Victorian Turkish Baths is the first book to bring to light the hidden history of a fascinating institution - the 600-plus dry hot air baths that sprang up across Ireland, Britain and beyond, in the 19th century. Malcolm Shifrin traces the bath's Irish-Roman antecedents, looking at how its origins were influenced by the combination of physician Richard Barter's hydropathic expertise, and idiosyncratic diplomat David Urquhart's passion for the hammams of the Middle East. The book reveals how working-class members of a network of political pressure groups built more than 30 of the first Turkish baths in England. It explores the architecture, technology and sociology of the Victorian Turkish bath, examining everything from business and advertising to sex-real and imagined. This book offers a wealth of wondrous detail - from the baths used to treat sick horses to those for first-class passengers on the Titanic. Victorian Turkish Baths will appeal to those interested in Victorian social history, architecture, social attitudes to leisure, early public health campaigns, pressure groups, gendered spaces and much else besides. The book is complemented by the author's widely respected website victorianturkishbath.org, where readers can find a treasure trove of further informationVictorian Turkish Baths is the first book to bring to light the hidden history of a fascinating institution - the 600-plus dry hot air baths that sprang up across Ireland, Britain and beyond, in the 19th century. Malcolm Shifrin traces the bath's Irish-Roman antecedents, looking at how its origins were influenced by the combination of physician Richard Barter's hydropathic expertise, and idiosyncratic diplomat David Urquhart's passion for the hammams of the Middle East. The book reveals how working-class members of a network of political pressure groups built more than 30 of the first Turkish baths in England. It explores the architecture, technology and sociology of the Victorian Turkish bath, examining everything from business and advertising to sex-real and imagined. This book offers a wealth of wondrous detail - from the baths used to treat sick horses to those for first-class passengers on the Titanic. Victorian Turkish Baths will appeal to those interested in Victorian social history, architecture, social attitudes to leisure, early public health campaigns, pressure groups, gendered spaces and much else besides. The book is complemented by the author's widely respected website victorianturkishbath.org, where readers can find a treasure trove of further information

An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books Monthly, UK). Step into the past and experience the world of Victorian England, from clothing to cuisine, toilet arrangements to transport—and everything in between. A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England is “a brilliant guided tour of Charles Dickens’s and other eminent Victorian Englishmen’s England, with insights into where and where not to go, what type of people you’re likely to meet, and what sights and sounds to watch out for . . . Utterly brilliant!” (Books Monthly, UK). Like going back in time, Higgs’s book shows armchair travelers how to find the best seat on an omnibus, fasten a corset, deal with unwanted insects and vermin, get in and out of a vehicle while wearing a crinoline, and avoid catching an infectious disease. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book blends accurate historical details with compelling stories to bring alive the fascinating details of Victorian daily life. It is a must-read for seasoned social history fans, costume drama lovers, history students, and anyone with an interest in the nineteenth century.

A celebration of communal bathing—swimming pools, saunas, beaches, ritual baths, sweat lodges, and more—viewed through the lens of architecture and landscape. We enter the public pool, the sauna, or the beach with a heightened awareness of our bodies and the bodies of others. The phenomenology of bathing opens all of our senses toward the physical world entwined with the social, while the history of bathing is one of shared space, in both natural and built environments. In The Architecture of Bathing, Christie Pearson offers a unique examination of communal bathing and its history from the perspective of architecture and landscape. Engagingly written and richly illustrated, with more than 260 illustrations, many in color, The Architecture of Bathing offers a celebration of spaces in which public and private, sacred and profane, ritual and habitual, pure and impure, nature and culture commingle. Pearson takes a wide-ranging view of her subject, drawing on architecture, art, and literary works. Each chapter is structured around an architectural typology and explores an accompanying theme—for example, tub, sensuality; river, flow; waterfall, rejuvenation; and banya, immersion. Offering examples, introducing relevant theory, and recounting personal experiences, Pearson effortlessly combines a practitioner's zest with astonishing erudition. As she examines these forms, we see that they are inextricable from landscapes, bodily practices, and cultural production. Looking more closely, we experience architecture itself as an immersive material and social space, embedded inthe interdependent environmental and cultural fabric of our world.

English spas have a long and steamy history, from the thermal baths of Aquae Sulis in Bath to the stews of Southwark, the elegant pump rooms of Cheltenham and Buxton to the Victorian mania for hydrotherapy and Turkish hammams. 'The Secret History of English Spas' is an informative but light-hearted social and cultural history of our obsession with drinking and bathing in spa waters. It tells the stories of the rich, the famous, the poor and the sick, all of whom visited spas in hopes of curing everything from infertility to leprosy and gonorrhoea. It depicts the entrepreneurs who promoted these resorts - often on the basis of the most dubious scientific evidence - and the riotous and salacious social life enjoyed in spa towns, where moral health might suffer even as bodies were cleansed and purged. And yet English spas also offered an ideal of civility and politeness, providing a place where social classes and sexes could mingle and enjoy refined entertainments such as music and dance - all part of the fashionable pastime referred to as 'taking the waters'.

