The Siege Of Loyalty House

An immersive and electrifying account of a defining episode in the English Civil War that illuminates the human experience—and human cost—of this devastating war. It was a time of puritans and populism, witch hunts and civil war. Between 1643 and 1645, Basing House in Hampshire, England, was besieged three times. To the parliamentary Roundheads, the house symbolized everything that was wrong with England: it was the largest private residence in the country, a bastion of royalism and excess. Its owner, the Marquess of Winchester, reportedly had the motto Love loyalty etched into the windows. Winchester refused all terms of surrender. When he discovered his brother plotting to betray the house, he forced him to hang his accomplices. When the garrison divided along religious lines, Winchester expelled all the Protestants. As royalist strongholds crumbled around the country, the Winchesters—and Basing House—stood firm. The famed architect Inigo Jones designed fortifications; gamekeepers became snipers; and the women hurled bricks at the besiegers. 'Loyalty House', as it was known, became the king's principal garrison. But the drum of the parliamentary army beat ever louder—and closer—and in October 1645, Oliver Cromwell rolled in the heavy guns. The Siege of Loyalty House tells the story of these dramatic events, not only recounting the sallies and skirmishes, but the experiences of the men, women, and children caught in the crossfire. What was it like to be under siege, lying in bed with shells crashing through the window? What was it like to conduct a siege, sleeping on frosty fields, receiving news of sick children at home from desperate wives? Ultimately, the story of Basing House is the story of England in the 1640s: a tale of brother against brother, of women on the frontline, of radicalism, iconoclasm, and fanaticism. It is a tale of destruction and derring-do, courage and cowardice, and a house on fire—the true end of an era.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was one of the most flamboyant and controversial characters of Henry VIII’s reign.

Explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England through the eyes of one remarkable family: the Vauxes of Harrowden Hall.

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggle’s brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepanto–one of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away “because of the countless corpses floating in the sea.” Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its best–a story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

The 2023 Century of the Soldier Conference discusses ‘Novelty and Change’ through diverse papers on overlooked research impacted by the pandemic. The 2023 Century of the Soldier Conference was held at the University of Worcester on the banks of the River Severn in the historic city of Worcester. The theme of the conference was ‘Novelty and Change’ and had a range of papers covering a variety of topics. The conference focused on new research and ideas that in some cases might have been overlooked in the disruption caused by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Senator Andrew Foster has it all: charm to spare, a loving wife, a beautiful daughter, and a fast-track career that will surely land him one day in the White House. And with the sudden resignation of the vice president, that track may have gotten a lot faster. But there’s a problem. There are people who know that Andy Foster’s charm can get the better of him, and they have bugged the Shelter Island bungalow where he is enjoying a midnight tryst with a beautiful campaign adviser. But all hell breaks loose when a man carrying an iron pipe comes crashing through the bedroom’s sliding glass door. Within seconds, the young woman lies bloodied, dead on the sheets, and Foster has fled in panic. And it’s all on tape. As momentum builds for Foster’s likely selection as the next vice president, the senator’s only hope of keeping his involvement with the murdered woman secret is to locate his blackmailers. But even they don’t have their hands on the devastating images. The man they used for the job has turned the tables and is blackmailing them. All the while, Foster’s personal life is collapsing. His wife, Christine, senses that something is terribly wrong. Unhappy about their daughter’s living in a political fishbowl, Christine is also worried that she and her husband have drifted away from each other. Little does she know that power-hungry politicians and brutal gangsters are ready to rip her family utterly apart. From the rarefied halls of Washington to the briny boardwalks of Brighton Beach, Richard Hawke pulls back the curtain to reveal what is taking place inside the hearts and minds of the powerful people we read about every day in the news. With House of Secrets, Hawke has delivered a pulse-pounding thriller that ignites the fatal mixture of politics, arrogance, and lust.

AN ECONOMIST AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A fresh, exciting, “readable and informative” history (The New York Times) of seventeenth-century England, a time of revolution when society was on fire and simultaneously forging the modern world. • “Recapture[s] a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possible.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “[Healy] makes a convincing argument that the turbulent era qualifies as truly ‘revolutionary,’ not simply because of its cascading political upheavals, but in terms of far-reaching changes within society.... Wryly humorous and occasionally bawdy”— The Wall Street Journal The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time—for the only time in history—England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before. There were no boundaries to politics. In fiery, plague-ridden London, in coffee shops and alehouses, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist, and almost impossible for monarchs to control. But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier. The Blazing World is the story of this strange, twisting, fascinating century. It shows a society in sparkling detail. It was a new world of wealth, creativity, and daring curiosity, but also of greed, pugnacious arrogance, and colonial violence.