Richard Holmes

Ganador del premio de no ficción del National Books Critics Circle y del premio de la Royal Society al mejor libro de divulgación, finalista del premio Samuel Johnson de la BBC, uno de los mejores libros de su año segun las listas del New York Times y de Amazon.com

Escrito por uno de los más conocidos y respetados historiadores militares británicos, este libro contiene más de 40 documentos facsímiles de gran relevancia histórica procedentes de reciente investigaciones. En el podra revivir aquel extraordinario periodo de la historia, disponiendo ademas de mapas, cartas, anotaciones, informes, mensajes en clave, libros de codigos, proclamas, boletines, cuadernos de bitacora y periodicos nunca publicados hasta ahora y que solo podian encontrarse en archivos y museos de Europa.

MARATÓN . TERMÓPILAS . SALAMINA . SIRACUSA . ADRIANÓPOLIS . RONCESVALLES . HASTINGS . ANTIOQUÍA. BOUVINES . NÇJERA . AGINCOURT . LEPANTO . ALMANZA . TRAFALGAR . AUSTERLITZ . SALAMANCA . WAGRAM . WATERLOO . BALACLAVA . ANTIETAM . GETTYSBURG . SEDÇN . EL MARNE . VERDUN. YPRES . JUTLANDIA. GALLIPOLI . DUKERQUE. PEARL HARBOR . EL ALAMEIN . ANZIO . NORMANDIA . ESTALINGRADO . LAS ARDENAS . KURSK . MIDWAY . BERLIN . GUADALCANAL . IWO JIMA . INCHON . DIEN BIEN PHU . TET . LOS ALTOS DEL GOLÇN ... Un completo recorrido por las grandes batallas de la historia de la mano de uno de las mas prestigiosos historiadores militares britanicos. Desde el antiguo Egipto a la segunda Guerra del Golfo, pasando por Grecia, Roma, las cruzadas, la guerra de los treinta años, las invasiones napoleonicas, la Guerra Civil Norteamericana, el imperio britanico, los boers, las dos guerras mundiales del siglo XX, Corea, Vietnam... Este apasionate y muy documentado volumen reune toda la informacion esencial sobre trescientas batallas decisivas en la historia de la humanidad, con los datos historicos y militares mas destacados, completos mapas con los movimientos de tropas y abundantes ilustraciones.

Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books Richard Holmes s dazzling portrait of the age of great scientific discovery is a groundbreaking achievement The book opens with Joseph Banks botanist on Captain Cook s first Endeavour voyage who stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769 fully expecting to have located Paradise Back in Britain the same Romantic revolution that had inspired Banks was spurring other great thinkers on to their own voyages of artistic and scientific discovery astronomical chemical poetical philosophical that together made up the age of wonder In this breathtaking group biography Richard Holmes tells the stories of the period s celebrated innovators and their great scientific discoveries from telescopic sight to the miner s lamp and from the first balloon flight to African exploration

From the Trojan War to World War II and beyond, The Oxford Companion to Military History brings together an international team of more than 150 experts who illuminate war''s bloody past. Ranging from the Alamo and Amphibious Operations to Marshal Zhukov and the Zulu War, here are 1,300 alphabetically arranged entries that provide a wealth of information on warfare from the classical period to the present day, including the social, political, technological, and economic background of major conflicts. There are biographical profiles on military leaders (Napoleon, Caesar, Eisenhower), theorists (von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu), and inventors (Fulton), among other notable figures. The contributors also discuss weapons and equipment; wars, campaigns, and battles; strategy and tactics; espionage and propaganda; logistics and fortifications; and military life, literature, and medicine. In addition, the book includes many wide-ranging contextual entries on topics as diverse as animals in war, pacifism, and venereal disease. The Companion boasts 75 specially commissioned maps, 20 in-text line diagrams, extensive cross-referencing, and guides to further reading. With superb coverage of land warfare in Europe and North America, plus numerous entries on war in the air and at sea around the world and throughout history, The Oxford Companion to Military History is the most wide-ranging and authoritative reference on all aspects of military history currently available.

