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Founded as a Greek trading station, the city has traded always, favouring the transit of goods by sea and land over industrialisation; as a result the twentieth-century recession of sea traffic and partial closure of the docks can make Marseille appear neglected, dishevelled, and under-employed as a great port and historical centre. The appearance is deceptive; Marseille is a ceaselessly changing and culturally ever-creative fusion of peoples--rich and poor, black, brown and white, a population, according to the novelist Blaise Cendrars, that remains 'insolent, happy to be alive, and more independent than ever'. The Vieux-Port into which the first Greek settlers rowed their fifty-oared ships is still the vital centre of the city and even if less vibrantly active than in the days of sail, it is here that the sense of the living Marseille can be grasped. Moreover, the Euromediterranee project and the naming of Marseille as cultural capital of Europe in 2013 have together brought in massive capital transfusions to a process of urban rehabilitation which is continuing. David Crackanthorpe explores the striking architecture of Marseille's monuments, the remains of Greek and Roman docks and wall, the islands of the gulf and the magnificent coast, the city's distinctive language, food and popular culture. With all the disfigurements it has suffered, Marseille remains one of the world's most unique cities and its site among the most splendid.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49549936230673,"sku":"GOR005008034","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51380031422737,"sku":"GOR007654522","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53122745696529,"sku":"GOR012061257","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53368404508945,"sku":"CIN1908493119VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1908493119.jpg?v=1751218589"},{"product_id":"this-time-the-flames-book-david-crackanthorpe-9780747270461","title":"This Time the Flames","description":"Briony West has grown up in the shadow of her father - an impressive man whose past as a missionary in Rhodesia has always been a mystery to her. But one day she discovers the secret that has haunted him for years - whilst in Africa, he fathered a son by an African woman. Matthew is now a young man and, despite his missionary education and light skin, he and his mother are part of a population controlled by a European colonial society. Shocked by the conditions she imagines her half-brother to face, in 1939 Briony decides to travel to Africa with the hope of advancing him in the world. But her arrival coincides with political unrest and she soon finds that her hopes for reconciliation are hanging by a thread in the midst of a country torn apart by war.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49558044606737,"sku":"GOR004112742","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0747270465.jpg?v=1751232563"},{"product_id":"stolen-marches-book-david-crackanthorpe-9780747275206","title":"Stolen Marches","description":"Set amidst the moral and political chaos of newly liberated France in 1945, this is an extraordinary novel of love, betrayal and sacrifice. As a student in France under the German occupation, Stephen Seagrave risked his life for the Resistance. But with the German defeat come dangers of another but no less frightening kind as he searches for the Gypsy whore he tried to save from the camps. His only weapon is a compromising photograph of a collaborator, now a powerful man in the new government, whom he must blackmail into helping him.  But such a dangerous game will lead him into a deadly labyrinth of deceptions and betrayals where it is no longer possible to tell friend from foe.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49584398205201,"sku":"GOR004335151","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0747275203.jpg?v=1750848259"},{"product_id":"horseman-pass-by-book-david-crackanthorpe-9780747260868","title":"Horseman, Pass by","description":"Marseilles, 1975. Bernard Vipont is a successful lawyer, but beneath his bourgeois surface lurk darker passions. His father having been killed by collaborators during the war, he has been waging a clandestine campaign of retribution ever since, reappropriating art treasures stolen from Jews. But when he discovers a stolen masterpiece in a monastery, he may have stumbled into a maze of deceit and betrayal that even his ingenuity cannot extricate him from. A maze that seems curiously linked to his other obsession - the sexual fixation that forces him to enact a bizarre ritual in Madame Gazhakian's high-class brothel...","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49600540508433,"sku":"GOR006104281","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49918205821201,"sku":"GOR005780290","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0747260869.jpg?v=1751430763"},{"product_id":"stolen-marches-book-david-crackanthorpe-9780747260851","title":"Stolen Marches","description":"As a student in France under the German occupation, Stephen Seagrave risked his life for the Resistance. 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The destruction of Protestantism in France succeeded best in the cities where Huguenots were vulnerable and could only remain faithful to their beliefs in secret; but in the mountains of the Cevennes in Languedoc there were hidden sites for unlawful religious assemblies, isolated villages and farms, and a people of Celtic origin passionately devoted to their form of Christianity with leanings to mysticism and trance-induced biblical prophecy.  The persecution-torture,\texecution, confiscation of children, imposition of ruinous fines - and the violent hostility of the Catholic clergy combined to create conditions of terror and misery in the Cevennes that would one day end in explosion. When it came, the court and civil servants with unlimited power but mediocre intelligence were taken by surprise.No one conceived that the Camisards, bands of shepherds, farm labourers and wool combers chanting psalms as they went ill-armed into battle and led by daring men without education or status, could successfully ambush and sometimes destroy well-armed troops of the crown - but they did so. David Crackanthorpe reveals how the uprising raged from 1702 to 1704 with atrocities on both sides, a huge increase in military numbers, and the burning of hundreds of villages in the Cevennes. Inevitably, Camisard force was finally broken and by a rare act of intelligence an amnesty allowed survivors to leave the country. French Protestantism and the Camisard memory survived in the traditions of a world-wide Huguenot diaspora, while at the Revolution, which finally brought religious toleration, many French families that had nominally abjured their faith safely returned to it and have continued to play an important part in French life and history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49935503786257,"sku":"GOR009826986","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50817690403089,"sku":"GOR014084678","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1909930202.jpg?v=1751155716"},{"product_id":"this-time-the-flames-book-david-crackanthorpe-9780747266679","title":"This Time the Flames","description":"Briony West has grown up in the shadow of her father - an impressive man whose past as a missionary in Rhodesia has always been a mystery to her. 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