George Shipway - Free Library Land Online - Ebooks

King in Splendour

Sat, 16 Nov 1996 16:12:06 +0200

Having established himself on Mycenae's throne, matching ruthless-ness with greater ruthlessness, Agamemnon accepts in all their gravity the burdens of a kingdom. His grand design is the unification of Achaea in preparation for a full campaign against the city state of Troy, long responsible for the interruption of shipments of grain westwards from the Crimea - with drastic economic consequences for Achaea. With the possible exception of Herodotus, it is likely that few before Shipway have put forward the idea that the Trojan War was about food and not about women. This novel bristles indeed with original ideas - many of them unorthodox and entertaining - about what actually happened three thousand years ago in Greece. Homer, whose writing has hitherto conditioned our understanding of events, is shown to be attached as PR man to a treacherous Achilles; Iphigeneia is mentally retarded and her sacrifice is Agamemnon's brainwave- a means of getting at Clytemnaistra, his wife and the girl's adoptive mother, who has recently poisoned her husband's mistress. Again, it is difficult to coax Heroes into a fighting mood merely over food and economics - they need a romantic ideal as motivation, so Agamemnon himself arranges for the elopement of Paris and Helen to Troy. The narrative sweep of this story is irresistible and the details which the author gives of the way of life, women, armour, the Theban vice and other sexual exertions, are constantly arresting and fascinating. George Shipway's gift in making history live again has never been better deployed than in the present book, following the previous and quite separate novel about Agamemnon's youth, Warrior in Bronze.

Warriors in Bronze

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:12:07 +0200

A solid retelling of the rise of Agamemnon from idealistic youth to bloodsoaked king. A vivid picture emerges of the Bronze Age in all its glory - magnificent palaces, beautiful women and the stuggle for survival for those who aim for the throne. Shipman's prose is sharp, often funny and suprisingly modern in feel. Agamemnon himself emerges as a latter day JR Ewing - canny, cunning and complex, the complete anti-hero.

Free Lance

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 07:57:29 +0200

India in 1800: teeming, chaotic, corrupt, filled with rich prizes for Englishmen brave or ruthless enough to seize opportunities. And neither Lieutenant Hugo Amoury nor his friend Charles Marriott, humble clerk of the East India Company, intend to miss the chances that come their way; both mean to take all that can be wrenched from this vast and violent land. Success will mean riches, women, power and glory; failure: a lifetime of rotting in some forsaken office or army barracks. So together they set out, the young merchant and the young military adventurer - to carve themselves a kingdom founded on money and blood.

Imperial Governor

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 16:12:08 +0200

Londinium is burning. Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, newly appointed governor of Roman Britain, is charged by an increasingly unstable Emperor Nero with a difficult task—the untamed island on the fringes of the empire must earn a profit. To do so, Suetonius pursues the last of the Druids into Wales and, along the way, subdues the fractious Celtic chieftains who sit atop a fortune in gold and rare metals. Meanwhile, in the provincial capital of Londinium, war is brewing. As Nero's corrupt tax officials strip the British tribes of their wealth and dignity, an unlikely leader arises—Queen Boudicca, chieftain of the Iceni, who unites the tribes of Britain and leads them on a furious and bloody quest for vengeance and liberty. A novel told in the form of a memoir, Imperial Governor is a compelling and impeccably researched portrait of Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, Roman general and first-century Governor of Britannia, who unexpectedly found himself facing one of the bloodiest...

Warrior in Bronze

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:12:07 +0200

Tells the story of how Agememnon used his cunning, courage, and prowess to become King of the Achaeans.

Nearly a century ago George Shipway ended a classical education at Clifton which, after the fashion of the time, touched only briefly on Greek history before the foundation of the Spartan and Athenian city-states in 7th century BC. He brought away a vague curiosity about the Mycenaean Greeks whom Homer described and his tutors ignored - an interest subsequently subdued by two decades as an Indian Cavalry officer. From 1949-68 he taught at a boys’ preparatory school; and the scholastic ambience, together with successive archaeological revelations that in part confirmed the evidence of Homer's poems, aroused his latent desire for knowledge of a period which to him had so far remained obscure. He travelled extensively in Greece and Crete, and combined his classical and military training in an attempt to extract a core of solid historical truth from the legends of the Greek Heroic Age.