Книги, похожие на «Артур Конан Дойл, Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters»

A historical novel set in Tuscany in the 18th century, during the enlightened government of Pietro Leopoldo of Hapsburg Lorraine. Autobiographical memories of the Grand Duchess Maria Luisa, his wife and confidante.“Vienna 1792. Maria Ludovica of Bourbon, the Spanish Infanta, for many years Grand Duchess of Tuscany and now Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, watches impotently the sudden death of her beloved consort, Pietro Leopoldo of Hapsburg, and from that moment begins almost frenetically to rekindle, one after the other, her innumerable memories of a life, still short, but intensely lived, beside the man who, since their first meeting had fascinated and conquered her, and to whom she had been a discrete and faithful companion. Public facts are weaved together with private feelings, with joys and suffering, in a sequence of urgent events. The Empress unconsciously knows, has always known, that she cannot survive for long (Editor’s note: she will in fact die just two months later) after the death of her husband and therefore must hurry to organise her memories, to finally manage to give an answer to the most important question for her: what did she really mean to him? Only a political and dynastic link, the mother of his children, friend and confidante or the woman he loved notwithstanding everything?”

This timeless classic is an exciting true story of survival against all odds.‘There was a sudden sickening sense of disaster. I felt a great lurch and heel, and a thunder of sound filled my ears. I was conscious, in a terrified moment, of being driven into the front and side of my bunk with tremendous force. At the same time there was a tearing cracking sound, as if Tzu Hang was being ripped apart, and water burst solidly, raging into the cabin. There was darkness, black boards, and I fought wildly to get out, thinking Tzu Hang had already gone. Then suddenly I was standing again, waist deep in water, and floorboards and cushions, mattresses and books were sloshing in wild confusion round me.’Miles Smeeton and his wife Beryl sailed their 46-ft Bermuda ketch, Tzu Hang, in the wild seas of Cape Horn, following the tracks of the old sailing clippers through the world’s most notorious waters. This is an exciting true story of survival against all odds, but it is also a thoughtful book which provides hard-learned lessons for other intrepid sailors.As Nevil Shute writes in his foreword: ‘It has been left to Miles Smeeton to tell us in clear and simple language just where the limits of safety lie.’