Kirjahaku

The new book from the acclaimed author of The Crossing Place and The Bronski House.

A colony of artists, summer tourists and pleasure steamers all help change the face of life in the small Cornish fishing village of Polmayne. Yet the old ways and the old hazards endure. Offshore lie the Main Cages, a treacherous outcrop of rock where many ships and many lives have been lost.

A fascinating narrative excursion into a bizarre episode in 19th century Ethiopian and British imperial history featuring a remote African despot and his monstrous European-built gun. On one of Addis Ababa's main roundabouts today sits a huge recently installed mortar. This is a replica of 'Sevastopol', a 70-ton lump of ordnance commissioned by one of the most extraordinary leaders Africa has ever produced – King of Kings of Ethiopia, the Emperor Theodore. In 1867, as his kingdom collapsed around him, Theodore retreated to his mountain-top stronghold in Magdala. It took his army six months to haul 'Sevastopol' through the gauges and passes of the highlands. Sixty miles to the north, a British expeditionary force under Sir Robert Napier – consisting of more than 10,000 fighting men, at least as many followers and 20,000 pack-animals, including a number of Indian elephants – had been ferried to the Red Sea Coast and built a railway line through the desert. Their object: to rescue the British consul and sixty Europeans, held prisoner by the increasingly erratic Theodore, who had taken to massacring his prisoners-of-war and pitching captives over the cliffs of Magdala. The resulting fate of Theodore and his mortar forms the climax to this strange extravaganza, in which an isolated medieval kingdom came dramatically face-to-face with an ascendant Europe. Philip Marsden tells the tale with all his proven narrative skill, deep love and first hand knowledge of Ethiopia.

Philip Marsden returns to the remote, fiercely beautiful landscape that has exercised a powerful mythic appeal over him since his first encounter with it over twenty years ago. ‘Ethiopia bred in me the conviction that if there is a wider purpose to our life, it is to understand the world, to seek out its diversity, to celebrate its heroes and its wonders – in short, to witness it.’ When Philip Marsden first went to Ethiopia in 1982, it changed the direction of his life. What he saw of its stunning antiquity, its raw Christianity, its extremes of brutality and grace prompted his curiosity, and made him a writer. But Ethiopia at that time was torn apart by civil war. The north, the ancient heartland of the country, was closed off. Twenty years later, Marsden returned. The result is this book – the account of a journey deferred. Walking hundreds of miles through a landscape of cavernous gorges, tabletop mountains and semi-desert, Marsden encounters monks and hermits, rebels and farmers. And he creates an unforgettable picture of one of the most remote regions left on earth. As in his award-winning book ‘The Spirit-Wrestlers’, Marsden reminds us of the brilliant heights that travel writing can attain, whilst celebrating the ageless rewards of the open road and the people for whom the mythic and the everyday are inextricably joined.

The story of Britainâ??s colourful maritime past seen through the changing fortunes of the Cornish port of Falmouth.

A remarkable, multifaceted story made up of journal accounts, memories, conversations and personal experience, The Bronski House is a paean to Poland, a landmark in travel writing, and a family history – tied together by the unique experience of returning from exile. In the summer of 1992, accompanied by Philip Marsden, the exiled poet Zofia Hinska stepped into the Belorussian village where she had spent her childhood. The Bronski House is in part the remarkable story of what she found. It is also the story of her mother, Helena Bronska – of her coming of age during the Russian revolution, her dramatic escapes from Bolsheviks, Germans and partisans, of her love and loss in a now vanished world. It brilliantly reconstructs a world which vanished in 1939 when Soviet tanks rolled into eastern Poland.

A revised and updated edition of Philip Marsden’s classic travel book, published to coincide with the centenary of the Armenian massacres. After centuries of prominence as a world power, Armenia has withstood every attempt during the 20th century to destroy it. With a name redolent both of dim antiquity and of a modern world and its tensions, the Armenians founded a civilization and underwent a diaspora that brought many of the great ideas of the East to Western Europe. The Crossing Place is Philip Marsden’s gripping account of his remarkable journey through the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus in a quest to discover the secret of one of the world’s most extraordinary peoples. Caught between opposing empires, between warring religions and ideologies – at the crossing place of history – the Armenians have somehow survived against the odds. This is their story – told by one of the finest travel writers at work today.

Under a Metal Sky examines the wonders and perils that the earth's precious metals have offered humans, forever changing our relationship with the world around us The ground beneath our feet is full of riches: the ochre that allowed prehistoric humans to paint on the cave walls; the tin that drove the early Industrial Revolution; radium, the source of Marie Curie's wonder; and lithium, the essential mineral of modern life found in our mobile phones and laptops. Each of these minerals has a story to tell, and each has its place in the broader story of human history. Under a Metal Sky takes us on a journey across the peat-rich Dutch lowlands, through Prague and Bohemia, and on to the gold-rich mountains of Georgia. Along the way, Marsden uncovers the strange and colorful histories of alchemy, scientific revolution, industrialization, and technological innovation, peopled by figures like the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II, Goethe, Marie Curie, and William Blake. But alongside wonder and inspiration, there has also been plunder and heedless exploitation, the consequences of which have set us on a path towards our own extinction. Beautifully written and mind-expanding, Under a Metal Sky seamlessly blends travel writing, cultural history, and geology. Who knew the history of rocks could be so page turning?

