Raleigh Trevelyan Books

Soldier, explorer, scholar and ambitious courtier in the shark-pool of Elizabethan politics, Sir Walter Raleigh is the epitome of the English Renaissance man. 13 years in the Tower of London. To a vain and ageing Queen, he was the betrayer of her affections. And to the Spanish, he was the most hated of pirates. Was Sir Walter Raleigh a hero - or a deceiver, terrorist and ruthless adventurer? What caused his rising star to fall so dramatically, ending with his execution in 1618? And what was the truth behind his tempestuous relationship with Elizabeth, dear Empress of my heart? Raleigh Travelyan reveals the truth in this portrait of one of the most charismatic, romantic and misunderstood figures of the Elizabethan age.

The eight stories in this collection, by Moravian, Pavese, Pratolina, and other modern writers, have been selected as being representative of contemporary Italian writing. The English translations provided are literal rather than literary, and there are notes and biographies to help the student of Italian. However, the volume can also be helpful to Italians, who can improve their English by studying a strict rendering of stories with which thet may already be familiar.

'A remarkable record - vivid, modest, intelligent and unusually frank.' Harold Nicolson 'It rings true in every sentence.' Bernard Fergusson In Jan 1944, Allied forces landed at Anzio and Nettuno on the eastern coast of Italy in the attempt to skirt the German lines and secure the passage to Rome. Success depended upon the element of surprise, but the landings stalled and the Allied soldiers found themselves hemmed in at the beachhead in what become known as the Battle of Anzio. The environment was sodden and humid, and the fighting intense. It was into this desperate situation that Raleigh Trevelyan, then a twenty-year-old subaltern, found himself leading his platoon, right to the most dangerous, forward position, known as 'the Fortress'. The resulting account, based on Trevelyan's diaries of the time, is one of the most eloquent records of close combat and of the relentless horror of modern warfare written. In direct, intimate prose, it describes the lives, and deaths, of ordinary men, and is a poignant testimony of innocence eroded by the awfulness of war.