When sacred objects were rejected during the Reformation, they were not always burned and broken but were sometimes given to children as toys. Play is typically seen as free and open, while iconoclasm, even to those who deem it necessary, is violent and disenchanting. What does it say about wider attitudes toward religious violence and children at play that these two seemingly different activities were sometimes one and the same? Drawing on a range of sixteenth-century artifacts, artworks, and texts, as well as on ancient and modern theories of iconoclasm and of play, Iconoclasm As Child's Play argues that the desire to shape and interpret the playing of children is an important cultural force. Formerly holy objects may have been handed over with an intent to debase them, but play has a tendency to create new meanings and stories that take on a life of their own. Joe Moshenska shows that this form of iconoclasm is not only a fascinating phenomenon in its own right; it has the potential to alter our understandings of the threshold between the religious and the secular, the forms and functions of play, and the nature of historical transformation and continuity.

The sense of touch had a deeply uncertain status in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It had long been seen as the most certain and reliable of the senses, and also as biologically necessary: each of the other senses could be relinquished, but to lose touch was to lose life itself. Alternatively, touch was seen as dangerously bodily, and too fully involved in sensual and sexual pleasures, to be of true worth. Feeling Pleasures argues that this tension came to the fore during the English Renaissance, and allowed some of the central debates of this period-surrounding the nature of human experience, of the material world, and of the relationship between the human and the divine-to proceed through discussions of touch. It also argues that the unstable status of touch was of particular import to the poetry of this period. By bringing touch to the fore in a period usually associated with the dominance of vision and optics, Joe Moshenska offers reconsiderations of major English poets, especially Edmund Spenser and John Milton, while exploring a range of spheres in which touch assumed new significance. These include theological debates surrounding relics and the Eucharist in the work of Erasmus, Thomas Cranmer and Lancelot Andrewes; the philosophical history of tickling; the touching of paintings and sculptures in a European context; faith healing and experimental science; and the early reception of Chinese medicine in England.

'Making Darkness Light is an illumination' Adam Phillips 'His sympathetic yet challenging account will undoubtedly win Milton new readers - and for that a chorus of Hallelujahs' Spectator For most of us John Milton has been consigned to the dusty pantheon of English literature, a grim puritan, sightlessly dictating his great work to an amanuensis, removed from the real world in his contemplation of higher things. But dig a little deeper and you find an extraordinary and complicated human being. Revolutionary and apologist for regicide, writer of propaganda for Cromwell's regime, defender of the English people and passionate European, scholar and lover of music and the arts - Milton was all of these things and more. Making Darkness Light shows how these complexities and contradictions played out in Milton's fascination with oppositions - Heaven and Hell, light and dark, self and other - most famously in his epic poem Paradise Lost. It explores the way such brutal contrasts define us and obscure who we really are, as the author grapples with his own sense of identity and complex relationship with Milton. Retracing Milton's footsteps through seventeenth century London, Tuscany and the Marches, he vividly brings Milton's world to life and takes a fresh look at his key works and ideas around the nature of creativity, time and freedom of expression. He also illustrates the profound influence of Milton's work on writers from William Blake to Virginia Woolf, James Joyce to Jorge Luis Borges. This is a book about Milton, that also speaks to why we read and what happens when we choose over time to let another's life and words enter our own. It will change the way you think about Milton forever.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY and THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY 'A thrilling account' The Times 'As heroic as Digby himself, Moshenska has defied the tyranny of genre and made his own absorbing account' Observer 'A master storyteller. Full of exquisite details, but with the grandest themes... this is a gripping adventure story' Zia Haider Rahman 'A brilliant account of one of the seventeenth century's most dashing lives' Ruth Scurr 'Gripping and extraordinary' Ann Wroe On the 16th of August 1628, five battle-scarred English ships sailed into the harbour of the Greek island of Milos. Dropping anchor, the 25-year-old captain banqueted with the local lord before sitting down to write an account of his journey - an account that would transform him entirely. Sir Kenelm Digby was one of the most remarkable Englishmen who ever lived: a trusted advisor to the King, but the sworn enemy of the all-powerful Duke of Buckingham; a pioneering philosopher and scientist, but committed to the occult arts of alchemy and astrology; a friend not only of Ben Jonson, Thomas Hobbes and van Dyck, but even Oliver Cromwell. He was also widely known as the 'son of a traytor and husband of a whore': a man who witnessed his father's gruesome execution for high treason as a Gunpowder Plotter, and the lover of the most celebrated beauty of the age, Venetia Stanley. In an attempt to clear his name, and on a quest for personal glory, Digby assembled a fleet and set sail for the Mediterranean: a world of pirate cities and ancient ruins where people, ideas and exotic goods moved freely between languages and nations. His journey - encompassing fevers, mutiny, piracy, daring rescues and heroic sea battles - is a great and terribly overlooked adventure, and a prism through which to view England, and all of Europe, during one of the most pivotal periods in its history. A Stain in the Blood is the story of an extraordinary life, and of a journey that helped to shape a nation. It is a revelatory first work of non-fiction by one of the brightest young writers and thinkers of today.

The sense of touch had a deeply uncertain status in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It had long been seen as the most certain and reliable of the senses, and also as biologically necessary: each of the other senses could be relinquished, but to lose touch was to lose life itself. Alternatively, touch was seen as dangerously bodily, and too fully involved in sensual and sexual pleasures, to be of true worth. Feeling Pleasures argues that this tension came to the fore during the English Renaissance, and allowed some of the central debates of this period-surrounding the nature of human experience, of the material world, and of the relationship between the human and the divine-to proceed through discussions of touch. It also argues that the unstable status of touch was of particular import to the poetry of this period. By bringing touch to the fore in a period usually associated with the dominance of vision and optics, Joe Moshenska offers reconsiderations of major English poets, especially Edmund Spenser and John Milton, while exploring a range of spheres in which touch assumed new significance. These include theological debates surrounding relics and the Eucharist in the work of Erasmus, Thomas Cranmer and Lancelot Andrewes; the philosophical history of tickling; the touching of paintings and sculptures in a European context; faith healing and experimental science; and the early reception of Chinese medicine in England.

'Making Darkness Light is an illumination' Adam Phillips 'His sympathetic yet challenging account will undoubtedly win Milton new readers - and for that a chorus of Hallelujahs' Spectator For most of us John Milton has been consigned to the dusty pantheon of English literature, a grim puritan, sightlessly dictating his great work to an amanuensis, removed from the real world in his contemplation of higher things. But dig a little deeper and you find an extraordinary and complicated human being. Revolutionary and apologist for regicide, writer of propaganda for Cromwell's regime, defender of the English people and passionate European, scholar and lover of music and the arts - Milton was all of these things and more. Making Darkness Light shows how these complexities and contradictions played out in Milton's fascination with oppositions - Heaven and Hell, light and dark, self and other - most famously in his epic poem Paradise Lost. It explores the way such brutal contrasts define us and obscure who we really are, as the author grapples with his own sense of identity and complex relationship with Milton. Retracing Milton's footsteps through seventeenth century London, Tuscany and the Marches, he vividly brings Milton's world to life and takes a fresh look at his key works and ideas around the nature of creativity, time and freedom of expression. He also illustrates the profound influence of Milton's work on writers from William Blake to Virginia Woolf, James Joyce to Jorge Luis Borges. This is a book about Milton, that also speaks to why we read and what happens when we choose over time to let another's life and words enter our own. It will change the way you think about Milton forever.