In an old wooden sloop, Philip Marsden plots a course north from his home in Cornwall. He is sailing for the Summer Isles, a small archipelago near the top of Scotland that holds for him a deep and personal significance. On the way, he must navigate the west coast of Ireland and the Inner Hebrides. Bearing the full force of the Atlantic, it is a seaboard which is also a mythical frontier, a place as rich in story as anywhere on earth. Through the people he meets and the tales he uncovers, Marsden builds up a haunting picture of these shores - of imaginary islands and the Celtic otherworld, of the ageless draw of the west, of the life of the sea and perennial loss - and the redemptive power of the imagination. Exhilarating and poignant, Marsden's prose has been widely praised. Bringing together themes he has been pursuing for many years, The Summer Isles is an unforgettable account of the search for actual places, invented places, and those places in between that shape the lives of individuals and entire nations.

In an old wooden sloop, Philip Marsden plots a course north from his home in Cornwall. He is sailing for the Summer Isles, a small archipelago near the top of Scotland that holds for him a deep and personal significance. On the way, he must navigate the west coast of Ireland and the Inner Hebrides. Through the people he meets and the tales he uncovers, Marsden builds up a haunting picture of these shores - of imaginary islands and the Celtic otherworld, of the ageless draw of the west, of the life of the sea and perennial loss - and the redemptive power of the imagination. The Summer Isles is an unforgettable account of the search for actual places, invented places, and those places in between that shape the lives of individuals and entire nations.

'A book of breathtaking wealth and depth... Marsden takes the history of metals and, from it, creates a dazzling history of humanity and our relationship with this planet. It can only be alchemy' Tom Bullough, author of Sarn Helen The discovery of minerals beneath our feet has transformed our species. Ochre first prompted humans to express themselves in art; tin and copper helped instigate the Bronze Age and later the Industrial Revolution; silver kick-started the engines of global trade. Each of these substances generated a leap forward in technology, each one opened the imagination a little further - and each one brought with it a cache of unexpected dangers. Under A Metal Sky begins and ends in Philip Marsden's homeland of Cornwall, one of the world's great geological hotspots.Travelling eastwards into Europe, he examines how the extraction of peat propelled the Netherlands to world prominence but also imperilled its very existence. Continuing on up the Rhine by barge, into the heart of the continent, he uncovers more stories of potent and tempting resources, from iron-rich meteorites to radium and mercury, and the gold-bearing mountains of Georgia. At the same time he explores precious seams of ideas, from science to alchemy, mysticism to ecology - and those questing souls who pursued them, likeParacelsus, the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II, Goethe,William Blake and Marie Curie. Rich with revelations, Under A Metal Sky traces the dazzling achievements and dark consequences of our ability to extract what we want from the earth, and presents a fascinating new perspective on European history and on our troubled relationship with the natural world. 'A luminously rich exploration of the mineral wonderland beneath our feet. Imaginatively travelled and beautiful written' Colin Thubron

When Philip Marsden moved to a remote, creekside farmhouse in Cornwall, the intensity of his response took him aback. It led him to wonder why we react so strongly to certain places and set him off on a journey on foot westwards to Land's End through one of the most myth-rich regions of Europe. From the Neolithic ritual landscape of Bodmin Moor to the Arthurian traditions at Tintagel, from the mysterious china-clay region to the granite tors and tombs of the far south-west, Marsden assembles a chronology of Britain's attitude to place. In archives, he uncovers the life and work of other enthusiasts before him - medieval chroniclers and Tudor topographers, eighteenth-century antiquarians, post-industrial poets and abstract painters. Drawing also on his travels from further afield, Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our own history but of man's perennial struggle to belong on this earth.

Dr. Fr d ric Jenny is the Renaissance man of competition policy. As an economist, scholar, judge and enforcer, he has helped transform the landscape of global competition enforcement. This second volume containing 19 new articles, addresses a range of issues to which Fred has made important intellectual and international contributions, including trade and competition, institution-building, and the new issues of online markets and theories of harm

The discovery of minerals beneath our feet has transformed our species. Ochre first prompted humans to express themselves in art; tin and copper helped instigate the Bronze Age and later the Industrial Revolution; silver kick-started the engines of global trade. Each of these substances generated a leap forward in technology, each one opened the imagination a little further - and each one brought with it a cache of unexpected dangers. Under A Metal Sky begins and ends in Philip Marsden's homeland of Cornwall, one of the world's great geological hotspots.Travelling eastwards into Europe, he examines how the extraction of peat propelled the Netherlands to world prominence but also imperilled its very existence. Continuing on up the Rhine by barge, into the heart of the continent, he uncovers more stories of potent and tempting resources, from iron-rich meteorites to radium and mercury, and the gold-bearing mountains of Georgia. At the same time he explores precious seams of ideas, from science to alchemy, mysticism to ecology - and those questing souls who pursued them, likeParacelsus, the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II, Goethe,William Blake and Marie Curie. Rich with revelations, Under A Metal Sky traces the dazzling achievements and dark consequences of our ability to extract what we want from the earth, and presents a fascinating new perspective on European history and on our troubled relationship with the natural world.