Excerpt from The Life and Times of John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale: 1616-1682 As bearing upon the matter of this biography, perhaps the most important body of new evidence which has been disclosed, is contained in the Lauderdale Papers, selected and edited by Dr Osmund Airy, and in the State and family Papers relating to the period of the Restoration. I have made liberal use of these sources of information. Lauderdale's name is, in our histories, almost exclusively associated with his administration of Scotland - the King of Scotland, as he was called by contemporaries - during the reign of Charles II., and the part he played in the pre mature attempt - premature by ten years - to restore the Stewart dynasty, is obscurely hidden in contemporary records. Also, there is little known of his secret, but none the less real, influence in the foreign affairs of the Kingdom after the Restoration. I have tried to elucidate his pre Restoration work, and to measure his share of responsibility in shaping the foreign policy of Charles II. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This is a new release of the original 1923 edition.

The Reader's Guide to British History is the essential source to secondary material on British history. This resource contains over 1,000 A-Z entries on the history of Britain, from ancient and Roman Britain to the present day. Each entry lists 6-12 of the best-known books on the subject, then discusses those works in an essay of 800 to 1,000 words prepared by an expert in the field. The essays provide advice on the range and depth of coverage as well as the emphasis and point of view espoused in each publication.

A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).