The second of three epic instalments in director Peter Jackson's blockbuster prequel to 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy. Set in Middle-Earth 60 years before events in 'The Lord of the Rings', the story follows the adventures of Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who, at the instigation of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), suddenly finds himself co-opted into joining a company of 13 Dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to help reclaim the lost kingdom of the Lonely Mountain from the clutches of Smaug the dragon (voice of Benedict Cumberbatch). In this film, while Gandalf heads south on his own, Bilbo, Thorin and the Dwarves enter the treacherous Mirkwood Forest on their way to the mountain. When they reach Lake-town Bilbo will have to perform the role he was assigned at the start of the quest - to find a secret door that will lead him to the lair of the dragon...

Extended cut of the first of three epic instalments in director Peter Jackson's blockbuster prequel to 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy. Set in Middle-Earth 60 years before events in 'The Lord of the Rings', the story follows the adventures of Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who, at the instigation of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), suddenly finds himself co-opted into joining a company of 13 Dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to help reclaim the Dwarves' lost kingdom of the Lonely Mountain from the clutches of Smaug the dragon. After setting out on their quest from the safety of Bag End, the band of travellers soon find themselves pitted against a range of strange and fearsome opponents, in addition to a small, slimy creature known simply as Gollum (Andy Serkis).

The first of three epic instalments in director Peter Jackson's blockbuster prequel to 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy. Set in Middle-Earth 60 years before events in 'The Lord of the Rings', the story follows the adventures of Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who, at the instigation of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), suddenly finds himself co-opted into joining a company of 13 Dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to help reclaim the Dwarves' lost kingdom of the Lonely Mountain from the clutches of Smaug the dragon. After setting out on their quest from the safety of Bag End, the band of travellers soon find themselves pitted against a range of strange and fearsome opponents, in addition to a small, slimy creature known simply as Gollum (Andy Serkis).

'This resource provides careful teaching in the very best traditions of SPCK. It is both detailed and readable, and provides a comprehensive introduction to the Christian faith as lived out through the Church. I commend it to all those seeking to establish deep foundations on which to build their faith.' John Sentamu, Archbishop of York 'One of the joys of being a bishop is to preside at a confirmation. The joy is greater when the candidates have been well prepared and are full of expectancy and a desire to grow in faith. Faith Confirmed will help produce confirmands like that. It is a wonderful resource. ' Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester and President of Affirming Catholicism Faith Confirmed is an introduction to what Anglican Christians believe. It is written for those preparing for confirmation in the Anglican Church and for all those who want to know more about the essentials of the Christian faith. This revised edition has been completely updated for the twenty-first century.

How have humans sought to prevent viable assumptions about themselves and their world from being in force, how does this propensity manifest itself, and in what terms has it been theorized and criticized throughout the ages? Through a diversity of discrete case-studies spanning a vast time-scale (including topics such as paleolithic personal ornaments, pre-ancient ritual economy, ancient philosophy, and modern artful science), this study explores the means by which humans voluntarily suspend habitual patterns of judgement and disbelief in order to perceive the world differently. In recognizing how such modes of suspension can be variously traced back to religious comportments and institutions, a new sense of religious participation is identified beyond the credulous subjunction to artifice and its critical dismissal. The relevant outcome of this long-term comparative approach is that sincere devotion to a (practical or theoretical, scientific or spiritual) cause and the temporary affirmation of artifice are not mutually exclusive comportments, but rather genealogically akin to the discretely sacred (alchemical, ataraxic, epistemological, spectacular, thaumaturgic, etc.) concerns of a pre-modern world.

