Bøger af Simon Webb

At a time when the subject of the trans-Atlantic slave trade is seldom out of the news, this book provides a challenge to the popularly accepted view of the matter.

A humble tailor and apple-grower from New Jersey, John Woolman became one of the leading voices against the transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century. Simon Webb's highly accessible new biography takes a fresh look at the life of this inspirational figure.

'Despite the efforts of ancient, medieval and renaissance astronomers, and the labours of Newton, Halley and the Herschels, it was a carpenter's son from a tiny village in the north of England who first began to glimpse the true nature of the Milky Way'. Simon Webb's new book is the first stand-alone biography of Thomas Wright (1711-86), astronomer, garden-designer and architect of Byers Green, County Durham.

Vera Zasulich, would-be assassin who later worked with Lenin. Alexandra Kollontai, the only woman in Russia's cabinet after the revolution of 1917. Louise Bryant, American reporter and 'Queen of Bohemia' who was thereon the spot and covered the Russian revolution and its aftermath.

'. . . although Alfred Poland discovered Poland Syndrome, the condition was not named after him for well over a century.'Poland Syndrome is a congenital condition that may affect as many as one in twenty thousand people. In this book Simon Webb, who has PS himself, tells the intriguing tale of how the syndrome was discovered by a teenage medical student in 1840. Simon's book also includes previously unpublished information about George Elt, a native of the English city of Worcester, whose PS led to Alfred Poland's ground-breaking discovery.

The History of King Richard III by Thomas More, the celebrated 'man for all seasons', gives us King Richard red in tooth and claw; every inch the merciless tyrant the Tudors wanted us to believe he was. The Langley Press edition of this neglected classic includes modern spelling and punctuation, and an introduction showing how the recent discovery of the king's skeleton sheds light on More's spectacular hatchet-job.

'And soon after came to them an horrible fish, which followed the ship long time, casting so much water out of his mouth into the ship, that they supposed to have been drowned...' Saint Brendan sets off from Ireland with fourteen companions, and sees many strange sights in 'the great sea ocean, that compasseth all the world about'. The Langley Press edition is a modern-spelling version of William Caxton's translation of Brendan's story, taken from 'The Golden Legend', one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. With introduction and bibliography.

The ultimate Ripper collection runs to over 550 pages and includes four complete books: 'American Jack', about the Ripper's links to the United States, books on the suspects Francis Thompson and Ernest Dowson, and 'Severin', a novel based on the story of the well-known suspect George Chapman. Among other suspects covered in the book are Francis Tumblety, James Maybrick, Prince Albert Victor, Neill Cream, James Kelly and Robert D'Onston Stephenson. 'A Jack the Ripper Omnibus' also includes new material that has never been published before.

Long regarded as a possible Jack the Ripper suspect, the Victorian poet Francis Thompson lived in London at the time of the Whitechapel murders, and may have had motive, means and opportunity to commit at least some of those horrific crimes. At one time, he even lived with a prostitute who subsequently disappeared. Considering known facts about Thompson's life and personality, and searching for clues in the darker corners of his poetry, Simon Webb's new book offers a balanced view of the case for Jack the Poet. Simon has also written 'American Jack', about the Ripper's links to the United States, and 'Severin', a Ripper novel.

Though he features in the first of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, Nicholas Flamel was a real person who lived in medieval Paris. Simon Webb's new book attempts to reconstruct his life, and also looks into the legends that have attached to his name over the centuries. Was he an alchemist, could he make gold from mercury, and are Nicholas and his wife Perenelle still alive after over six hundred years? Published by the Langley Press.

The ideas for Shakespeare's plays did not just spring from his head fully formed: there had to be some reading and research before the playwright put pen to paper.In this highly accessible illustrated book, Simon Webb looks at how the man from Stratford 'borrowed' ideas from a wide range of sources - from the Bible and the Greek and Roman classics, to travellers' tales and even plays written by his rivals.

'Dear Boss - I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won't fix me just yet.' Was Jack the Ripper an American, or had he lived in the United States? Did he commit any of the Ripper-style murders carried out in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Simon Webb's first non-fiction book about the Whitechapel killer re-tells the stories of the murders usually attributed to this mysterious figure, and re-examines the evidence surrounding a number of suspects with American connections.

A Dean who liked to box in public, a Minor Canon who was a famous fisherman, and a poor butcher's son who made a fortune from coal are among the characters in Simon Webb's book about the City of Durham in the Age of Victoria.

An English Quaker from County Durham, in 1763 Jeremiah Dixon became the joint architect of one of the most important boundaries in history: the Mason-Dixon line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, which still marks the division between the North and the South in the United States.The author is a Quaker who lives near Dixon's home at Cockfield in County Durham, and his book offers unique insights into the life and achievements of 'Jerry the Astronomer'.Illustrated.

Simon Webb's new book explores the lives of five of the best-loved English saints, and also looks at less well-known figures, such as Amphibalus, Hugh, Edmund, and Lucius, saintly King of the ancient Britons.

