Edward Wilson-Lee

Ingenious a glorious portrait of the great 15th century prince of learning Daily Telegraph

Investigating the literary culture of the early interaction between European countries and East Africa, Edward Wilson-Lee uncovers an extraordinary sequence of stories in which explorers, railway labourers, decadent emigres, freedom fighters, and pioneering African leaders made Shakespeare their own in this alien land. Whilst travelling in Luxor, Edward Wilson-Lee encountered a man who called out to him from the summer shade with lines from Shakespeares Macbeth: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Unable to resist the temptation, Wilson-Lee responded with the next line and so began a fascination with unexpected cultural encounters, especially those made memorable by the poignancy of discovering beauty out of place. Shakespeare may have heard of Luxor (although he would have known it as Thebes) but it is unlikely that he imagined his lines ever being spoken there, close by the feluccas sailing on the Nile and the acres of pharaonic ruins beyond. This radical, breath-taking book combines travel, history, biography and satire in an ode to Shakespeare. Wilson-Lee teaches Shakespeare at Cambridge but grew up in East Africa and Shakespeare in Swahililand explores Shakespeares global legacy like no other book before it. In these pages explorers stagger through Africas interior accompanied by Shakespeare; eccentrics live out their dreams on the African Savannah with Shakespeare by their side; decadent emigres, railway labourers, Indian settler communities, African intellectuals and rebels all turned to Shakespeare and adapted his plays to fit their needs. The book examines how Shakespeare influenced the first African leaders of independent nations, Cold War intrigues and even Che Guevara. With its extraordinary sequence of stories and momentous travels from Zanzibar, through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan, this literary adventure throws high culture and the wild together in celebration of Shakespeares legacy as a poet of the world.

Ingenious a glorious portrait of the great 15th-century prince of learning Daily TelegraphA deeply fascinating, sui generis book by a brilliant scholar-writer, which uses the life story of a Renaissance prodigy to summon an angel-host of ideas, people and stories, all circling the question of languages ability to transcend the mortal realm Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland ________________________________ Does there exist a form of speech so powerful as to allow the speaker to control the listener, taking over their thoughts and even their will? Renaissance prodigy and polymath Giovanni Pico della Mirandola the uncontested marvel of an age of true wonders believed that there was. The Grammar of Angels tells how Pico dedicated his short, brilliant life to finding a philosophy that would settle the most important questions about human existence. This philosophy would, he believed, provide tools by which man could transcend his mortal limitations and join the ranks of the angels. At the heart of Picos ideas were questions that he traced through the breadth and depth of human thought, from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to the medieval Arabs and Jews. He made use of everything at his disposal from Europes broadening horizons and asked primal questions of himself and the world. Why is it that we can be astonished by beauty? That the hairs on the backs of our necks can be made to stand by intoxicating rhythms and harmonies? That we can be provoked to ecstatic experiences by the simple means of an incantation? In 1486, when he was just twenty-three, he declared his intention to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers and for which he wrote a speech that is often deemed the manifesto of the Renaissance, even though the ideas it introduced were subject to an unprecedented ban by the Church. He died mysteriously aged only thirty-one. The implications of his thought were dangerous in the Europe of his day, suggesting as they did that the notion of the individual might be just as much of an illusion as a flat earth or a geocentric universe. Picos tempestuous life at the heart of the Renaissance was a testament to intellectual daring, to a human dignity founded in the willingness to think the unthinkable and to peer over the edge of the abyss in search of answers.

La biographie du fils illégitime de Christophe Colomb, qui chercha à égaler les prouesses de son père en créant la première bibliothèque universelle. Grand voyageur et collectionneur, il atteignit le

