to prison in
the land of the world's deadliest snake, and the story of a
Southern preacher who tries to murder his wife with his church's
rattlesnakes. Mixed in with all these bizarre tales are fascinating
scientific facts, snake lore and ancient legends.
An erudite but highly entertaining travel narrative, "The Snakebite
Survivors' Club" taps into our general fear of snakes to tell a
funny and somewhat gruesome account of the world of snakes and the
people they repel, mesmerize, and sometimes kill.
The most dramatic, revealing and little-known story in Turkey's
history - which illuminates the nation 'Through the spellbinding
career of a single, ill-fated leader, Jeremy Seal illuminates a
bitterly divided country' Colin Thubron 'Read this book if you're
interested in Turkey. Read it if you're interested in power, hubris
and redemption. Read it' Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The
Islamic Enlightenment In the spring of 2016 travel writer Jeremy
Seal went to Turkey to investigate perhaps the most dramatic,
revealing and little-known episode in the country's history - the
'original' coup of 1960, which deposed the traditionalist Prime
Minister Adnan Menderes. The story of Menderes - to his adoring
supporters the country's founding democrat; to his sworn enemies
its most infamous traitor - goes to the heart of the feud that
continues to rage between the Western and secular ambitions of a
minority elite and the religious and conservative instincts of the
small-town majority. A Coup in Turkey is a thrilling account of the
events leading up to the coup and the trials and executions that
followed, a story of political subterfuge and score-settling,
courtroom drama, state execution, authoritarian intolerance and
ideological division. Seal travels through President Erdogan's
Turkey, tracking down eye-witness accounts from survivors of the
Menderes era in Istanbul, the historic metropolis, and the new
capital at Ankara. As he expertly guides us through this
extraordinary story, so the compelling parallels between past and
present become strikingly clear, and he illuminates this troubled
nation with a deep sympathy and love for the people and places he
writes about. By focussing on one key event - one which many Turks
regard with shame - this evocative, gripping portrait of Turkey
recentres our understanding of the past and makes sense of one of
Europe's most bewildering yet intriguing neighbours. 'A wonderful
writer' Robert Macfarlane
This is a captivating mystery of the best kind - the sort that
really happened. While walking through a cliff-top graveyard in the
village of Morwenstow on the coast of Cornwall, Jeremy Seal
stumbled across a wooden figurehead which once adorned the
Caledonia, a ship wrecked on the coast below in 1842. Through
further investigation, he began to suspect the locals, and in
particular the parson, Robert Hawker, of luring the ship to her
destruction on Cornwall's jagged shore. Wrecking is known to have
been widespread along several stretches of England's coast. But is
that what happened in Morwenstow? Seal weaves history, travelogue
and vivid imaginative reconstruction into a marvellous piece of
detective work.
The course of the Meander is so famously indirect that the river's
name has come to signify digression - an invitation Jeremy Seal is
duty-bound to accept while travelling the length of it in a one-man
canoe. At every twist and turn of his journey, from the Meander's
source in the uplands of Central Turkey to its mouth on the Aegean
Sea, Seal illuminates his account with a wealth of cultural,
historical and personal asides. It is a journey that takes him from
Turkey's steppe interior - the stamping ground of such illustrious
adventurers as Xerxes, Alexander the Great and the Crusader Kings -
to the great port city of Miletus, home of the earliest Western
philosophers. Along the way Seal unpicks the history of this
remarkable region, but he also encounters a rich assortment of
contemporary characters who reveal a rural Turkey on the cusp of
change. Above all, this is the story of a river that first brought
the cultures of East and West into contact - and conflict - with
one another, its banks littered with the spoil of empires, the
marks of war, and the detritus of recent industrialisation. At once
epic, intimate and insightful, Meander is a brilliant evocation of
a land between two worlds.
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