Battlefields is what every Richard Holmes fan has been waiting for. Richard Holmes skilfully clarifies the complexities of four major World War 2 military campaigns: El Alamein, Italy, Arnhem and the Battle of Britain (the Main Offensive), In this fascinating and brilliantly articulated study of war. In Battle Honours he recreates what it was really like to be in the midst if bloody conflict from letters, diaries and interviews with soldiers awarded campaign medals for their heroism during World War 2.

As one of the most admired political leaders of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill holds iconic status in popular memory. But in this incisive new biography, acclaimed military historian Richard Holmes offers a remarkable reappraisal of Churchill by examining the influences that shaped his character. Drawing upon never-before-seen materials such as letters between the young Churchill and his parents, Holmes paints the most complete portrait to date of the man who stood up to Hitler and led his people to victory against all odds. Detailing the decisive events of Churchills life -- from his childhood to his experiences in the Boer War through his rapid rise in politics -- Holmes demonstrates the central role Churchills character played in the key decisions of his public life. With an already inflated sense of self, Churchill had several lucky escapes in combat -- in the Boer War and in the trenches of WWI -- convincing him that he was saved for a reason and was destined for greatness. In the Footsteps of Churchill uncovers a surprisingly different Churchill -- both admirable and difficult -- through the lens of his character.

Bestselling military historian Richard Holmes delivers an expertly written and exhilarating biography of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough and Britains finest soldier. Charting Churchills rise to favour to lead his country to glory, cementing its position as a major player on the European stage and saviour of the Holy Roman Empire, Holmes paints a portrait of a man who combined passion, avarice and duplicity in his personal life with tenacity and utter brilliance on the battlefield.

Winner of the 1989 Whitbread Prize for Book of the Year, this is the first volume of Holmess seminal two-part examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of Britains greatest poets. Coleridge: Early Visions is the first part of Holmess classic biography of Coleridge that forever transformed our view of the poet of Kubla Khan and his place in the Romantic Movement. Dismissed by much recent scholarship as an opium addict, plagiarist, political apostate and mystic charlatan, Richard Holmess Coleridge leaps out of the page as a brilliant, animated and endlessly provoking figure who invades the imagination. This is an act of biographical recreation which brings back to life Coleridges poetry and encyclopaedic thought, his creative energy and physical presence. He is vivid and unexpected. Holmes draws the reader into the labyrinthine complications of his subjects personality and literary power, and faces us with profound questions about the nature of creativity, the relations between sexuality and friendship, the shifting grounds of political and religious belief.BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Richard Holmess Falling Upwards.

With this collection of short and fascinating biographical pieces, the award-winning biographer of Coleridge and Shelley offers a fascinating glimpse into the mysterious art of biography. When researching, Richard Holmes has often become captivated by figures peripheral to his main subject, literary forays that he couldnt resist. These talesthe forbidden love of John Stuart Mill, the bizarre novel of Oscar Wilde s tragic grand-uncle, Scott and Zelda Fitzgeralds nightmarish yet cathartic final trip to Parisare part of what comprises Sidetracks, a marvelously original that includes letters and travelogues, radio plays, essays, and minature biographies. This book is a rare literary feast and an exploration of the creative processes of one of our most preeminent biographers.BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Richard Holmess Falling Upwards.

Sahib is a magnificent history of the British soldier in India from Clive to the end of Empire, making full use of personal accounts from the soldiers who served in the jewel in Britains Imperial Crown. This is a stunning account of Indian soldiering in peace and war, from the barrack rooms to the cavalry swirling across open plains. Bestselling military historian Richard Holmes not only illuminates the lives and feelings of the men who served, but also those of the women who followed them across a vast continent, bore their children, and suffered alongside them in the merciless conditions.

From the redcoat who served Charles II to the modern, camouflage-clad guard at Camp Bastion, from battlefield to barrack-room, this is a magisterial social history of the British soldier. Since 1660 the army has evolved and adapted, but the social organisation of the men has changed less, with the major combat arms retaining many of the characteristics familiar to those who fought at Blenheim, Waterloo and the Somme. The Duke of Marlborough, who built up the British army to become a world-class fighting force in the 1660s, would recognise in the tired heroes of Helmand the descendants of the men he led to victory at Blenheim over three hundred years ago. Soldiers is exhaustively researched, and Holmess affection for the soldier shines through on every page. Above all, this book is brimming with great stories, from the chaos of the battlefield to the fug of the barrack-room, from Ulster to Bengal, from Flanders fields to the Afghan hills. This is a magisterial social history of the British soldier and Richard Holmess fitting last tribute to the British soldier to whom he was so devoted.