Food Words is a series of provocative essays on some of the most important keywords in the emergent field of food studies, focusing on current controversies and on-going debates. Words like 'choice' and 'convenience' are often used as explanatory terms in understanding consumer behavior but are clearly ideological in the way they reflect particular positions and serve specific interests, while words like 'taste' and 'value' are no less complex and contested. Inspired by Raymond Williams, Food Words traces the multiple meanings of each of our keywords, tracking nuances in different (academic, commercial and policy) contexts. Mapping the dynamic meanings of each term, the book moves forward from critical assessment to active intervention -- an attitude that is reflected in the lively, sometimes combative, style of the essays. Each essay is research-based and fully referenced but accessible to the general reader. With a foreword by eminent food scholar Warren Belasco, Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland-Baltmore County, and written by an inter-disciplinary team associated with the CONANX research project (Consumer culture in an 'age of anxiety'), Food Words will be essential reading for food scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Intelligence has never been a more important factor in international affairs than it is today. Since the end of the Second World War, vast intelligence bureaucracies have emerged to play an increasingly important role in the making of national policy within all major states. One of the biggest problems within the contemporary thinking about intelligence and international relations is a lack of historical context. Observers routinely comment on the challenges facing intelligence communities without reflecting on the historical forces that have shaped these communities over the past two centuries. As presented in this volume, new perspectives on the evolution of intelligence services and intelligence practice over the past 200 years can only enrich ongoing debates over how best to reform national intelligence structures. The practices of war and international politics were transformed by the conflicts of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. One of the most important outcomes of this transformation was the gradual emergence of permanent and increasingly professionalized intelligence services within the military and foreign policy establishments of the Great Powers. The contributions in this volume consider the causes and consequences of this trend as well as its impact on war, strategy, and statecraft. The rise of permanent intelligence bureaucracies has combined with technological progress to transform practices of intelligence collection and analysis that have remained essentially unchanged since the Roman era. Ultimately, however, the nature and limits of intelligence have remained constant, rendering intelligence little or no more effective in reducing uncertainty at theopening of the 21st century than in centuries past.

This book questions the simplistic view that convenience food is unhealthy and environmentally unsustainable. By exploring how various types of convenience food have become embedded in consumers' lives, it considers what lessons can be learnt from the commercial success of convenience food for those who seek to promote healthier and more sustainable diets. The project draws on original findings from comparative research in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Sweden (funded through the ERA-Net Sustainable Food programme). Reframing Convenience Food avoids moral judgments about convenience food, and instead provides a refreshingly novel perspective guided by an understanding of everyday consumer practice. It will appeal to those with an interest in the sociology and politics behind health, consumerism, sustainability and society.

Despite government claims that food is safer and more readily available today than ever before, recent survey evidence demonstrates high levels of food-related anxiety among Western consumers. While chronic hunger and malnutrition are relatively rare in the West, food scares relating to individual products, concerns about global food security and other expressions of consumer anxiety about food remain widespread. Anxious Appetites explores the causes of these present-day anxieties. Looking at fears over provenance and regulation in a world of lengthening supply chains and greater concentration of corporate power, Peter Jackson investigates how anxieties about food circulate and how they act as a channel for broader social issues. Drawing on case studies such as the 2013 horsemeat scandal and fears about the contamination of infant formula in China in 2008, he examines how and why these concerns emerge. Comparing survey results with ethnographic observation of consumer practice, he explores the gap between official advice about food safety and people's everyday experience of food, including a critique of ideological notions of 'consumer choice'. A captivating, timely book which presents a new theory of social anxiety.

This volume addresses the means and ends of sacrificial speculation by inviting a selected group of specialists in the fields of philosophy, history of religions, and indology to examine philosophical modes of sacrificial speculation - especially in Ancient India and Greece - and consider the commonalities of their historical raison d'etre. Scholars have long observed, yet without presenting any transcultural grand theory on the matter, that sacrifice seems to end with (or even continue as) philosophy in both Ancient India and Greece. How are we to understand this important transformation that so profoundly changed the way we think of religion (and philosophy as opposed to religion) today? Some of the complex topics inviting closer examination in this regard are the interiorisation of ritual, ascetism and self-sacrifice, sacrifice and cosmogony, the figure of the philosopher-sage, transformations and technologies of the self, analogical reasoning, the philosophy of ritual, vegetarianism, and metempsychosis.

