A “humdinging page-turner of a book” (The Spectator) that will “give great pleasure” (Country Life). The Old Rectory examines the history of the English parsonage through the centuries, and their many and varied styles of architecture. Explore the lives of famous inhabitants and discover the scandals of neglect.

Shortlisted for the 2014 SAHGB Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion. Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated with care and reverence in many societies, including classical Rome and Greece. But only in modern Europe and America, in the last two centuries, has this care been elaborated and energised into a forceful, dynamic ideology: a 'Conservation Movement', infused with a sense of historical destiny and loss, that paradoxically shared many of the characteristics of Enlightenment modernity. Miles Glendinning's new book authoritatively presents, for the first time, the entire history of architectural conservation, and traces its dramatic fluctuations in ideas and popularity, ending by questioning whether its recent international ascendancy can last indefinitely.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was one of the leading figures of twentieth-century architecture. For architects and many others who are committed to the modernist tradition, he is a pivotal figure. With in-depth, scholarly essays and opulent photographs and plans, this book traces the multifaceted development of his work, including his first Berlin buildings, his villa projects, his work at the Bauhaus in the 1930s, and his American projects of the postwar years. Jean-Louis Cohen was the director of the Institut français d’architecture until 2003 and is currently a professor at New York University. He has an established reputation as a leading international historian of architecture. His broad and encompassing perspective makes this book a reliable and comprehensive introduction to the work of Mies van der Rohe. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe gehörte zu den führenden Persönlichkeiten in der Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts und ist für Architekten und viele andere, die sich der Tradition der Moderne verpflichtet haben, eine Schlüsselfigur. Mit wissenschaftlich fundierten Texten und opulentem Plan- und Fotomaterial zeichnet das Buch die facettenreiche Entwicklung seines Werkes nach: Die ersten Berliner Bauten, seine Villenprojekte und Tätigkeit am Bauhaus in den dreißiger Jahren sowie die amerikanischen Projekte der Nachkriegszeit. Jean-Louis Cohen, bis 2003 Direktor des Institut français d’architecture und zur Zeit Professor an der New York University, hat einen etablierten Ruf als international führender Architekturhistoriker. Seine umfassende Perspektive macht das Buch zu einer verlässlichen Einführung in das Werk Mies van der Rohes.

This volume contributes towards to developments in the study of religion that illuminate the plural nature of religious change in modern Britain. It makes a critical intervention in British studies of religion by bringing the analytical insights of material culture, to bear on religion in the British World.

The general perception of the west midlands region in the Roman period is that it was a backwater compared to the militarized frontier zone of the north, or the south of Britain where Roman culture took root early – in cities like Colchester, London ,and St Albans – and lingered late at cities like Cirencester and Bath with their rich, late Roman villa culture. The west midlands region captures the transition between these two areas of the ‘military’ north and ‘civilized’ south. Where it differed, and why, are important questions in understanding the regional diversity of Roman Britain. They are addressed by this volume which details the archaeology of the Roman period for each of the modern counties of the region, written by local experts who are or have been responsible for the management and exploration of their respective counties. These are placed alongside more thematic takes on elements of Roman culture, including the Roman Army, pottery, coins and religion. Lastly, an overview is taken of the important transitional period of the fifth and sixth centuries. Each paper provides both a developed review of the existing state of knowledge and understanding of the key characteristics of the subject area and details a set of research objectives for the future, immediate and long-term, that will contribute to our evolving understanding of Roman Britain. This is the third volume in a series – The Making of the West Midlands – that explores the archaeology of the English west midlands region from the Lower Palaeolithic onwards.

In his best-selling travel memoir, The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain punningly refers to the black man who introduces him to Venetian Renaissance painting as a “contraband guide,” a term coined to describe fugitive slaves who assisted Union armies during the Civil War. By means of this and similar case studies, Paul H. D. Kaplan documents the ways in which American cultural encounters with Europe and its venerable artistic traditions influenced nineteenth-century concepts of race in the United States. Americans of the Civil War era were struck by the presence of people of color in European art and society, and American artists and authors, both black and white, adapted and transformed European visual material to respond to the particular struggles over the identity of African Americans. Taking up the work of both well- and lesser-known artists and writers—such as the travel writings of Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, the paintings of German American Emanuel Leutze, the epistolary exchange between John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton, newspaper essays written by Frederick Douglass and William J. Wilson, and the sculpture of freed slave Eugène Warburg—Kaplan lays bare how racial attitudes expressed in mid-nineteenth-century American art were deeply inflected by European traditions. By highlighting the contributions people of black African descent made to the fine arts in the United States during this period, along with the ways in which they were represented, Contraband Guides provides a fresh perspective on the theme of race in Civil War–era American art. It will appeal to art historians, to specialists in African American studies and American studies, and to general readers interested in American art and African American history.

This book analyses the positions of external church doorways in England to investigate the significance that positioning had for the function and design of these buildings. The author proposes a link between the design and function of parochial churches and chapels with the number and attributes of their doorways.

The discovery of ancient Egypt and the development of Egyptology are momentous events in intellectual and cultural history. The history of Egyptology is the story of the people, famous and obscure, who constructed the picture of ancient Egypt that we have today, recovered the Egyptian past while inventing it anew, and made a lost civilization comprehensible to generations of enchanted readers and viewers thousands of years later. This, the first of a three-volume survey of the history of Egyptology, follows the fascination with ancient Egypt from antiquity until 1881, tracing the recovery of ancient Egypt and its impact on the human imagination in a saga filled with intriguing mysteries, great discoveries, and scholarly creativity. Wonderful Things affirms that the history of ancient Egypt has proved continually fascinating, but it also demonstrates that the history of Egyptology is no less so. Only by understanding how Egyptology has developed can we truly understand the Egyptian past.

In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them—if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.