WINNER OF THE 2019 PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE The fascinating history of Christopher Columbuss illegitimate son Hernando, guardian of his fathers flame, courtier, bibliophile and catalogue supreme, whose travels took him to the heart of 16th-century Europe Honor Clerk, Spectator, Books of the Year This is the scarcely believable and wholly true story of Christopher Columbus bastard son Hernando, who sought to equal and surpass his fathers achievements by creating a universal library. His father sailed across the ocean to explore the known boundaries of the world for the glory of God, Spain and himself. His son Hernando sought instead to harness the vast powers of the new printing presses to assemble the worlds knowledge in one place, his library in Seville. Hernando was one of the first and greatest visionaries of the print age, someone who saw how the scale of available information would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. His was an immensely eventual life. As a youth, he spent years travelling in the New World, and spent one living with his father in a shipwreck off Jamaica. He created a dictionary and a geographical encyclopaedia of Spain, helped to create the first modern maps of the world, spent time in almost every major European capital, and associated with many of the great people of his day, from Ferdinand and Isabel to Erasmus, Thomas More, and Durer. He wrote the first biography of his father, almost single-handedly creating the legend of Columbus that held sway for many hundreds of years, and was highly influential in crafting how Europe saw the world his father reached in 1492. He also amassed the largest collection of printed images and of printed music of the age, started what was perhaps Europes first botanical garden, and created by far the greatest private library Europe had ever seen, dwarfing with its 15,000 books every other library of the day. Edward Wilson-Lee has written the first major modern biography of Hernando and the first of any kind available in English. In a work of dazzling scholarship, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells an enthralling tale of the age of print and exploration, a story with striking lessons for our own modern experiences of information revolution and Globalisation.

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 A TLS Book of the Year 2022 Exhilarating and whip-smart THE SUNDAY TIMES From award-winning writer Edward Wilson-Lee, this is a thrilling true historical detective story set in sixteenth-century Portugal. A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damio de Gois and Luis de Cames capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.

Cómo Hernando Colón, hijo de Cristóbal Colón, creó la primera biblioteca moderna y organizó el conocimiento al mejor estilo de la era digital. El Memorial de los libros naufragados cuenta la historia casi increible pero completamente cierta del hijo menor de Cristobal Colon, Hernando, quien procuro igualar o incluso superar los meritos de su padre creando una biblioteca universal, la mas extraña y variadisima coleccion de materiales impresos, desde libros, manuscritos y panfletos hasta estampas, folletos, partituras, posteres de tabernas y un largo etcetera. Este enorme y curioso legado tenia para el un valor incalculable, porque le acerco a su objetivo de construir una biblioteca que lo abarcara todo, en un sentido nunca antes imaginado. Conocido como el biografo mas importante de Cristobal Colon, asi como por supervisar los primeros mapas modernos del mundo y visitar las principales capitales europeas en busca de libros, Hernando se nos revela en esta obra como uno de los primeros y mas grandes visionarios, que cambio la forma de organizar el conocimiento, tanto por el caracter intuitivo con el que configuro la que fue la biblioteca privada mas grande del momento como por la manera como organizo la informacion, con la que rompio todos los paradigmas y se acerco a lo que seria hoy, como dice Edward Wilson-Lee, el big data, la Wikipedia e internet.

Una nueva épica de la expansión ibérica en pleno renacimiento30 de enero de 1574. El cuerpo sin vida del Archivero del Estado, Damião de Góis, fue hallado en las calles de Lisboa. Pronto su fallecimi

Una obra de investigación histórica que se lee como si fuera ficción.Cómo Hernando Colón, hijo de Cristóbal Colón, creó la primera biblioteca moderna y organizó el conocimiento al mejor estilo de la era digital. ElMemorial de los libros naufragados cuenta la historia casi increiblepero completamente ciertadel hijo menor de Cristobal Colon, Hernando, quien procuro igualar o incluso superar los meritos de su padre creando una biblioteca universal, la mas extraña y variadisima coleccion de materiales impresos, desde libros, manuscritos y panfletos hasta estampas, folletos, partituras, posteres de tabernas y un largo etcetera. Este enorme y curioso legado tenia para el un valor incalculable, porque le acerco a su objetivo de construir una biblioteca que lo abarcara todo, en un sentido nunca antes imaginado. Conocido como el biografo mas importante de Cristobal Colon, asi como por supervisar los primeros mapas modernos del mundo y visitar las principales capitales europeas en busca de libros, Hernando se nos revela en esta obra como uno de los primeros y mas grandes visionarios, que cambio la forma de organizar el conocimiento, tanto por el caracter intuitivo con el que configuro la que fue la biblioteca privada mas grande del momento como por la manera como organizo la informacion, con la que rompio todos los paradigmas y se acerco a lo que seria hoy, como dice Edward Wilson-Lee, elbig data, la Wikipedia e internet.

Una nueva epica de la expansión iberica en pleno renacimiento30 de enero de 1574. El cuerpo sin vida del Archivero del Estado, Damião de Góis, fue hallado en las calles de Lisboa. Pronto su fallecimi