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Adrian Tinniswood

    January 1, 1954

    Adrian Tinniswood is an author whose career spans nearly 30 years as a writer, broadcaster, lecturer, and educational consultant in both Britain and the United States. His work is characterized by a deep engagement with the subjects he explores and a precise style that draws readers into intricate worlds. Tinniswood's approach to writing, informed by his studies in English and Philosophy, allows him to bring unique perspectives and insightful observations. His writings offer readers an enriching and thought-provoking literary experience.

    The Polite Tourist
    His Invention So Fertile
    The Verneys
    The Rainborowes
    Noble Ambitions
    Country Houses from the Air
    • 2024

      The Power and the Glory

      The Country House Before the Great War

      • 432 pages
      • 16 hours of reading

      Set in the golden age before World War I, this prequel delves into the lavish lifestyles and intricate social dynamics of the late Victorian and Edwardian country houses. It captures the blend of privilege and hedonism among the elite, showcasing a diverse cast that includes nobility, self-made millionaires, and glamorous hostesses. As Britain flourished, these stately homes became symbols of opulence, revealing the absurdities and intrigues of a society where duty and honor coexisted with excess.

      The Power and the Glory
    • 2021

      From the bestselling author of The Long Weekend- a wild, sad and sometimes hilarious tour of the English country house after the Second World War, when Swinging London collided with aristocratic values. 'Preposterously entertaining' Observer 'Brilliant' Daily Telegraph 'Rollicking' Sunday Times As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the weight of rising taxes and a growing sense that they had no place in twentieth-century Britain, hundreds of ancestral piles were dismantled and demolished. Yet - perhaps surprisingly - many of these great houses survived, as dukes and duchesses clung desperately to their ancestral seats and tenants' balls gave way to rock concerts, safari parks and day trippers. From the Rolling Stones rocking Longleat to Christine Keeler rocking Cliveden, Noble Ambitions takes us on a lively tour of these crumbling halls of power. * A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year * * Longlisted for the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History *

      Noble Ambitions
    • 2019

      Evolve 5 Workbook with Audio

      • 104 pages
      • 4 hours of reading

      EVOLVE is a six-level English course that gets students speaking with confidence. Workbook Level 5 (CEFR B2) provides further practice of the Student's Book material, with multiple opportunities for consolidation in every unit. It includes activities focusing on all skills as well as functional language, and it can be used as homework or for additional practice in the classroom. The Workbook features listening activities with downloadable audio that students can listen to repeatedly.

      Evolve 5 Workbook with Audio
    • 2019

      The House Party

      • 144 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      The House Party explores privilege and leisure from the viewpoint of the guest and the host, showing us what it was really like to spend a weekend with the Jazz Age industrialist, the bibulous belted earl, and the bright young thing.

      The House Party
    • 2019

      The Royal Society

      • 256 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      The story of a British institution whose fellows, including Newton, Darwin and Hawking, have changed the way we look at the world.

      The Royal Society
    • 2018

      "Behind the Throne is a history of family life. The families concerned were royal families. But they still had to get up in the morning. They ate and entertained their friends and worried about money. Henry VIII kept tripping over his dogs. George II threw his son out of the house. James I had to cut back on the drink bills. The great difference is that royal families had more help with their lives than most. Charles I maintained a household of 2,000 people. Victoria's medical establishment alone consisted of thirty doctors, three dentists and a chiropodist. Even in today's more democratic climate, Elizabeth II keeps a full-time staff of 1200. A royal household was a community, a vast machine. Everyone, from James I's Master of Horse down to William IV's Assistant Table Decker, was there to smooth the sovereign's path through life while simultaneously confirming his or her status. [The book] uncovers the reality of five centuries of life at the English court, taking the reader on a remarkable journey from one Queen Elizabeth to another and exploring life as it was lived by clerks and courtiers and clowns and crowned heads: the power struggles and petty rivalries, the tension between duty and desire; the practicalities of cooking dinner for thousands, or ensuring the king always won when he played a game of tennis. [It] is nothing less than a domestic history of the royal household, a reconstruction of life behind the throne. Readers go on progress with Elizabeth I as she takes her court and her majesty to her subjects. They dance the conga round the state rooms of Buckingham Palace with George VI. They find out what it was like to dine with queens, and walk with kings."--Jacket

      Behind the Throne
    • 2016

      2 SEPTEMBER 1666: 350 YEARS SINCE THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON In the early hours of 2 September 1666 a small fire broke out in a bakery in Pudding Lane.

      The Great Fire of London
    • 2016

      The Long Weekend

      • 416 pages
      • 15 hours of reading
      3.5(461)Add rating

      [A] fantastically readable and endlessly fascinating book... Delicious, occasionally fantastical, revealing in ways that Downton Abbey never was. It is as if Tinniswood is at the biggest, wildest, most luxuriantly decadent party ever thrown, and he knows everyone. Rachel Cooke Observer

      The Long Weekend
    • 2014

      The Rainborowes

      • 448 pages
      • 16 hours of reading

      The Rainborowes bridges two generations and two worlds, weaving together the lives of the Rainborowe clan as they struggle to forge a better life for themselves and a better future for humankind in the New World.

      The Rainborowes
    • 2010

      Pirates of Barbary

      • 343 pages
      • 13 hours of reading
      3.4(68)Add rating

      It's easy to think of piracy as a romantic way of life long gone--if not for today's headlines of robbery and kidnapping on the high seas. Pirates have existed since the invention of commerce itself, but they reached the zenith of their power during the 1600s, when the Mediterranean was the crossroads of the world, and pirates were the scourge of Europe and the glory of Islam. They attacked ships, enslaved crews, plundered cargoes, enraged governments, and swayed empires. Historian Adrian Tinniswood brings alive this chapter in history, where clashes between pirates of the East--Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli--and governments of the West--England, France, Spain, and Venice--grew increasingly intense and dangerous, and he shows how their maneuverings between the Muslim empires and Christian Europe shed light on the religious and moral battles that still rage today.--From publisher description.

      Pirates of Barbary