Kirjahaku

This new biography of John Evelyn, diarist, scholar, and intellectual virtuoso (1620-1706), is the first account to make full use of his huge unpublished archive, deposited at the British Library in 1995. This crucial material permits a broader and richer picture of Evelyn, his life, and his friendships than permitted by his own celebrated diaries.Gillian Darley provides a rounded portrait of Evelyn’s eighty-five years--his family life, his exile in Paris, his interests, and his preoccupations. Evelyn lived through some of England’s most tumultuous history, through five reigns, the Civil War, the Restoration, and the Revolution of 1688. He was author or translator of countless publications, tackling an enormous variety of contemporary issues. Both a religious man and a key figure in the Royal Society, he viewed Christianity and the new science as wholly compatible. Evelyn remained endlessly curious and engaged into very old age, and this absorbing biography demonstrates the liveliness of his hugely busy mind.

Volcanoes around the world have their own legends, and many have wrought terrible devastation, but none has caught the imagination like Vesuvius. We now know that immense eruptions destroyed Bronze Age settlements around Vesuvius, but the Romans knew nothing of those disasters and were lulled into complacency--much as we are today--by its long period of inactivity. None of the nearly thirty eruptions since AD 79 has matched the infamous cataclysm that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum within hours. Nearly two thousand years later, the allure of the volcano remains--as evidenced by its popularity as a tourist attraction, from Shelley and the Romantics to modern-day visitors.Vesuvius has loomed large throughout history, both feared and celebrated. Gillian Darley unveils the human responses to Vesuvius from a cast of characters as far-flung as Pliny the Younger and Andy Warhol, revealing shifts over time. This cultural and scientific meditation on a powerful natural wonder touches on pagan religious beliefs, vulcanology, and travel writing. Sifting through the ashes of Vesuvius, Darley exposes how changes in our relationship to the volcano mirror changes in our understanding of our cultural and natural environments.

Historian and Essex champion Gillian Darley takes us on a vivid personal tour, from the seaside piers to the empty marshlands and the New Town high-rises, revealing a landscape and a story like no other. Alongside Essex Man and Towie, there's the Essex that despatched the first puritan settlers to America, welcomed refugees from Europe and beyond, and offered fresh hope to bombed-out East End. 'Excellent Essex' a brilliant guide to England's most misunderstood county.

To mark one year from opening the new station, Art on the Underground launch a new publication on the work of Alexandre da Cunha at Battersea Power Station in London. Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset is a monumental kinetic sculpture for the Underground station. Stretching 95m and 60m in length, the artwork incorporates two friezes that face each other along the length of the ticket hall. The artwork was inspired by the former control room at Battersea Power Station and its system of vertical bars that regulated the production and output of electricity into the city. Combining this with resonances of the daily flow of dawn to dusk, Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset refers to cycles, routine, the everyday and eternity. Designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio, the book features essays from art historian Dr Lisa Blackmore exploring the artist’s practice, a geographical and social history of the local area from architecture and design writer Gillian Darley, an essay on commissioning the work by Eleanor Pinfield and a creative prose work from experimental writer Rebecca Watson.