How To Sleep Like A Wolf

Hammeraxe

It was Celtic missionaries from Ireland who converted the heathen English in the AD sixth century and at the time Ireland was known as center of learning. Well after AD 700, if a monk in Europe could read and write both Latin and Greek, he was most probably of Irish provenance. But by 820, the Celtic Church had practically ceased to exist. Set against the age of the Viking terror, Hammeraxe traces the story of the wronged younger son of a Viking chieftain and his spirited Moorish wife. How she taught him to war with both bow and horse in the Moorish fashion. It tells the story of how he became a chieftain in his own right. How a chance friendship on an island near France led to the violent Viking invasion of Ireland. Why a captive Irish monk betrayed his country and became a Norse chieftain. How the power of the five kings was broken and why the Celtic Church was destroyed. A sweeping tale of flames, terror, betrayal, and love, Hammeraxe tells the story of the Viking invasion of Ireland in the ninth century and how it affected life in Ireland permanently.

Sons of the Empire

In Sons of the Empire, Robert MacDonald explores popular ideas and myths in Edwardian Britain, their use by Baden-Powell, and their influence on the Boy Scout movement. In particular, he analyses the model of masculinity provided by the imperial frontier, the view that life in younger, far-flung parts of the empire was stronger, less degenerate than in Britain. The stereotypical adventurer - the frontiersman - provided an alternative ethic to British society. The best known example of it at the time was Baden-Powell himself, a war scout, the Hero of Mafeking in the South African war, and one of the first cult heroes to be created by the modern media. When Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts in 1908, he used both the power of the frontier myth and his own legend as a hero to galvanize the movement. The glamour of war scouting was hard to resist, its adventures a seductive invitation to the first recruits. But Baden-Powell had a serious educational program in mind: Boy Scouts were to be trained in good citizenship. MacDonald documents his study with a wide range of contemporary sources, from newspapers to military memoirs. Exploring the genesis of an imperial institution through its own texts, he brings new insight into the Edwardian age.

Nick Whiffles