Bøker av Christina Richard

Illustrated biography of Rudyard Kipling's parents. John Lockwood Kipling and Alice Macdonald Kipling were both born into strict Wesleyan Methodist families, but their similar interests, loving and successful marriage brought them exciting experiences in India, artistic recognition and membership of the Pre-Raphaelite group at the heart of late-Victorian culture. Their son became the most popular and famous poet and writer in the British Empire. Together John and Alice faced the social niceties of life in the Raj, travel and spartan living conditions. They adapted to the difficulties of colonial life, made the most of every opportunity and eventually achieved a peaceful, comfortable community-based retirement in Tisbury in south Wiltshire. This biography of two remarkable individuals is an affectionate look at a happy, adventurous marriage, a challenging family life and long and loving friendships.

This is the story of two men from a remote Wiltshire village, father and son Joseph and Josiah Lane, stonemasons, whose lives stretched across the Georgian period, from 1717 to 1833. They became grotto builders, men of artistic genius, acknowledged experts in their speciality, but the sort of ordinary craftsmen whose achievements are not normally recorded in the official pages of history. They were responsible for many of the mysterious, decorative, thrilling grottoes which appeared during the 18th century in English gardens, built to enhance the romantic, poetic and artistic landscapes created by rich landowners. From Stourhead to Fonthill, Wycombe Abbey, Wimborne St Giles, Bowood, Bowden Park, Painshill and Oatlands Park, Claremont, Castle Hill, Ascot Place, Belcombe and Norbiton House, Joseph and Josiah constructed brick, timber and limestone caverns, tunnels, bath houses, gambling dens and cascades. Some were profusely decorated with shells, coral spars, slivers of crystal, amethysts, feldspar and calcite fragments, some appeared savage and rough hewn. Christina Richard has pieced together the story of the lives and work of Joseph and Josiah for the first time from a wide range of local and national sources, and has enhanced her account with imaginative descriptions of village and family life at the time for people of their station. The result is an affectionate and revealing portrait of these two extraordinary men, who contributed so much to the elegance of England's wonderful 18th century gardens.

In November 1830 the protest movement known as the Swing Riots, which had affected many communities across southern England, reached the remote Wiltshire village of Tisbury. There, poverty stricken agricultural workers, facing the loss of their winter income following the introduction of threshing machines, assembled for a demonstration, demanding higher wages and the abolition of the dreaded machinery. This book looks at what happened to these young men, some of whom were arrested, tried and sentenced to transportation to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). It follows the pitched battle between the workers and the Hindon Troop of the Wiltshire Yeomanry at Pythouse, the arrests, trials and sentencing. Christina Richard looks at the way the punishment of transportation was managed by the Government, the lives of the young men in the new colony, the return of a very few of them and how their families managed after being left alone and penniless.