Bøker av Philip Marsden

The discovery of minerals beneath our feet has transformed our species. Ochre first prompted humans to express themselves in art; tin and copper helped instigate the Bronze Age and later the Industrial Revolution; silver kick-started the engines of global trade. Each of these substances generated a leap forward in technology, each one opened the imagination a little further - and each one brought with it a cache of unexpected dangers. Under A Metal Sky begins and ends in Philip Marsden's homeland of Cornwall, one of the world's great geological hotspots.Travelling eastwards into Europe, he examines how the extraction of peat propelled the Netherlands to world prominence but also imperilled its very existence. Continuing on up the Rhine by barge, into the heart of the continent, he uncovers more stories of potent and tempting resources, from iron-rich meteorites to radium and mercury, and the gold-bearing mountains of Georgia. At the same time he explores precious seams of ideas, from science to alchemy, mysticism to ecology - and those questing souls who pursued them, likeParacelsus, the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II, Goethe,William Blake and Marie Curie. Rich with revelations, Under A Metal Sky traces the dazzling achievements and dark consequences of our ability to extract what we want from the earth, and presents a fascinating new perspective on European history and on our troubled relationship with the natural world.

One of Britain's foremost writers of place takes an evocative journey along the western coast of Ireland and Scotland to chart the perennial allure of this perilous and myth-rich stretch of sea

From an award-winning travel writer, this is an evocative journey around some of the country's most ancient sites and ritual places, and a profound exploration of the relationship between man and the landscape

A revised and updated edition of Philip Marsden's classic travel book, published to coincide with the centenary of the Armenian massacres.

The story of Britain's colourful maritime past seen through the changing fortunes of the Cornish port of Falmouth.Within the space of few years, during the 1560s and 1570s, a maritime revolution took place in England that would contribute more than anything to the transformation of the country from a small rebel state on the fringes of Europe into a world power. Until then, it was said, there was only one Englishman capable of sailing across the Atlantic. Yet within ten years an English ship with an English crew was circumnavigating the world.At the same time in Cornwall, in the Fal estuary, just a single building - a lime kiln - existed where the port of Falmouth would emerge. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, Falmouth would be one of the busiest harbours in the world.'The Levelling Sea' uses the story of Falmouth's spectacular rise and fall to explore wider questions about the sea and its place in history and imagination. Drawing on his own deep connection with Cornwall, award-winning author Philip Marsden writes unforgettably about the power of the sea and its ability to produce greed on a piratical scale, dizzying corruption, and grand and tragic aspirations.

Philip Marsden returns to the remote, fiercely beautiful landscape that has exercised a powerful mythic appeal over him since his first encounter with it over twenty years ago.'Ethiopia bred in me the conviction that if there is a wider purpose to our life, it is to understand the world, to seek out its diversity, to celebrate its heroes and its wonders - in short, to witness it.'When Philip Marsden first went to Ethiopia in 1982, it changed the direction of his life. What he saw of its stunning antiquity, its raw Christianity, its extremes of brutality and grace prompted his curiosity, and made him a writer.But Ethiopia at that time was torn apart by civil war. The north, the ancient heartland of the country, was closed off. Twenty years later, Marsden returned. The result is this book - the account of a journey deferred.Walking hundreds of miles through a landscape of cavernous gorges, tabletop mountains and semi-desert, Marsden encounters monks and hermits, rebels and farmers. And he creates an unforgettable picture of one of the most remote regions left on earth. As in his award-winning book 'The Spirit-Wrestlers', Marsden reminds us of the brilliant heights that travel writing can attain, whilst celebrating the ageless rewards of the open road and the people for whom the mythic and the everyday are inextricably joined.

The acclaimed first novel by one of Harper Perennial's most gifted young writers, author of 'The Bronski House' and 'The Spirit Wrestlers'.Philip Marsden's brilliant first novel is set in the 1930s, in the small Cornish fishing village of Polmayne. A newcomer to the village, Jack Sweeney, buys a boat and establishes himself as a fisherman, gradually winning the respect even of the village elders. But times are changing, and a new kind of visitor is beginning to appear in Polmayne. A bohemian colony of artists offends some sensibilities, while a hotel is opened to accommodate the summer tourists, and pleasure steamers mingle with the fishing boats in the harbour.Yet, despite the superficial changes, the old ways and the old hazards of Cornish life endure. Offshore, just below the surface of the waves, lie the Main Cages, a treacherous outcrop of rock where many ships and many lives have been lost.Firmly rooted in a particular place and time, yet recalling in its universality such books as Graham Swift's 'Waterland' and E. Annie Proulx's 'The Shipping News', 'The Main Cages' is a gripping story of love and death, and a remarkable fictional debut.

A remarkable, multifaceted story made up of journal accounts, memories, conversations and personal experience, The Bronski House is a paean to Poland, a landmark in travel writing, and a family history - tied together by the unique experience of returning from exile.

The new book from the acclaimed author of The Crossing Place and The Bronski House.