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On his way back from the crusades, one of England's most famous and romantic medieval kings was ship-wrecked and stranded near Venice. Trying to make his way home in disguise, he was arrested and imprisoned and effectively disappeared. He didn't return home for another fifteen months, and at enormous cost - a quarter of the entire wealth of England was paid to win his release. The extraordinary events surrounding Richard the Lionheart's disappearance provides the background to some of the most colourful and enduring legends - Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham, the discovery of King Arthur's grave, and above all, the story of Blondel, Richard's faithful minstrel, and his journey across central Europe - singing under castle towers - until he finds the missing king. Blondel's Song tells the tale of one of the most peculiar incidents of medieval history, and the background to the real Blondel and his fellow troubadours, as well as the courts of love, the Holy Grail, emergence of gothic cathedrals like Notre Dame and Chartres, and the unique moment of tolerance in the West - when Europe shared a language, and a new culture of music, romance and chivalry.
A collection of papers presented at the two-day conference 'The world of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, 1566-1643', held at University College Cork in June 2013.-- Page 11.
One of the most influential books on chess ever published – now in digital format. The Tiger is a vicious beast. He doesn't care about the aesthetic side of chess. He doesn't even care about making the 'best' moves. All he cares about is winning. Do you want to win more games? Then become a Tiger. 'Chess for Tigers' tells you how to make the most of your playing strength, how to play upon your opponent's weaknesses, how to steer the game into a position which suits you and not your opponent, how to get results against strong opposition and how to avoid silly mistakes. This is a cult classic that is as relevant to today's generation of chess players as the first edition was. Regularly voted...
English culture is confused, muddled and often borrowed. The purpose of this book is to give the reader a complete grounding in the idiosyncrasies of the English and to pin down the absurdities and warmth of Englishness at its best. Featured in this book are such established English cultural behemoths as the Beatles, Big Ben and the Last Night of the Proms alongside less celebrated quirks such as meat pies and the working man’s haven, the allotment. Here we celebrate the bell-ringers and Morris dancers, bowler hats (‘the symbol of respectable Englishness’) and cardigans (‘symbol of staid middle-class solidarity’). We examine the brutality of Punch and Judy and our historic love of fairies, once so much a part of the English psyche that they were described as ‘the British religion’. At once fond and irreverent, laudatory and curious, How to Be English might just teach us how to be English once again.
If you thought being middle-class meant your own home, something set aside for the kids and a comfortable retirement – think again.
Not long ago, economic theories were generally based on a narrow set of principles. Then the continuing boom-bust cycle combined with the failure of the best economic minds to ensure that prosperity spreads down through the economy has left a series of very obvious question marks, and the orthodoxy has been challenged from inside and outside the profession. It now seems clear that human beings and the planet have to be brought into the analysis. The first chapter goes right back to the debate about the purposes for which money was originally invented. The Big Ideas chapter builds up a picture of the key ideas that have driven economic theories. Economics and People derives insights into the way that money and economics works from the way that people actually behave. Economics and the Planet covers some of the economic insights that have come from those whose expertise has been biological or environmental.
The word 'tickbox' emerged recently as a cynical angle on official or corporate incompetence. They had 'ticked the box' - people said - but failed to act. It is increasingly used to describe this gap between official spin and reality. Yet, says David Boyle in this powerful expose of tickbox culture, that is just the tip of a vast tickbox iceberg. The only people who remain blind to this gap are those rich or powerful enough to run the world, and behind Tickbox lies an insidious philosophy of automation and the misuse of data that weighs heavily on every one of us. It makes our public services less effective - and makes them soar in costs - it lies behind so many stark injustices and disaster...
'Getting real' is the next big thing in Western living - the determined rejection of the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced, in the search for authenticity. This book explains where our reactions against spin and fakeness come from - and where they are going.
If, as Buddhism claims, the potential for awakening exists in all human beings, we should be able to map the phenomenon with the same science we apply to other forms of consciousness. A student of cognitive social science and a Zen practitioner for more than forty years, Richard P. Boyle brings his sophisticated perspective to bear on the development of a theoretical model for both ordinary and awakened consciousness. Boyle conducts probing interviews with eleven prominent Western Buddhist teachers (Shinzen Young, John Tarrant, Ken McLeod, Ajahn Amaro, Martine Batchelor, Shaila Catherine, Gil Fronsdal, Stephen Batchelor, Pat Enkyo O'Hara, Bernie Glassman, and Joseph Goldstein) and one scient...