{"title":"Ruth Scurr","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"napoleon-book-ruth-scurr-9781784741006","title":"Napoleon","description":"**A FINANCIAL TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH AND HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEAR**  'Glorious . . . Scurr   has achieved something remarkable: a completely original book on a completely   unoriginal subject . . . a truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted   non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial   Times       A revelatory portrait of Napoleon to mark the 200th anniversary of his   death, written for our own time, not in power politics or epic battles, but   through his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life   its light and shade       Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to   Josephine's gardens and menageries in Paris, to gardens in Cairo, Rome and on   Elba, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and   ultimately to Napoleon's final garden on St Helena, where Chinese labourers   built him a summerhouse where he could sit and scan the sea in his final   months.       During the French Revolution ideas about nature - human nature, the natural   world and exchanges between the two - were at the centre of fierce political   debates and events. In this lively and perceptive cultural history, Napoleon   is placed firmly in this context: he wanted to see himself as a patron of the   sciences and progress, bringing an end to the Revolution and binding up its   wounds. In fact he unleashed an era of destruction and war, causing millions   of deaths across Europe.       In this innovative biography, as uniquely fitting its subject as Ruth   Scurr's applauded portraits of Robespierre and John Aubrey, Napoleon emerges   a giant figure made human, seen through the eyes of those who knew him best -   close witnesses, rich and poor, famed and obscure - in the shade of his   gardens. The result is vivid, multidimensional and haunting, throwing us back   in time, so that we see him before us, both as the Emperor hunting for glory   and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade.       'An immensely satisfying and captivating book .   . . charming and intelligent' Andrew Roberts, Times   Literary Supplement","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49510510100753,"sku":"GOR011402035","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50109943283985,"sku":"GOR012561999","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50235929002257,"sku":"CIN1784741000VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1784741000.jpg?v=1751216778"},{"product_id":"napoleon-book-ruth-scurr-9781784704032","title":"Napoleon","description":"'Glorious... Scurr is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times  A revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade.  Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months.  In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade.  'Immensely satisfying and captivating... Charming and intelligent' Andrew Roberts, TLS  'Grippingly original' The Times  'A delight to read' Daily Telegraph   * A Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and History Today *  Winner of a Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2022","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49516096291089,"sku":"GOR012780581","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49743726444817,"sku":"NGR9781784704032","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50716990898449,"sku":"GOR012809188","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51477309817105,"sku":"GOR012669961","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1784704032.jpg?v=1751438792"},{"product_id":"fatal-purityrobespierre-and-the-french-revolution-book-ruth-scurr-9780701176006","title":"Fatal PurityRobespierre and the French Revolution","description":"Robespierre was only 36 when he died, sent to the guillotine where he had sent thousands ahead of him. Only a few months before, this pale and fragile man, formal, anxious to the point of paranoia, steeled by deep-held principles, had held centre place in the new Festival of the Supreme Being, wearing his sky-blue coat and decreeing a new religion for France. Robespierre and the Revolution were inseparable: a single inflexible tyrant. But what turned a shy young lawyer into the living embodiment of the Terror at its most violent? Admirers called him 'the great incorruptible'; critics dubbed him a 'monster', a 'bloodthirsty charlatan'; even his friends found him hard to understand. Ruth Scurr sheds a dazzling new light on this puzzle, tracing Robespierre's life from a troubled childhood in provincial Arras to the passionate idealist, fighting for the rights of the people, and sweeping on to the implacable leader prepared to sign the death warrant for his closest friends. No backdrop can match the French revolution: it burns with human interest. As Scurr says, 'More than haunting, it obsesses, because it will not lie down and die'. Her brilliant, probing narrative brings the Revolution and its chilling hero to fiery life once again, helping us to understand how ideals and fanaticism can so often go hand in hand, as they still do today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49522678694161,"sku":"GOR001667488","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49564380889361,"sku":"GOR001341397","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49643084284177,"sku":"GOR005039708","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51849614819601,"sku":"GOR009316270","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701176008.jpg?v=1751168331"},{"product_id":"john-aubrey-book-ruth-scurr-9780099490630","title":"John Aubrey","description":"'A truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times  SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD  This is the autobiography that John Aubrey never wrote.  You may not know his name. Aubrey was a modest man, a gentleman-scholar who cared far more for the preservation of history than for his own legacy. But he was a passionate collector, an early archaeologist and the inventor of modern biography.  With all the wit, charm and originality that characterises her subject, Ruth Scurr has seamlessly stitched together John Aubrey's own words to tell his life story and a captivating history of seventeenth-century England unlike any other.  