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Seller's Description:
Dispatched, from the UK, within 48 hours of ordering. This book is in good condition but will show signs of previous ownership. Please expect some creasing to the spine and/or minor damage to the cover. Grubby book may have mild dirt or some staining, mostly on the edges of pages. Aged book. Tanned pages and age spots, however, this will not interfere with reading. Inscription on the first page, typically just a name but may include a dedication or a brief personal message.
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Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has soft covers. In good all round condition. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 400grams, ISBN: 0140049274.
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Seller's Description:
Good Fair with rubbed, bumped, and creased edges, a few short tears, faint soiling, small losses to middle and foot of spine, and front flap price clipped jacket.
James Morris?s PAX BRITANNICA [1968], which uses the British Empire as it was in 1897 for a framework, is the best work of popular history I?ve ever read. Morris (who is now ?Jan? rather than ?James?) is a terrific writer. This elegant, absorbing, let-things-speak-for- themselves book focuses on the personalities, great and small, who shaped and controlled the Empire in its glory days. Of course there are many diversions, surprises and curiosities, and Morris, a master of dry, gentle irony, fully exploits his brilliant talents as a teller of stories. He is as much travel writer as historian. Much of the pleasure (and credibility) of PAX BRITANNICA rests in the fact that Morris visited most of the places of empire he describes - many of them as they were when he was writing the book in the 1960s. Nothing brings history to life like going to the places where it happened. Thus, you will be charmed, as was Morris, to learn that during a single month of 1897, the domestic animal slaughterer in the tiny West Indian colony of St. Lucia despatched 122 cattle, 52 sheep, two goats, 21 pigs and two turtles and that of the 1,824 people born on the island that year, 1,099 were illegitimate. During your vicarious drive along the glorious ocean-side esplanade in Madras, you will be startled to encounter several statues of George V, the penultimate British Emperor of India, in the center of carefully manicured, beflowered roundabouts. In Bombay, at the junction of several major boulevards, you?ll see a small fountain commemorating Arthur Wesley?s (he became the Iron Duke) 1803 victories over the forces of the Maratha Empire. How odd, you?ll think, that such powerful emblems of colonial oppression weren?t destroyed long ago, and what?s more, that at the beginning of the 21st century, these artifacts of Empire are still in place.
PAX BRITANNICA is part of a trilogy. Although the first in the series to be written, in subject chronology, it falls between HEAVEN?S COMMAND [1973], about the creation of the Empire, and FAREWELL THE TRUMPETS [1978], about its loss.Although still first rate, in my opinion, the latter works lack the edge of inspiration, engagement and liveliness which make PAX BRITANNICA 2 so special.
Other notable books by Morris (he/she has written more than 35) include OXFORD [1979], CITIES [1963], HONG-KONG [1988],THE WORLD OF VENICE [1995], STONES OF EMPIRE: THE BUILDINGS OF THE RAJ [1986], AMONG THE CITIES [1985], COAST TO COAST: A JOURNEY ACROSS 1950's AMERICA [1956] and MANHATTAN ?45 [1987]. The versatile, wide-ranging Morris has also recently written a book called LINCOLN: A FOREIGNER?S QUEST [2000].