How to use the iris of the eye as a diagnostic medical tool The human iris provides a unique window into our bodies, offering clues to our past, present, and future health. Its related science—iridology—allows us to assess our wellbeing and provides pathways to follow to ensure we remain physically and emotionally fit. Iridologist and herbalist Peter Jackson-Main demonstrates just how easy it is for readers to make use of this diagnostic tool. With just a small flashlight and a mirror, you can begin to compare your eyes with the dozens shown in this book, learning about your constitution and how you can avoid potential health problems In this revised and expanded edition, Practical Iridology also explains what the colours and markings of your eyes reveal; details dietary and exercise routines for different iris types; provides a visual glossary of the different iris signs; and offers guidance in preparing remedies.

In its discussion of the three levels of teaching and learning - whole school philosophy, classroom policy and specific teaching frameworks - Educating Young Children, originally published in 1992, addresses the twin themes of teacher ethics and pedagogic theory. In developing their argument the writers draw on both empirical classroom research and philosophical analysis, as well as the work developed within the Roehampton Institute MA programme in which they were both tutors at the time.

The first section of this volume brings together five studies on the Mongol empire. The accent is on the ideology behind Mongol expansion, on the dissolution of the empire into a number of rival khanates, and on the relations between the Mongol regimes and their Christian subjects within and potential allies outside. Three pieces in the second section relate to the early history of the Delhi Sultanate, with particular reference to the role of its Turkish slave (ghulam) officers and guards, while a fourth examines the collapse in 1206-15 of the Ghurid dynasty, whose conquests in northern India had created the preconditions for the Sultanate's emergence. The final three papers are concerned with Mongol pressure on Muslim India and the capacity of the Delhi Sultanate to withstand it.

The Mongols and the West provides a comprehensive survey of relations between the Catholic West and the Mongol Empire from the first appearance of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan's armies on Europe's horizons in 1221 to the battle of Tannenberg in 1410. This book has been designed to provide a synthesis of previous scholarship on relations between the Mongols and the Catholic world as well as to offer new approaches and conclusions on the subject. It considers the tension between Western hopes of the Mongols as allies against growing Muslim powers and the Mongols' position as conquerors with their own agenda, and evaluates the impact of Mongol-Western contacts on the West's expanding knowledge of the world. This second edition takes into account the wealth of scholarly literature that has emerged in the years since the previous edition and contains significantly extended chapters on trade and mission. It charts the course of military confrontation and diplomatic relations between the Mongols and the West, and re-examines the commercial opportunities offered to Western merchants by Mongol rule and the failure of Catholic missionaries to convert the Mongols to Christianity. Fully revised and containing a range of maps, genealogical tables and both European and non-European sources throughout, The Mongols and the West is ideal for students of medieval European history and the crusades.

This innovative book marks a significant departure from tradition anlayses of the evolution of cultural landscapes and the interpretation of past environments. Maps of Meaning proposes a new agenda for cultural geography, one set squarely in the context of contemporary social and cultural theory. Notions of place and space are explored through the study of elite and popular cultures, gender and sexuality, race, language and ideology. Questioning the ways in which we invest the world with meaning, the book is an introduction to both culture's geographies and the geography of culture.

First Published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Cambridge History of Iran is an eight-volume survey of Iranian history and culture, and its contribution to the civilisation of the world. All aspects of the religious, philosophical, political, economic, scientific and artistic elements in Iranian civilisation are studied, with some emphasis on the geographical and ecological factors which have contributed to that civilisation's special character. The aim is to provide a collection of readable essays rather than a catalogue of information. The volumes offer scope for the publication of new ideas as well as providing summaries of established facts. They should act as a stimulus to specialists, but are primarily concerned to answer the sort of questions about the past and present of Iran that are asked by the non-specialist. This volume covers the history of Iran from the collapse of the Il-Khanid empire (c. 1335) to the second quarter of the 18th century. The period id of special interest as one which, in the traditional view, witnessed the emergence of Iran as a 'national state'. It is in the latter half of this era that moderate Shi'ism acquired the definitive hold on the country which has been maintained to the present day, and which helps to differentiate Iran from the other Islamic states of south-west Asia. In addition to chapters on commercial and diplomatic contacts with Europe - contacts usually fortified by a common hostility to the Ottoman Turks - which became prominent from the 16th century, the volume contains chapters on social and economic history, the arts and architecture, the exact sciences, religion, philosophy and literature.

