Religious activity flourished in the eighteenth-century navy; this book examines the reasons why and its manifestations. The Evangelical Admiral Gambier, notorious for distributing tracts to his fleet in a theatre of war, is commonly seen as a misfit in a fighting service that had scant time for fervent piety. In fact, the navy of the Revolutionaryand Napoleonic Wars showed a level of religious observance not seen since the days of Queen Anne. Evangelical laymen provided one dynamic for this change: concentrating first on public worship, they moved to active proselytism insearch of converts amongst sailors, and in a third phase developed a loose network of prayer groups in scores of ships, uniting officers and seamen in voluntary gatherings that transcended rank. This book explores the effect this new piety had on discipline and human governance, on literacy, on the development of chaplains' ministry and on the mindset of the officer corps. It also looks at the larger question of how its values were absorbed into the ethos of the navy as a whole. It draws on sources both familiar and unusual - logs, letters, minutes, memoirs, tracts and sermons, Regulations - to explain how evangelical influence affected officer corps, lower deck andAdmiralty, showing how a movement that began by promoting public worship at sea became an agency for mass evangelism through literature, preaching and off-duty gatherings, where officers and men met for shared Bible reading and prayer a mere decade after the great Mutinies.

It's Wednesday the 7th March 2018 - in the mainland UK. Everywhere else, it's June 1065. No one knows what caused The Break eleven months ago, but there's no sign of its end. England is settling into its new future a reindustrialising concentration camp. The rest of the world is watching...waiting...curious...Jennifer thinks her family survived The Hunger because of their smuggling business - tampons and paracetamol to France, silver back to England. Little does she know what game her father was really playing, as she recrosses the Channel from an Impromptu mission of her own. Little can she know how her life has already been torn apart.Who has taken Jennifer's parents? Where are they? What is the Home Secretary up to with the Americans? Why is she so desperate to lay hands on Michael? Will Jesus Christ return to Earth above Oxford Circus? When will the "Doomsday Project" go live?Can the Byzantine Empire and the Catholic Church take on the British State, and win?All will be answered - if Jennifer can stay alive in a post-apocalyptic London terrorised by cannibals, by thugs in uniform, and by motorbike gangs of Islamic suicide bombers.

Shows how the rise of evangelical religion in the navy helped create a new kind of sailor, technologically trained and steeped in a higher set of values. This book examines how, as the nineteenth century progressed, religious piety, especially evangelical piety, was seen in the British navy less as eccentric and marginal and more as an essential ingredient of the character looked for in professional seamen. The book traces the complex interplay between formal religious observance, such as Sunday worship, and pockets of zealous piety, showing how evangelicalism gradually earned less grudging regard, until inthe 1860s and 1870s it became a dominant source of values and a force for moral reform. Religion in the British Navy explains this shift, outlining how Arctic expeditions showed the need for dependability and character, how Health Returns revealed the full extent of sexual licence and demonstrated the urgency of moral reform, and how manning difficulties in the Russian War of 1854-1856 showed that a modern fleet required a new type of sailor, technologically trained and steeped in a higher set of values. The book also discusses how the navy, with its newly awakened religious sensibilities, played a major role in the expansion of Protestant missions globally, in exploration,convict transportation, the expansion of imperial frontiers, and worldwide maritime policing operations. Fervent piety had an effect in all these areas - religion had helped develop a new kind of manliness where piety as well asdaring had a place. RICHARD BLAKE is the author of Evangelicals in the Royal Navy, 1775-1815 (Boydell 2008).

The second adventure with vain, amoral, and sexually voracious seventh-century scholar Aelric 610AD. The bloodthirsty Emperor Phocas is preparing for the greatest battle of his life. Enemy armies are racing closer to attack his fortress, the golden city of Constantinople, and traitors within plot his downfall. Clinging to power by masterminding a campaign of terror, he is running out of funds, allies, and time--but he has one card left to play. Aelric, a naive and ambitious young clerk from Britain, is sent to Constantinople ostensibly on a mission to copy old texts for the Church of Rome. On his arrival he discovers the terrible dangers lurking behind the shining streets and glittering facades. A pawn in a secret conspiracy that will change the course of history, he can only rely on his wits, charm, and fighting skills to stay alive.

Fleeing the country in its headlong rush to war in Vietnam, a young American drops out of school and goes to Paris to write. After a year and a half, he realizes that if you have to work to live there, Paris is a lot like any other city, except that it's full of Americans who came there to write. One night he and a friend go to the Paris Hilton to attend a lecture on a "great new movement that is sweeping the world." A month later the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi invites him to India to attend a three-month teacher-training course on Transcendental Meditation. Based on journals Blakely kept at the time, the second half of this book is an eye-witness account of that gathering on the banks of the Ganges in the spring of 1968, which Blakely describes as "a lot like Woodstock but without all the people and the noise, and lasting a lot longer." While this book is primarily a personal journey, coming to terms with a crucial period in the author's life, it also provides a close-up portrait of the Maharishi, from someone who caught a glimpse of the wizard behind the curtain. In addition, it contains vignettes of other people who also happened to attend that course in Rishikesh---including George Harrison, John Lennon, Mia Farrow, and Mike Love---that readers will find entertaining and informative.