{"title":"Sir Richard Holmes","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"age-of-wonder-book-sir-richard-holmes-9780375422225","title":"The Age of Wonder","description":"\u003ci\u003eThe Age of Wonder \u003c\/i\u003eis a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery--astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical--swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science--an era whose consequences are with us still.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49511951958289,"sku":"GOR007466784","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49649047142673,"sku":"GOR007193324","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49777025548561,"sku":"CIN0375422226G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50131928711441,"sku":"CIN0375422226A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50232852480273,"sku":"CIN0375422226VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0375422226.jpg?v=1751039105"},{"product_id":"falling-upwards-book-sir-richard-holmes-9780307379665","title":"Falling Upwards","description":"Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air and so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject. Dramatic sequences move from the early Anglo-French balloon rivalries, the crazy firework flights of beautiful Sophie Blanchard, the revelatory ascents over the great Victorian cities and sprawling industrial towns of northern Europe, the astonishing long-distance voyages of the American entrepreneur John Wise, and the French photographer Felix Nadar to the terrifying high-altitude flights of James Glaisher, FRS, who rose above seven miles without oxygen, helping to establish the new science of meteorology as well as the environmental notion--so important to us today--of a fragile planet. Balloons were also used to observe the horrors of modern battle during the American Civil War, including a memorable flight by General Custer.Readers will discover the many writers and dreamers--from Mary Shelley to Edgar Allan Poe, from Charles Dickens to Jules Verne--who felt the imaginative impact of flight and allowed it to soar in their work. Moreover, through the strange allure of the great balloonists, Holmes offers another of his subtle portraits of human endeavor, recklessness, and vision.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49525940814097,"sku":"GOR008020163","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49549095108881,"sku":"GOR007692065","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50155218010385,"sku":"CIN0307379663G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51424444088593,"sku":"CIN0307379663VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52499024511249,"sku":"CIN0307379663A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0307379663.jpg?v=1762338878"},{"product_id":"this-long-pursuit-book-sir-richard-holmes-9780307379689","title":"This Long Pursuit","description":"From the award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Age of Wonder \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFalling Upwards, \u003c\/i\u003ehere is a luminous meditation on the art of biography that fuses the author's own experiences with a history of the genre and explores the fascinating and surprising relationship between fact and fiction. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In a book that ranges widely over art, science, and poetry, Richard Holmes confesses to a lifetime's obsession with his Romantic subjects. It has become for him a pursuit, or pilgrimage of the heart, that has taken him across three centuries, through much of Europe, and into the lively company of many earlier biographers. Central to this quest is a powerful and tender evocation of the lives of women both scientific and literary, some well-known and some almost lost to history: Margaret Cavendish, Mary Somerville, Germaine de Sta l, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the Dutch intellectual Z lide. Holmes also investigates the myths that have overshadowed the lives of some favorite Romantic figures: the love-stunned John Keats, the waterlogged Percy Bysshe Shelley, the chocolate-box painter Thomas Lawrence, the opium-soaked genius Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the mad visionary bard William Blake. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The diversity of Holmes's material is a testimony to his empathy, erudition, and inquiring spirit--and, sometimes, to his mischievous streak. \u003ci\u003eThe Long Pursuit \u003c\/i\u003egives us a unique insider's account of a biographer at work: traveling, teaching, researching, fantasizing, forgetting, and even ballooning. From this great chronicler of the Romantics now comes a chronicle of himself and his intellectual passions; it contains his most personal and most seductive writing.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51405961330961,"sku":"GOR014260787","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51454073831697,"sku":"CIN030737968XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52699515486481,"sku":"CIN030737968XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B06XMRV31G.jpg?v=1750739010"},{"product_id":"sieges-of-pontefract-castle-1644-1648-book-sir-richard-holmes-9781783312832","title":"The Sieges of Pontefract Castle 1644-1648","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe great Medieval castle of Pontefract in Yorkshire - where Richard I was held and murdered after his deposition - was besieged three times during the English Civil Wars. Held by Royalists and described by Oliver Cromwell no less as 'one of the strongest inland garrisons of the kingdom' the castle was slighted and left in ruins after it was finally taken by Parliament after the third and last siege during the second Civil War of 1648. This fine account of the three sieges, out of print since its publication in 1887, fills a much needed gap in studies of the military history of the English Civil Wars.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52475533754641,"sku":"NLS9781783312832","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52755140641041,"sku":"NIN9781783312832","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781783312832.jpg?v=1759842699"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-sir-richard-holmes.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}