The past two decades have seen an explosion both in the volume of data we use, and our understanding of its management. However, while techniques and technology for manipulating data have advanced rapidly in this time, the concepts around the value of our data have not. This lack of progress has made it increasingly difficult for organisations to understand the value in their data, the value of their data and how exploit that value. Halo Data proposes a paradigm shift in methodology for organisations to properly appreciate and leverage the value of their data. Written by an author team with many years’ experience in data strategy, management and technology, the book will first review the current state of our understanding of data. This opening will demonstrate the limitations of this status quo, including a discussion on metadata and its limitations, data monetisation and data-driven business models. Following this, the book will present a new concept and framework for understanding and quantifying value in an organisation’s data and a practical methodology for using this in practice. Ideal for data leaders and executives who are looking to leverage the data at their fingertips.

Windtower offers a unique insight into a past way of life, exploring Dubai's rich and storied past and heritage. This new and extended edition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the formation of the United Arab Emirates, diving deeper into the merchant community's central role in Dubai's pre-oil economy and social life. This new edition also considers the lessons to be learned from Dubai's traditional windtowers at a time of global warming and climate crisis, and how this knowledge might benefit contemporary urban design. The title features a foreword from His Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales, who writes: "I do hope this book will enable other people to join in appreciating the unique nature of these buildings and that it will encourage an awareness of how relevant many of their distinctive features are to the modern challenges of building sustainable communities in a way that maximizes the use of renewable energy." With exclusive archival photography, custom maps, as well as original architectural plans and diagrams, Windtower is a must-have book for anyone interested in Dubai's architecture, culture and fascinating historical development.

The Seventh Crusade, led by King Louis IX of France, was the last major expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land actually to reach the Near East. The failure of his invasion of Egypt (1249-50), followed by his four-year stay in Palestine in order to retrieve the disaster, had a profound impact on the Latin West. In addition, Louis's operations in the Nile delta indirectly precipitated the Mamluk coup d'etat, which ended the rule of the Ayyubids, Saladin's dynasty, in Egypt and began the transfer of power there to a military elite that would prove to be a far more formidable enemy to the Franks of Syria and Palestine. This volume comprises translations of the principal documents and of extracts from narrative sources - both Muslim and Christian - relating to the crusade, and includes many texts, notably the account of Ibn Wasil, not previously available in English. The themes covered include: the preparations and search for allies; the campaign in the Nile delta; the impact on recruitment of the simultaneous crusade against the emperor Frederick II; the Mamluk coup and its immediate consequences in the Near East; Western reactions to the failure in Egypt; and the popular 'crusade' of the Pastoureaux in France (1251), which aimed originally to help the absent king, but which degenerated into violence against the clergy and the Jews and had to be suppressed by force.

If deception, deceit and manipulation are integral to the business of intelligence gathering - what are the implications for the historical record? Are intelligence archives themselves officially constructed to allow only manipulated histories?

This new book examines these questions and explores how various kinds of people involved in studying and/or practicing intelligence, view texts and issues from different perspectives. It shows how scholars have long sought to make use of relevant archives, but constraints on access to such sources have been considerable. With the end of the Cold War and other changes in official attitudes, more intelligence documents are now becoming available.

This is a fascinating new examination that shows how no document speaks entirely for itself, though some may be more eloquent or assertive than others. The interpretation of the archival record (as indeed the non-archival record) is at the heart of scholarship, and challenges in interpreting textsare generic problems for any researcher.

If deception, deceit and manipulation are integral to the business of intelligence gathering - what are the implications for the historical record? Are intelligence archives themselves officially constructed to allow only manipulated histories?

This new book examines these questions and explores how various kinds of people involved in studying and/or practicing intelligence, view texts and issues from different perspectives. It shows how scholars have long sought to make use of relevant archives, but constraints on access to such sources have been considerable. With the end of the Cold War and other changes in official attitudes, more intelligence documents are now becoming available.

This is a fascinating new examination that shows how no document speaks entirely for itself, though some may be more eloquent or assertive than others. The interpretation of the archival record (as indeed the non-archival record) is at the heart of scholarship, and challenges in interpreting textsare generic problems for any researcher.