What does it mean to be an island people? How has our rich & complex relationship with the sea shaped our national psyche? This beautifully illustrated exploration of Britain's maritime history sets out to discuss these questions. Brian Lavery takes the reader on a journey around the ports & harbours of Britain's coast, across rivers & along canals, climbing up lighthouses & strolling down piers. He moves with consummate skill between topics as varied as the rise of the Royal Navy or the development of specialised fisheries, the motives behind exploration & emigration or the protection of our shores from invasion, to deliver an all-encompassing history that is accessible & revealing. The pages are alive with tales of the great naval heroes, famous battles, legendary explorers & talented shipbuilders & architects. Each chapter

Includes:: a featured ship, dockyard, museum or notable maritime site, such as Chatham Dockyard, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, HMS Belfast, Liverpool's historic port, & the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh. The book is rounded off with a Gazeteer of over 100 heritage sites. The book is published as part of the major Sea Britain 2005 initiative whose aim is to co-ordinate all the various events that are planned for the Trafalgar bicentennary & promote the role that the sea plays & has played in British culture. Partners include The National Maritime Museum, The National Trust, English Heritage, the RNLI, The Royal Yachting Association & the Official Nelson Commemorative Committee, among others, with the support of the Department of Culture, Media & Sport. Each of these organisations has made a committment to the promotion of this book.

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For Philip, Dinah, Lucy-Ann, Jack & Kiki the parrot, the summer holidays in Cornwall are everything they`d hoped for. Until they begin to realize that something very sinister is taking place on the mysterious Isle of Gloom
- where a dangerous adventure awaits them in the abandoned copper mines & secret tunnels beneath the sea.
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This is an information-packed handbook about St Helena, the remote Atlantic island where Napoleon was exiled & which was only reachable by sea until the recent construction of its airport. The book

Includes:: chapters on its history, places of interest, environment (its terrain as well as its endemic flora & fauna), & language (St Helenian English & its sources). There is also a word list with more than 1500 entries, a substantial bibliography, & an index.

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The year is 1643. Roberto, a young nobleman, survives war, the Bastille, exile & shipwreck as he voyages to a Pacific island straddling the date meridian. There he waits now, alone on the mysteriously deserted Daphne, separated by treacherous reefs from the island beyond: the island of the day before. If he could reach it, time
- & his misfortunes
- might be reversed. But first he must learn to swim...

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Why did Reg Harris want to become a professional road racer? Why did Britain's top time-triallist sit on a dustbin to annoy the RTTC? Why did Jacques Anquetil want to put the British '25' record on the shelf for three decades? & what stopped British cycling being as great as it could have been? How could people passionate about bike-racing, & dedicated to the sport they loved, have made sure that it never became a major sport in Britain, & that British cycling never became a force in the world? ...

Take a three-generation family holiday in Cuba in the company of Dervla Murphy, her daughter & three young granddaughters & you have a Swallows & Amazon like adventure in the Caribean as they trek into the hills & along the coast as a family, camping out on empty beaches beneath the stars & relishing the ubiquitous Cuban hospitality. But this is no more than the joyful start of a fully-fledged quest to understand the unique society created by the Cuban Revolution. For Dervla returns alone to explore the mountains, coastal swamps & decaying cities, investigating the experience of modern Cuba with her particular, candid curiosity. Through her own research & through conversations with Fidelistas & their critics alike, The Island That Dared builds a complex picture of a people struggling to retain their identity in the face of insistent hostility of the government of the United States. ...

The creation myth of the US begins with the puritans of the Mayflower who went on to build the most powerful nation on earth. This is the story of the passengers aboard its sister ship, the Seaflower, who in 1630 founded a rival colony on an isolated Caribbean island called Providence. Their crops failed, slaves revolted, & as crisis loomed the settlers turned to piracy. After the colony was wiped out by the Spanish Providence was forgotten in Engl&, but the drama was re-played by those who settled the island 100 years later, now providing a fascinating microcosm of the Atlantic story. ...

London`s streets, built up over more than two thousand years, are a maze of history, cultures & stories. In his fantastically detailed maps of the city, Stephen Walter translates these elements into a tangle of insightful yet humorous words & symbols that make up a complex of hidden meanings & wider contradictions. Testament to Walter`s skill & importance as a cartographer, his groundbreaking, oversized map The Island was one of only two works by contemporary artists to feature in the seminal Magnificent Maps exhibition held at the British Library in 2010, the other by Grayson Perry & was exhibited together with some of the most important maps in history, such as Pierre Desceliers`s 1550 world map. The work, which reimagines London as an insular body of land surrounded by water, has now been reconfigured & turned into Walter`s own version of a London street atlas, with readers able to explore his unique vision of the city by flicking through the pages. A grid at the front of the book lets readers easily navigate their way through the map & the large-scale, detailed reproductions allow for close examination of his witty & inventive depictions. Walter`s cartographic renderings have a cult following & now a wider audience will be able to immerse themselves in his uniquely personal vision
- one that both celebrates the art of mapmaking & pokes intelligent fun at the city he calls home.
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Based on Stephen Walter`s stunningly detailed map of London, The Isl&, this jigsaw puzzle offers a chance to explore the city in a whole new way. Walter converts the city`s densely packed streets into a tangle of insightful yet humorous words & symbols. This jigsaw puzzle has been designed to preserve its detail, with the puzzle pieces specially cut along geographical lines in the map. Over the years, Walter`s maps have gained a cult following & this puzzle will bring his wondrous creations to a wider audience, eager to discover more about London`s history & culture through this quirky, cartographic masterpiece. ...

Tomas O` Crohan was born on the Great Blasket Island in 1865 & died there in 1937, a great master of his native Irish. He shared to the full the perilous life of a primitive community, yet possessed a shrewd & humorous detachment that enabled him to observe & describe the world. His book is a valuable description of a new vanished way of life; his sole purpose in writing it was in his own words, `to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be again`. The Blasket Islands are three miles off Irelands Dingle Peninsula. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries. A rich oral tradition of story-telling, poetry, & folktales kept alive the legends & history of the islands, & has made their literature famous throughout the world. The 7 Blasket Island books published by OUP contain memoirs & reminiscences from within this literary tradition, evoking a way of life which has now vanished. ...