Richard Holmess great work of biographical exploration, published alongside its sister volume Sidetracks. In 1985, Richard Holmes published a small book of essays called Footsteps and the writing of biography was changed forever. A daring mix of travel, biographical sleuthing and personal memoir, it broke all the conventions of the genre and remains ons of the most intoxicating, magical works of modern literary exploration ever published. Sleeping rough, he retraces Robert Louis Stevensons famous journey through the Cevennes. Caught up in the Parisian riots of the 1960s, he dives back in time to the terrors of Wordsworth and of Mary Wollstonecraft marooned in Revolutionary Paris and then into the strange tortured worlds of Gerard de Nerval. Wandering through Italy, he stalks Shelley and his band of Romantic idealists to Casa Magni on the Gulf of Spezia. Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING FELICITY JONES AND EDDIE REDMAYNE A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW STATESMAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A DAILY TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A NEW REPUBLIC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A TIME MAGAZINE TOP 10 NONFICTION BOOK OF 2013 From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists. Falling Upwards asks why they risked their lives, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet. The stories range from early ballooning rivals to the long-distance voyages of American entrepreneurs; from the legendary balloon escape from the Prussian siege of Paris to dauntless James Glaisher, who in the 1860s flew seven miles above the earth without oxygen. Falling Upwards has inspired the Major Motion Picture The Aeronauts in cinemas SOON. In a glorious fusion of history, art, science and biography, this is a book about what balloons give rise to: the spirit of discovery, and the brilliant humanity of recklessness, vision and hope.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE POL ROGER DUFF COOPER PRIZE*A Book of the Year in the Times; Telegraph; Spectator; Financial Times; Observer; Waterstones and Daunt Books A dazzling new biography of young Tennyson by the prize-winning, bestselling author of The Age of Wonder. Alfred Lord Tennyson is now remembered if he is remembered at all as the gloomily bearded Poet Laureate, author of such clanking Victorian works as The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the mournful author of the lugubrious elegy In Memoriam. In this dazzling new biography, Richard Holmes reawakens this somnolent Victorian figure, brings him back to sparkling life, and unexpectedly transforms him. From the prize-winning and bestselling biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, and author of the landmark, critically acclaimed THE AGE OF WONDER, Holmes recovers in Young Tennyson an astonishingly magnetic and mercurial personality, a secretly expressive and highly emotional man but now haunted by the great intellectual and above all the great scientific issues of his time. The brilliant child of an obscure dysfunctional Lincolnshire family, terrorised by a drunken father, torn by unhappy love affairs but sustained by vivid friendships (especially that of Edward FitzGerald, the author of Omar Khayyam) Young Tennyson emerges in his first forty years as a memorable poet, hypnotically musical (The Lady of Shalott) yet intensely engaged with the new astronomy, geology, biology and even the psychiatry of the age before Darwin. Tennysons imagination and intellect were haunted by the eruption of three new fundamentally transformative scientific ideas biological evolution, the notion of a godless, unpitying universe and of planetary extinction. These were as terrifying to Tennyson as climate catastrophe is to us today. Their impact brought him into contact with the life and scientific work of William Whewell (originally his university tutor), the astronomer John Herschel, the geologist Charles Lyell, the mathematician Mary Somerville, the computer pioneer Charles Babbage, and the brilliant science populariser Robert Chambers. He also shared his visions and anxieties with contemporary writers and social commentators like Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, and poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edgar Allan Poe. Tennysons work during these vagrant years is suffused with an unsuspected and strangely modern magic. Holmess extraordinary biography allows us to witness Tennyson wrestling with mind-altering ideas of geology and deep time, the vastness, beauty and terror of the new cosmology, and the challenges of social revolution. And how these inspired him to grapple with the idea of human mortality, the threat of suicide and depression, the struggle between love and loneliness, agnosticism and belief.