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Heritage Science is emerging as a discipline that brings together
chemists, physicists, microbiologists, conservation scientists,
archaeologists and conservators. Its scope, precise boundaries and
the interfaces between its component disciplines may be in a state
of flux but, above all, its interdisciplinary nature offers
understanding of the causes, control and protection of heritage
from ever-present environmental challenges. In particular, the
activities of microbes play a central part in shaping the natural
world of our planet but this awesome power constitutes a serious
threat to the integrity of our most precious art, heritage
artefacts, monuments and cultural treasures. Heritage artefacts
that have been recovered from water, or that exist near the sea in
maritime conditions, pose special conservation problems due in main
to the combined effect of microbial activities and
physical/chemical assaults that the environment can offer. This
book is a result of the invited and updated papers from HMS2005:
Microbes, Monuments and Maritime Materials and forms a
comprehensive volume that addresses key topical areas of heritage
science and discusses the threats to a wide range of heritage
materials and monuments by biological and chemical agents of decay.
Key features of the book include: " Up-to-date summaries on the
conservation of internationally-important artefacts and monuments "
Clear outline of molecular techniques to identify microbes in
environmental heritage samples " Wide range of case studies
covering wood, stone, cave and cave paintings " Contributions
presented as fully referenced research publications giving useful
technical details and identification of areas for future study "
Informs conservators about the threats from microbes to a range of
materials " Extensive range of case studies of important world
heritage artefacts and monuments as well as an overview of in situ
preservation of historic ships " Provides background knowledge on
the use and application of modern analytical techniques in
conservation " Contains detailed information on molecular and
synchrotron techniques to assist with identifying biological and
chemical threats to heritage artefacts and monuments The book also
provides up-to-date information on subjects covering the component
field of heritage microbiology, molecular and chemical analytical
techniques, and the mechanisms of degradation and deterioration of
historic ships and buildings. The book details state-of-the-art
techniques for the study of large and small heritage objects, and
their conservation. Techniques cover the use of GIS image
processing, molecular biological analysis of environmental samples
including FISH, electrophoresis to remove corrosive ions and
synchrotron radiation to detect chemicals present in artefacts.
Several authors have developed their methods through involvement in
international collaborative projects such as BIOBRUSH, BACPOLES and
Save the Vasa. Extensive emphasis is placed on case studies and
there is a valuable section on historic ships covering the
preservation of HMS Victory, ss Great Britain, Vasa and the Mary
Rose. This book provides an indispensable guide and reference
source for those working in all areas of historical conservation,
biodeterioration, microbiology and materials science.
Julian Mitchell's fifth novel, first published in 1966, is the
story of Martin Bannister, whose lonely bachelor life in Manhattan
is transformed by a meeting with desirable redhead Henrietta
Grigson and her husband Freddy, with whom he embarks on a heady
social whirl. But Martin has a surprise in store - a plot twist the
real-life inspiration for which Julian Mitchell divulges in his new
preface to this Faber Finds edition. 'A comedy that is delightfully
human, played by characters who have the edgy vitality of real
life.' Evening Standard 'Mitchell is a writer of the most supple
technical accomplishment.' Telegraph 'Ingeniously constructed and
excellently written.' Listener
'[The White Father] was to be a State of the Nation novel, about
the end of Empire, contrasting the last generation of men who'd
served it, and the new one which was just breaking out from the
long dullness of the post-war years, but didn't really know where
it was going...' Julian Mitchell, from his new Preface Mitchell's
fourth novel, published in 1964, earned him both the John Llewellyn
Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. Its protagonist Hugh
Shrieve is District Officer in charge of the Ngulu, a small tribe
in an African colony on the verge of independence. Fearing 'his'
tribe will be overlooked in the politics of a constitutional
conference set to take place in London, Hugh returns to England for
the first time in years. But there he soon feels lost in his own
country. 'An impressively accurate account of British society in
the sixties.' Montreal Gazette
As Far As You Can Go was Julian Mitchell's third novel, first
published in 1963. Its protagonist is Harold Barlow, a young
stockbroker, on his way up in the world - but easily bored,
desiring adventure. He accepts a commission to travel to America;
and the further west he goes, the more he discovers in the way of
wide open spaces and freedoms. There is, however, a limit. In an
introduction written especially for this edition, Julian Mitchell
describes his interest in writing 'a reverse Henry James novel,
about a European discovering America rather than vice-versa.' 'Like
Nabokov, but without his cynicism, Mr Mitchell sets the geography
of the United States in motion.' Anthony Burgess, Observer 'This
raid on the American psyche, so hilarious, yet so horrific in its
implications, proves Mr Mitchell a first-rate satirist.' Telegraph
A Disturbing Influence was Julian Mitchell's second novel, first
published in 1962. The setting is the small, utterly English town
of Cartersfield, where the very quietness of life causes trouble.
