{"title":"John P Evans","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"quite-remarkable-man-book-john-p-evans-9781445638904","title":"A Quite Remarkable Man","description":"Born near Berwick-on-Tweed in the Scottish Borders, and the son of a Church of Scotland minister, Patrick Brydone served as a second lieutenant in the Seven Years' War, returning from Portugal in 1763. Hearing that other ex-soldiers were becoming guides to those wishing to explore Europe, he established a business as a travelling preceptor in Lausanne on Lake Geneva, showing both the intellectual rigour of what today we would call a scientist or polymath, and an ability to inspire curiosity and the continual search for knowledge in his charges.Publication of a book he wrote in the early 1770s about his travels in Sicily and Malta, when tutor to two sons of the gentry, was a huge success, being published in France, Germany and the USA in various editions. Subsequent commissions took him and his charges to Vienna, Berlin, Poland and Russia and in 1777 Brydone became the tutor to the two elder sons of Lord North, the British Prime Minister at the time. Two years later, North family patronage led to him being made Comptroller General of the Stamp Office, a useful sinecure for life. He married the thirty-three-year-old daughter of the principal of Edinburgh University in 1785 and set up home at Lennel House near Coldstream. At the age of seventy, Brydone had the good fortune to see his eldest daughter Mary married to Gilbert Elliot, heir to the earldom of Minto in Roxburghshire. Despite his eventual near blindness, he was to share many of the joys his grandchildren afforded the family. He died in June 1818.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49619034341649,"sku":"GOR012986622","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51396794122513,"sku":"GOR009466861","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1445638908.jpg?v=1760522100"},{"product_id":"victorian-elliots-in-peace-and-war-book-john-p-evans-9781445605074","title":"The Victorian Elliots in Peace and War","description":"This book is part history and part an account of the daily life of a large aristocratic family with homes in Roxburghshire in Scotland, and in fashionable Eaton Square in London. The story is told principally by the Earl and Countess of Minto, their five sons  -  a diplomat, MP, soldier, sailor and lawyer  -  along with the daughters' governess. The action takes place in Britain and across the world, in such places as Brazil and Uruguay, Morocco, China, Cape Province, Russia, Corfu, the Crimea, Bulgaria, Prussia, Italy, Sicily and the Vatican. It includes colourful descriptions of crises and revolutions as well as the consequences of the fortunate marriage made by one of the Elliot daughters to a future British prime minister.It treads a careful path between being a piece of historical scholarship and the inside story of the family's life, managing to combine the style and content of letters and diaries from a variety of sources. It is the first biography of the Minto family in the reign of Queen Victoria and one in which both sexes have a part to play.  Intricately choreographed, The Victorian Elliots is not formulaic and its readers will enjoy the description it gives of the long Victorian afternoon.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49680645062929,"sku":"GOR006146109","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53246164861201,"sku":"GOR007421383","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1445605074.jpg?v=1777715238"},{"product_id":"rise-of-the-elliots-of-minto-book-john-p-evans-9781445668741","title":"The Rise of the Elliots of Minto","description":"The Rise of the Elliots of Minto begins as battles between Scottish clans and reivers across the English-Scottish border continue. A Gilbert Elliot is helping a Campbell, the earl of Argyll, escape the clutches of the law. Soon afterwards, as a member of the Scottish Parliament, he prospers both socially and financially. Being made a baronet, he retires following the Treaty of Union, dying in 1718.A chronological account of the happenings of six generations of Elliots in the eighteenth century, and a dramatis personae of well over 100, completes the author's trilogy about the family commenced in 2011. Inheritance of the estate in Roxburghshire in the Borders by the second baronet is accompanied by his being made a judge, and by the expansion of his interests in music and rural affairs. Two of three successful marriages among his offspring were then to greatly influence the family's ascendancy from the gentry to the lower ranks of the aristocracy. Key to this was the eventual third baronet who became a politician and a literary patron, and his elder sister Eleanor who was to live the first part of her married life in America. Between them they had at least seventeen children, including an admiral, an army captain, the governor of New York, and a woman poet. A third union between the fourth baronet's sister and William Eden, who was a friend of Pitt the Younger, government minister and diplomat at the time of the American War of Independence, cemented the family's association with the Eden family.Although a social history of the family and several biographies or essays about two or three senior Elliots exist, little has been revealed till now about the fascinating lives of its younger members or the family in the round. The Rise of the Elliots of Minto provides a warm and perceptive glimpse into the life of a far-from-rich aristocratic family, as well as a picture of what the populace at large endured. The lid is lifted a little further on both the conventional and non-conventional in eighteenth-century society, where adventure and death were partners.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50567445184785,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50567445250321,"sku":"GOR010280357","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1445668742.jpg?v=1777715274"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-john-p-evans.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}