From My Bookshelves

[Dreamwoven]

The third book by Elly Griffiths The Chalk Pit, has a section on Underground Societies, people who live in some of our most affluent cities, but they are driven to live below the earth. People who - for whatever reason - aren't welcome on the surface - homeless people, the addicts, HIV-positive. There are subterranean communities all over the world - in catacombs, sewers and abandoned metros. The tunnel people in Las Vegas, the Empire of the Dead in Paris, the Rat Tribe in Beijing. A lot of them are proper societies with electricity and phone lines - even churches and restaurants sometimes. The Rat Tribe in Beijing are mostly migrant workers, some of them brought in to build for the Olympics (The Chalk Pit, p.197).

[Dreamwoven]

I have another book on Stonehaven by Archibald Watt "Highways and Byways Round Stonehaven". Kerstin and I went to Stonehaven and the ruins of Dunnottar Castle just before going to Minnesota where we spent a year. The book is a fascinating history of the region and brings back fine memories of Kincardineshire.

[Dreamwoven]

Charles H. Hapgood Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: evidence of advanced civilisations in the Ice Age. I first read this book in 1966, but bought my own copy in 2014. My parents lived in Northwest London in 1966, and I went to the University library in the West End, placing orders to consult old Portolano maps so I should have them available on the day.

Since then I have kept up my interest in old maps.

[Dreamwoven]

Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings depicts the Atlantic Ocean with Europe and North Africa on the East and the Americas on the west (from Cuba down to Antarctica). The southern tip of South America is connected to Antarctica by a land bridge, and there is no evidence of ice. The seas show illustrations of sailing ships. This map was found in Constantinople after its fall to the Ottoman turks in 1453, and the map is known as the Piri Re'is Map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map.

[Dreamwoven]

It is believed that Christopher Columbus may have in part based his judgement of the veracity of the reality of the Americas on this map.

[Dreamwoven]

Portolan charts are known for their accuracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portolan_chart

"Portolan or portulan charts are navigational maps based on compass directions and estimated distances observed by the pilots at sea. They were first made in the 13th century in Italy, and later in Spain and Portugal, with later 15th and 16th century charts noted for their cartographic accuracy.[1] With the advent of widespread competition among seagoing nations during the Age of Discovery, Portugal and Spain considered such maps to be state secrets. The English and Dutch, relative newcomers, found the description of Atlantic and Indian coastlines extremely valuable for their raiding, and later trading, ships. The word portolan comes from the Italian adjective portolano, meaning "related to ports or harbors", or "a collection of sailing directions".[1]"

[Danik 2016]

Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings depicts the Atlantic Ocean with Europe and North Africa on the East and the Americas on the west (from Cuba down to Antarctica). The southern tip of South America is connected to Antarctica by a land bridge, and there is no evidence of ice. The seas show illustrations of sailing ships. This map was found in Constantinople after its fall to the Ottoman turks in 1453, and the map is known as the Piri Re'is Map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map.

If I read it rightly there is the characteristic outline of the coast of Brazil. And that is phantastic because Brazil was officially discovered
in 1500, only thirteen years before.

[Dreamwoven]

We tend to interpret everything in terms of what we know. The focus is often on the anglo-saxon view of the world. Ask a Spaniard what the discovery of Mexico means, quite a different answer from an American.

[Dreamwoven]

The latest book I have is the modern classic by Flora Thompson Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin Books, 1945). Beautifully written:

"All times are times of transition; but the eighteen-eighties were so in a special sense for the world was at the beginning of a new era, the era of machinery and scientific discovery. Values and conditions of life were changing everywhere. Even to simple country people the change was apparent. The railways had brought distant parts of the country nearer; newspapers were coming into every home; machinery was superseding hand labour, even on the farms to some extent; food bought at shops, much of it from distant countries, was replacing the home-made and home-grown. Horizons were widening; a stranger from a village five miles away was no longer looked upon as "a furriner" (pp.68-69).

[Danik 2016]

I´m not sure if that book is on your shelf, but:

"How narrow women have grown lately! They looked like stalks of corn, straight, shining, identical. And men’s faces were as bare as the palm of one’s hand. The dryness of the atmosphere brought out the colour in everything and seemed to stiffen the muscles of the cheeks. It was harder to cry now. Water was hot in two seconds. Ivy had perished or been scraped off houses. Vegetables were less fertile; families were much smaller. Curtains and covers had been frizzled up and the walls were bare so that new brilliantly coloured pictures of real things like streets, umbrellas, apples, were hung in frames, or painted upon the wood. There was something definite and distinct about the age, which reminded her of the eighteenth century, except that there was a distraction, a desperation — as she was thinking this, the immensely long tunnel in which she seemed to have been travelling for hundreds of years widened; the light poured in; her thoughts became mysteriously tightened and strung up as if a piano tuner had put his key in her back and stretched the nerves very taut; at the same time her hearing quickened; she could hear every whisper and crackle in the room so that the clock ticking on the mantelpiece beat like a hammer. And so for some seconds the light went on becoming brighter and brighter, and she saw everything more and more clearly and the clock ticked louder and louder until there was a terrific explosion right in her ear. Orlando leapt as if she had been violently struck on the head. Ten times she was struck. In fact it was ten o’clock in the morning. It was the eleventh of October. It was 1928. It was the present moment."

Orlando, Virginia Woolf https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woo.../chapter6.html

[Dreamwoven]

No, that is not one of mine.

[Dreamwoven]

"The baby carriage was made of black wickerwork, something like an old-fashioned bath-chair in shape, running on three wheels and pushed from behind. ("pram" was a word of the future - perambulator or milkman's hand-cart). It wobbled and creaked and rattled over the stones, for rubber tyres were not yet invented and its springs, if springs it had, were of the most primitive kind. Yet it was one of the most cherished of the family possessions, for there was only one other baby carriage in the hamlet, the up-to-date bassinet which the young wife at then had recently purchased. The other mothers carried their babies on one arm, tightly-rolled in shawls, with only the face showing." (Lark Rise to Candleford p.34)

[Dreamwoven]

I have always sympathised with small countries where independence is valued. Perhaps this comes from the years I lived in Wales (Aberystwyth) and Scotland (Aberdeen). Ireland is also special as it is divided into two parts (Northern Ireland - Protestant, and the rest - the bulk of Ireland being Catholic. I also lived in Scotland for 5 years in the late 1960s, where I became in favour of Scottish independence. All this became controversial when Brexit was being negotiated. On which see http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-...itics-44123716.

One of my books is by Edith Pargeter on Wales. She calls Lord Llwelwyn "the first and only true Prince of Wales" Edith Pargeter has also written a series of books on Cadfael under the name Ellis Peters. I have read all of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadfael

[Dreamwoven]

The book I have on Wales is a quartette "The Brothers of Gwynnedd"

[Dreamwoven]

I have several books by Jan Gillou: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Guillou

Three of these are fictionalised accounts of the Knights Templar, g
together called The Crusades Trilogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades_trilogy.

There is also one book on witchcraft "Häxornas Försvarvare: en historiskt reportage" This is not in Wikipedia, but I found it in his own company -Piratförlaget: http://www.piratforlaget.se/bocker/h...skt-reportage/