The young and old are preoccupied alike with their own affairs, to
the exclusion of the world. Tetchy schoolmaster Mr Drysdale sums it
up: 'We don't care much for change in Cartersfield.' But change
comes regardless, in the shape of a rootless young man who finds
Cartersfield a fine place in which to recuperate after an illness,
and a fine place, too, to indulge his appetite for destruction. In
a fascinating new preface to this reissue Julian Mitchell describes
how he drew on his Cotswold childhood and the town of Cirencester
in order to invent his fictional Cartersfield and populate it with
a cast of characters.
Imaginary Toys (1961) marked the literary debut of the then
26-year-old Julian Mitchell, who would eventually set aside his
prizewinning career as a novelist and achieve wider renown as a
dramatist, most famously with Another Country (1981). Imaginary
Toys is a novel of Oxford after World War Two, where class
consciousness has become newly acute, and a quartet of narrators
wrestle with their studies and their more personal difficulties -
among the four a coalminer's son and the daughter of a solid
bourgeois family, who fall in love to the discomfort of their
respective friends. In the first of a sequence of reflective,
autobiographical new introductions composed especially for Faber
Finds' reissues of his early novels, Julian Mitchell recalls the
atmosphere of mid-1950s Oxford, and the path he took to a literary
vocation.
Investigative journalist, Dan Morris, was a man on a mission. He
had already disrupted the illegal drugs trade in Bristol and was
now determined to uncover a County Lines gang operating in South
Devon. He believed huge amounts of cocaine and other drugs were
flooding into Devon by land, sea and air. They were being traded in
villages, towns and cities across the county. The police also knew
that a drugs warehouse was located somewhere in their area, but
where? Detective Inspector Richard King and his team were busy
trying to solve the mystery of a body washed up on Hope Cove beach;
at the same time they were alerted to intimidation in the form of
arson and criminal damage over a multi-million pound planning
application. However, their priorities change when the journalist's
car is rammed over a cliff. King and his team must now try to stop
the rise in drug trading and associated crimes. As a detective, the
hugely experienced inspector knew that suspects were not always
what they seemed and his task was to uncover their deception. He
was aware that the lives of some criminals and even his police
colleagues were at risk as they closed in on the leader of the drug
cartel. Sadly, he was to be proved right.
After a relatively quiet few months, an outbreak of serious
headline-grabbing crimes confronts Inspector King and his team of
detectives. Their investigations start with people trafficking on a
South Devon beach, followed by a spate of armed robberies. The
pressure on the team quickly intensifies when the suspected suicide
of a man found hanging in Plymbridge Woods is not initially what it
seems. King must determine if it was assisted suicide or something
more sinister. Another man's body is soon discovered in his car at
a boatyard where he worked: it quickly becomes clear he was drugged
and murdered. Is there a link between the deaths of these men and
their previous Army service in Iraq? King becomes increasingly
concerned that he may be hunting a serial killer who must be
stopped before he kills again.
Mary Cranson had done the walk many times before, but now had
simply vanished from Dartmoor near the prominent landmark called
Haytor. Her boyfriend raises the alarm when she doesn't meet him as
arranged in the local pub. For the investigating officer, Detective
Inspector Richard King, the intriguing aspect is that many of her
friends knew she would be on the moor as she had told them of her
intentions the previous evening. King and his small team of
detectives begin the arduous task of interviewing the people who
would have known her whereabouts that fateful afternoon. Could she
have been consumed by one of the notorious bogs on the moor or is
the reason for her disappearance something more sinister? The
detectives are also dealing with thefts of vehicles and machinery,
mainly from farms across Dartmoor. These have continued undetected
for over six months and questions are being asked in the local
media about the lack of progress in catching the thieves. The
profile of these cases increases significantly when a theft goes
disastrously wrong. King is also made aware of a barn fire close to
Haytor, but is this connected to the other cases? Pressure is
mounting on the wily detective from the chief constable who wants
progress on both the thefts and the missing woman.
The Welsh Boy, a lusty tale of youthful passion, is a scintillating
rediscovery of one of the hidden gems of eighteenth-century
literature bringing back to life a true story of passionate love
and outrageous sexual scandal. Jem Parry is blessed with a
wonderful singing voice that has allowed him to escape his humble
origins in South Wales. Mary Powell is the richest heiress in the
district - also its loveliest, and its most daring. When Mary
engages Jem as her music master their lessons at the spinet turn
into tutorials in the most heavenly pleasures. But love is one
thing, sex another and marriage yet a third. The Welsh Boy is Based
on The True Anti-Pamela, the personal diaries of James Parry which
he had published as an act of revenge against his former lover Mary
Powell. He saw their torrid affair as a direct inversion of Samuel
Richardson's contemporary best-seller, Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded,
with himself in the role of lowly-born innocent and his lover the
aristocratic villain of the piece.
Two seemingly upstanding couples find their friendships enveloped
by scandal and tragedy, as the facade of wealth and privilege falls
away and details of their indiscretions emerge.
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