Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of TrafalgarHarper Collins, 9 sie 2005 - 341 In Seize the Fire, Adam Nicolson, author of the widely acclaimed God's Secretaries, takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets in October 1805, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the heroic. Is violence a necessary aspect of the hero? And daring? Why did the cult of the hero flower in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a way it hadn't for two hundred years? Was the figure of Nelson—intemperate, charming, theatrical, anxious, impetuous, considerate, indifferent to death and danger, inspirational to those around him, and, above all, fixed on attack and victory—an aberration in Enlightenment England? Or was the greatest of all English military heroes simply the product of his time, "the conjurer of violence" that England, at some level, deeply needed? It is a story rich with modern resonance. This was a battle fought for the control of a global commercial empire. It was won by the emerging British world power, which was widely condemned on the continent of Europe as "the arrogant usurper of the freedom of the seas." Seize the Fire not only vividly describes the brutal realities of battle but enters the hearts and minds of the men who were there; it is a portrait of a moment, a close and passionately engaged depiction of a frame of mind at a turning point in world history. |
Z wnętrza książki
Wyniki 1 - 5 z 6
... called it, and on his chairs he had a small patch particularly upholstered on the right arm, where he could rest this anxious stump. Like most naval officers, he was both tanned – the word used by unfriendly landlubbers to describe ...
... called Nelson 'a most uncouth creature.' His general appearance, she thought – and this was a woman who loved and admired him – 'was that of an idiot.' He was the most feared naval commander in the world. In the previous seven years he ...
... called – all, in their different ways, failed the French navy. In the 19th century, it was often said by French conservative historians that the triumphant French navy of the American War of Independence was destroyed by the Revolution ...
... called, contrasted with les rouges of the gardes – even if they were looked down on and excluded from the most valuable commands. In the 1780s there had been half-hearted attempts to recruit and promote men with a regard more to their ...
... called Villeneuve a poltron de tête, an intellectual coward, a man perhaps too refined for the brutalities which the moment required of him. The navy of which Villeneuve was now a part was scarcely recognisable from the one he had ...
Spis treści
3 | |
Order and Anxiety | 49 |
Honour | 93 |
Love | 130 |
Boldness | 157 |
Violence | 209 |
Humanity | 239 |
Nobility | 275 |
bibliography | 319 |
index | 327 |
Inne wydania - Wyświetl wszystko
Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar Adam Nicolson Ograniczony podgląd - 2009 |
Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar Adam Nicolson Podgląd niedostępny - 2006 |