A man who sleeps for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains wakes to a much-changed world.

James's reign marked one of the very rare major breaks in England's monarchy. Already James VI of Scotland and a highly experienced ruler who had established his authority over the Scottish Kirk, he marched south on Elizabeth I's death to become James I of England and Ireland, uniting the British Isles for the first time and founding the Stuart dynasty which would, with several lurches, reign for over a century. Indeed his descendant still occupies the throne. A complex, curious man and great survivor, James drastically changed court life in London and presided over such major projects as the Authorized Version of the Bible and the establishment of English settlements in Virginia, Massachusetts, Gujarat and the Caribbean. Although he failed to unite England and Scotland, he insisted that ambassadors acknowledge him as King of Great Britain and that vessels from both countries display a version of the current Union Flag. He was often accused of being too informal and insufficiently regal - but when his son, Charles I, decided to redress these criticisms in his own reign he was destroyed. How much of the roots of this disaster were to be found in James's reign is one of the many problems dramatized in Thomas Cogswell's brilliant and highly entertaining new book.

The Englishman of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially of the latter, is seen to have exercised considerable zeal in creating substitutes for his home, namely by establishing a vast number of taverns, inns, clubs, gardens and coffee houses. Those which already have existed in "Old London" are described in this volume. Originally published in 1909.

The Boar's Head Playhouse, Herbert Berry. The Boar's Head playhouse was built at virtually the same time as the famous Globe. This book traces its history, explains much of the way it operated in its heyday, and shows many of its physical characteristics. Illustrated.

To this day The White Hart and The Red Lion are two of the most popular names for a public house in England – both talismans that served as the insignia for Richard II and the banished Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, who usurped the throne in 1399. Nick Asbury acted in the Royal Shakespeare Company's famed Histories cycle which staged Shakespeare's vision of the deposition of Richard II through to the notorious Battle of Bosworth in 1485. With fellow RSC actors for company,Nick travels the country visiting the buildings, landscapes and former sites of war and intrigue that feature in the plays, and asks the question: what is it about the England of Shakespeare's Histories that continues to fascinate? From Alnwick to Eastcheap, Windsor Castle to a Leicester car park, this is his snapshot of England and its people, then and now.

Brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss -- and in danger. Francis Bacon is charged with investigating the murder of a fellow barrister at Gray's Inn. He recruits his unwanted protégé Thomas Clarady to do the tiresome legwork. The son of a privateer, Clarady will do anything to climb the Elizabethan social ladder. Bacon's powerful uncle Lord Burghley suspects Catholic conspirators of the crime, but other motives quickly emerge. Rival barristers contend for the murdered man's legal honors and wealthy clients. Highly-placed courtiers are implicated as the investigation reaches from Whitehall to the London streets. Bacon does the thinking; Clarady does the fencing. Everyone has something up his pinked and padded sleeve. Even the brilliant Francis Bacon is at a loss — and in danger — until he sees through the disguises of the season of Misrule. “Castle’s characters brim with zest and real feeling.” — Kirkus Starred Review. Don’t dally! Jump right into this first book in the award-winning Francis Bacon mystery series.

'The experience of insecurity, it turned out, would shape one of the most remarkable monarchs in England's history' In the popular imagination, as in her portraits, Elizabeth I is the image of monarchical power. But this image is as much armour as a reflection of the truth. In this illuminating account of England's iconic queen, Helen Castor reveals her reign as shaped by a profound and enduring insecurity that was a matter of both practical politics and personal psychology.