'A game-changer in the world of biography' Mary Beard  'Ingenious' Hilary Mantel  'Irresistible' Philip Pullman","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49534115610897,"sku":"GOR007501840","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728772571409,"sku":"NGR9780099490630","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50098304549137,"sku":"CIN0099490633G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50344608432401,"sku":"CIN0099490633A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50445276315921,"sku":"GOR008105650","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51295968264465,"sku":"GOR007556220","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51681531035921,"sku":"GOR008189374","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099490633.jpg?v=1751194532"},{"product_id":"john-aubrey-book-ruth-scurr-9780701179076","title":"John Aubrey","description":"Shortlisted for the COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD  No.1: Telegraph Best Books for Christmas   'Light, ingenious, inspiring, a book to reread and cherish' Hilary Mantel  'A delight...the book I would take with me to a desert island' David Aaronovitch   I was born about sun rising in my maternal grandfather’s bedchamber on 12th March 1626. St. Gregory’s Day, very sickly, likely to die.   John Aubrey loved England. From an early age, he saw his England slipping away and, against extraordinary odds, committed himself to preserving for posterity what remained of it – in books, monuments and life stories. His Brief Lives would redefine the art of biography yet he published only one rushed, botched book in his lifetime and died fearing his name and achievements would be forgotten.  Ruth Scurr’s biography is an act of scholarly imagination: a diary drawn from John Aubrey’s own words, displaying his unique voice, dry wit, the irreverence and drama of a literary pioneer. Aubrey saw himself modestly as a collector of a vanishing past, a ‘scurvy antiquary’. But he was also one of the pioneers of modern writing, a journalist before the age of journalism, who witnessed the Civil War and the Great Fire of London in the company of some of the influential men and women, high and low, whose lives he would make his legacy.  John Aubrey’s own life was a poignant personal and financial struggle to record the doings of great men and the relics of antiquity, the habits of Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and Thomas Hobbes, the stones of Stonehenge and the stained glass of forgotten churches. In this genre-defying account, rich with the London taverns and elegiac landscapes of an England he helped to preserve, Ruth Scurr has resurrected John Aubrey as a potent spirit for our own time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49549752860945,"sku":"GOR007062346","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49607048757521,"sku":"GOR008761948","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50175102058769,"sku":"GOR007032418","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701179074.jpg?v=1750743989"},{"product_id":"fatal-purity-book-ruth-scurr-9780099458982","title":"Fatal Purity","description":"'A truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times  Robespierre was only thirty-six when he died, sent to the guillotine where he had sent thousands ahead of him. Robespierre and the Revolution were inseparable: a single inflexible tyrant. But what turned a shy young lawyer into the living embodiment of the Terror at its most violent? Admirers called him 'the great incorruptible'; critics dubbed him a 'monster', a 'bloodthirsty charlatan'.   Ruth Scurr sheds new light on this puzzle, tracing Robespierre's life from a troubled childhood in provincial Arras to the passionate idealist, fighting for the rights of the people, and sweeping on to the implacable leader prepared to sign the death warrant for his closest friends.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49557904523537,"sku":"GOR002005160","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49621849669905,"sku":"GOR003501841","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49640167145745,"sku":"GOR002370044","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728695238929,"sku":"NGR9780099458982","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50134521544977,"sku":"GOR009072538","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51694965358865,"sku":"CIN0099458985G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099458985.jpg?v=1751432504"},{"product_id":"fatal-purity-book-ruth-scurr-9780805082616","title":"Fatal Purity","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFranco-British Society Literary Prize Winner\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eShortlisted for The Duff Cooper Prize.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eLong-listed for The Samuel Johnson Prize.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eA \"One Hundred Best Books of the Decade\" in \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Judicious, balanced, and admirably clear at every point. This is quite the calmest and least abusive history of the Revolution you will ever read.\" --Hilary Mantel, \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Written with epic sweep, full of nuance and insight, \u003ci\u003eFatal Purity\u003c\/i\u003e is a fascinating portrait of a man who identified with the Revolution to the point of madness, and in so doing changed the course of history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? The first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Was his extreme moralism a heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.