Chaucer's Legend of Good Women re-tells the stories of some of the most fascinating women in history and mythology, including Cleopatra, Medea and Dido, Queen of Carthage. This edition includes Simon Webb's highly accessible prose translation, and an introduction which examines how this neglected work has been rediscovered as a key text for understanding the medieval view of women.

The Quakers were just one of the new religious groups that emerged during the turbulent seventeenth century in England. Patricia Brown and Simon Webb's book looks at these groups from the female point of view, and compares the lives of early Quaker women with those of women from other sects.

Historian, saint, scientist, monk and biblical scholar, the Venerable Bede was one of the most remarkable figures to come out of the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain. Simon Webb's book gives an introduction to the life of this extraordinary man: an eighth-century Northumbrian whose works are still read throughout the world. New revised edition exclusive to Createspace.

Who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become the patron saint of lovers? Is it true that Valentine's Day originated in a bawdy pagan festival? If it started in the Middle Ages, then how was the unfortunate Queen Anne of Bohemia involved? These and other questions are examined by author (and incurable romantic) Simon Webb in this entertaining book, which concludes with a convincing theory about how February 14th became a festival of romance.

The Voyage of St Brendan, first written down over a thousand years ago, recounts the strange adventures of a sixth-century abbot and his crew of monks, as they wander the oceans for seven years in their sturdy leather boat. This edition also contains translated extracts from biographies of Brendan written in Latin and Irish, an introduction and suggestions for further reading.

Pope Adrian IV was not the greatest or most saintly of popes, but he was the only English pope so far, and he lived in very interesting times. Simon Webb's book is a straightforward and impartial biography of this twelfth-century pontiff, who started life as plain Nicholas Breakspear of Abbot's Langley near St Albans.

A highly accessible biography of Elias Hicks, a nineteenth-century Quaker from Long Island who campaigned against slavery and was at the centre of some painful political developments among American Quakers.Revised and corrected edition.

'I here lay down to you the truth, and nothing but the truth: the naked and plain truth, which is here exposed so bare that the very pudenda are not covered, and affords many passages that would raise a blush in a young virgin's cheek.'The Langley Press selection from Aubrey's Brief Lives includes the lives of Aubrey's most famous subjects, including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton and Sir Walter Raleigh.The selection includes a number of blush-making passages that were missed out of Andrew Clark's 1889 edition, including the speedy wooing of one of Thomas More's daughters, and the notorious tale of Walter Ralegh's al fresco love-making.

The Malmesbury philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously said that life was 'nasty, brutish and short'; but, as Simon Webb's introduction makes clear, the author of 'Leviathan' was not entirely pessimistic, and only applied his most famous phrase to life lived amid political chaos. The life of Hobbes written by his close friend John Aubrey reveals a personality that could be blunt, but was never nasty or brutish. Though King Charles II thought him the 'oddest fellow he ever met with', Aubrey paints the picture of a great British thinker who was certainly eccentric, but was also one of the leading spirits of his age. The Langley Press edition of Aubrey's brief life of Hobbes also includes the philosopher's Latin prose autobiography, in a new translation by William Duggan.

Aesthete, decadent poet, misogynist and violent drunk, Ernest Dowson has been long-listed as a Jack the Ripper suspect for nearly twenty years. Simon Webb's new book takes a fresh look at the evidence, and examines the possibility that Dowson's consumption of epic quantities of absinthe may have turned him from a woman-hating brawler into the terror of Whitechapel.

'In the opinion of this biographer, James Nayler was not a blasphemer, a heretic, a sower of discord, a fool or a madman, but a genuine Quaker prophet who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.'Tried by parliament, whipped, branded and bored through the tongue in the winter of 1656, James Nayler remains the most controversial figure among the early Quakers. Simon Webb's new biography sets the Yorkshireman's story in the context of his turbulent times, and incorporates recent discoveries about the life of the 'Quaker Jesus'.

Where did George Fox and the early Quakers get their ideas? Was George Fox aware of the writings of continental mystics like Jacob Boehme? In this highly accessible book, Simon Webb traces the historical roots of Quakerism's most enduring ideas.

Aubrey tells us that from an early age he liked to talk to old people, 'as living histories'. Since the biographer was born in 1626, many of the human chronicles he consulted would have had fresh memories of the Elizabethan age. This selection, the second from the Langley Press, covers the most famous Elizabethans John Aubrey wrote about, who were not included in 'Aubrey's Brief Lives: A Selection'. These include Francis Bacon, the occultist John Dee, and the poet Sir Philip Sidney. With his usual mix of impressions, opinions, speculation and gossip, Aubrey tells us how Francis Bacon's widow made her second husband 'deaf and blind with too much of Venus'; how the playwright John Fletcher died of vanity; and how Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke sported 'with her stallions'.

Based on the Advices and Queries of Britain Yearly Meeting, Simon Webb's sequence of forty-two Quaker sonnets tries to distil the essence of Quakerism as he understands it.

'It was revealed to Eadmar, a devout monk, that Durham was to be Cuthbert's final resting-place.'Robert Hegge's 1624 book tells the story of St Cuthbert with humour, insight and accuracy. Simon Webb's highly accessible modern English version draws back the curtain on a masterpiece that has remained unpublished for 200 years.