Victoria Baths hit the headlines in 2003 by winning the BBC's Restoration competition. This magnificent complex was described on opening as "the most splendid municipal bathing institution in the country". It houses a wealth of beautiful tiling, stained glass, mosaic flooring and other decorative detail. After a decade of disuse, the work of bringing it back to life is beginning. While campaigning to save the Baths, the Friends of Victoria Baths researched its history. Ths book is the result, telling of how the Baths were conceived, their construction in 1903-6, and variety of uses of 87 years. The richest information source has been the memories of people who swam, bathed, danced and worked here over the years. They shared their memories and stories with Prue Williams, and the resulting book adds much to the social and architectural history of a great industrial city.

The incursions of women into areas from which they had been traditionally excluded, together with the literary representations of their attempts to negotiate, subvert and appropriate these forbidden spaces, is the underlying theme that unites this collection of essays. Here scholars from Australia, Greece, Great Britain, Spain, Switzerland and the United States reconsider the well-entrenched assumptions associated with the public/private distinction, working with the notions of public and private spheres while testing their currency and exploring their blurred edges. The essays cover and uncover a rich variety of spaces, from the slums and court-rooms of London to the American wilderness, from the Victorian drawing-room and sick-room to out of the ordinary places like Turkish baths and the trenches of the First World War. Where previous studies have tended to focus on a single aspect of women's engagement with space, this edited book reveals a plethora of subtle and tenacious strategies found in a variety of discourses that include fiction, poetry, diaries, letters, essays and journalism. Inside Out goes beyond the early work on artistic explorations of gendered space to explore the breadth of the field and its theoretical implications.

Scopri giardini nascosti e arte clandestina, visita i musei più strani, sali a bordo di un prototipo di Jacuzzi, decifra misteriosi segni massonici, entra in una grotta di lava stile islandese, viaggia nel selvaggio West di Morningside... Lontano dalle "trappole" per turisti e dai luoghi affollati, potresti aver pensato che Edimburgo non avesse altro da rivelare, ma la città conserva ancora molti tesori nascosti nei luoghi più inaspettati. Una guida per coloro che pensavano di conoscere bene Edimburgo o per chi vorrebbe esplorare le curiosità di questa città.

______________________________ The huge word-of-mouth bestseller – completely updated for 2019 THE LONDON THAT TOURISTS DON’T SEE Look beyond Big Ben and past the skyscrapers of the Square Mile, and you will find another London. This is the land of long-forgotten tube stations, burnt-out mansions and gently decaying factories. Welcome to DERELICT LONDON: a realm whose secrets are all around us, visible to anyone who cares to look . . . Paul Talling – our best-loved investigator of London’s underbelly – has spent over fifteen years uncovering the stories of this hidden world. Now, he brings together 100 of his favourite abandoned places from across the capital: many of them more magnificent, more beautiful and more evocative than you can imagine. Covering everything from the overgrown stands of Leyton Stadium to the windswept alleys of the Aylesbury Estate, DERELICT LONDON reveals a side of the city you never knew existed. It will change the way you see London. ______________________________ PRAISE FOR THE DERELICT LONDON PROJECT ‘Fascinating images showing some of London’s eeriest derelict sites show another side to the busy, built-up capital.’ Daily Mail ‘Talling has managed to show another side to the capital, one of abandoned buildings that somehow retain a sense of beauty.’ Metro ‘Excellent . . . As much as it is an inadvertent vision of how London might look after a catastrophe, DERELICT LONDON is valuable as a document of the one going on right in front of us.’ New Statesman ‘From the iconic empty shell of Battersea Power Station to the buried ‘ghost’ stations of the London Underground, the city is peppered with decaying buildings. Paul Talling knows these places better than anyone in the capital.’ Daily Express ‘[London has an] unusual (and deplorable) number of abandoned buildings. Paul Talling’s surprise bestseller, DERELICT LONDON, is their shabby Pevsner.’ Daily Telegraph ______________________________

Based on many years of painstaking research and covering eleven centuries of medieval, modern and contemporary history, The Alhambra represents a major contribution to world scholarship. During his research for the book, the author has made some very exciting discoveries. He has, for example, resolved one of the great enigmas of Nasrid art by discovering the geometric proportional system on which the entire Alhambra architecture and decoration are based. The designs are at times so intricate that they baffle even professional mathematicians: Professor Fernaacute;ndez-Puertas has cracked the geometric code and discovered that the marvels of the Alhambra are built on a proportional system that is essentially incommensurable and not based on fixed units like metres or inches. This has involved making hundreds of analytical figures, many of which will be included in the book. Professor Fernaacute;ndez-Puertas is also the first to discover the chronological order in which the Alhambra palaces were built. He has collated much fragmentary information in order to reconstruct a picture of court life within the Alhambra and the personalities of its sultans and poet-viziers. The book thus contains the heart of three centuries of Nasrid art, as well as providing a history of the palatine city from the ninth century to the present day: the pre-Nasrid Alhambra, the Nasrid Alhambra and the Christian Alhambra. Based on many years of painstaking research and covering eleven centuries of medieval, modern and contemporary history, The Alhambra will be the most comprehensive scientific work yet issued on the subject--a work of this order is unlikely to be published again within our lifetime.