\u003c\/p\u003e ackdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.ackdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.ackdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.ent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49916462366993,"sku":"CIN0805082611G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50015785419025,"sku":"CIN0805082611A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50300328476945,"sku":"CIN0805082611VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007602131217,"sku":"NIN9780805082616","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0805082611.jpg?v=1751296486"},{"product_id":"john-aubrey-my-own-life-book-ruth-scurr-9781681370422","title":"John Aubrey, My Own Life","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49995434983697,"sku":"CIN1681370425VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50388736311569,"sku":"CIN1681370425G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1681370425.jpg?v=1751376989"},{"product_id":"napoleon-book-ruth-scurr-9781631492419","title":"Napoleon","description":"“How should one envisage this subject? With a great pomp of words, or with simplicity?” —Charlotte Brontë, “The Death of Napoleon” The most celebrated general in history, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) has for centuries attracted eminent male writers. Since Thomas Carlyle first christened him “our last Great Man,” regiments of biographers have marched across the same territory, weighing campaigns and conflicts, military tactics and power politics. Yet in all this time, no definitive portrait of Napoleon has endured, and a mere handful of women have written his biography—a fact that surely would have pleased him.   With Napoleon, Ruth Scurr, one of our most eloquent and original historians, emphatically rejects the shibboleth of the “Great Man” theory of history, instead following the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon’s life through gardens, parks, and forests. As Scurr reveals, gardening was the first and last love of Napoleon, offering him a retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Gardens were, at the same time, a mirror image to the battlefields on which he fought, discrete settings in which terrain and weather were as important as they were in combat, but for creative rather than destructive purposes.   Drawing on a wealth of contemporary and historical scholarship, and taking us from his early days at the military school in Brienne-le-Château through his canny seizure of power and eventual exile, Napoleon frames the general’s story through the green spaces he cultivated. Amid Corsican olive groves, ornate menageries in Paris, and lone garden plots on the island of Saint Helena, Scurr introduces a diverse cast of scientists, architects, family members, and gardeners, all of whom stood in the shadows of Napoleon’s meteoric rise and fall. Building a cumulative panorama, she offers indelible portraits of Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre, the younger brother of Maximilien Robespierre, who used his position to advance Napoleon’s career; Marianne Peusol, the fourteen-year-old girl manipulated into a Christmas-Eve assassination attempt on Napoleon that resulted in her death; and Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases, the atlas maker to whom Napoleon dictated his memoirs. As Scurr contends, Napoleon’s dealings with these people offer unusual and unguarded opportunities to see how he grafted a new empire onto the remnants of the ancien régime and the French Revolution.   Epic in scale and novelistic in its detail, Napoleon, with stunning illustrations, is a work of revelatory range and depth, revealing the contours of the general’s personality and power as no conventional biography can.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50136870453521,"sku":"CIN1631492411G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50397144908049,"sku":"CIN1631492411VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51213742833937,"sku":"NIN9781631492419","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1631492411.jpg?v=1750762784"},{"product_id":"carlyle-s-the-french-revolution-book-ruth-scurr-9780826440525","title":"Carlyle's The French Revolution","description":"Ruth Scurr offers a substantial introduction to Carlyle and his masterwork, followed by a series of carefully selected extracts. In 1837 Thomas Carlyle published his two-volume work \"The French Revolution: A History\" and overnight became a celebrity. The work was filled with a passionate intensity, hitherto unknown in historical writing. In a politically charged Europe, filled with fears and hopes of revolution, Carlyle's account of the motivations and urges that inspired the events in France, became powerfully relevant. Carlyle's style emphasised this, continually pointing to the urgency of action - often using the present tense. For him, chaotic events demanded 'heroes' to take control over the competing forces erupting within society. In Carlyle's view only dynamic individuals could master events and direct these energies effectively. As soon as ideological formulas replaced heroes and human action society became dehumanised. As Dr Scurr shows in her masterly introduction and through the texts she has selected from Carlyle's masterpiece of historical writing, \"The French Revolution\" needs still to be read for its relevance and as one of the finest examples of English prose writing ever. \"Continuum Histories\" will attract a new generation of readers to some of the greatest narrative history ever written. Each volume includes a dramatic episode from a major work of history, prefaced with an introduction by a leading modern authority.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50200606638353,"sku":"GOR006849745","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53392614719761,"sku":"GOR012337381","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0826440525.jpg?v=1750786843"},{"product_id":"napoleon-book-ruth-scurr-9781324092025","title":"Napoleon","description":"Marking the 200th anniversary of his death, Napoleon is an unprecedented portrait of the emperor told through his engagement with the natural world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50275482009873,"sku":"CIN1324092025G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51192605802769,"sku":"NIN9781324092025","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51201566572817,"sku":"NGR9781324092025","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52105834266897,"sku":"CIN1324092025VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1324092025.jpg?v=1751402729"},{"product_id":"fatal-purity-book-ruth-scurr-9780805079876","title":"Fatal Purity","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJudicious, balanced, and admirably clear at every point. 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