Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey

Through the centuries, people from all walks of life have heard the siren call of a pilgrimage, the lure to journey away from the familiar in search of understanding. But is a pilgrimage even possible these days for city-dwellers enmeshed in the pressures of work and family life? Or is there a way to be a pilgrim without leaving one’s life behind? James Attlee answers these questions with Isolarion, a thoughtful, streetwise, and personal account of his pilgrimage to a place he thought he already knew—the Cowley Road in Oxford, right outside his door.

Isolarion takes its title from a type of fifteenth-century map that isolates an area in order to present it in detail, and that’s what Attlee, sharp-eyed and armed with tape recorder and notebook, provides for Cowley Road. The former site of a leper hospital, a workhouse, and a medieval well said to have miraculous healing powers, Cowley Road has little to do with the dreaming spires of the tourist’s or student’s Oxford. What Attlee presents instead is a thoroughly modern, impressively cosmopolitan, and utterly organic collection of shops, restaurants, pubs, and religious establishments teeming with life and reflecting the multicultural makeup of the surrounding neighborhood.

From a sojourn in a sensory-deprivation tank to a furtive visit to an unmarked pornography emporium, Attlee investigates every aspect of the Cowley Road’s appealingly eclectic culture, where halal shops jostle with craft jewelers and reggae clubs pulsate alongside quiet churchyards. But the very diversity that is, for Attlee, the essence of Cowley Road’s appeal is under attack from well-meaning city planners and predatory developers. His pilgrimage is thus invested with melancholy: will the messy glories of the Cowley Road be lost to creeping homogenization?

Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy to contemporary art, Attlee is a charming and companionable guide who revels in the extraordinary embedded in the everyday. Isolarion is at once a road movie, a quixotic stand against uniformity, and a rousing hymn in praise of the complex, invigorating nature of the twenty-first-century city.

In the small towns one finds the true spirit of Provence. Terracotta roofs cling at strange angles to stone and plaster; deep, velvety shade covers the ground beneath tall plane trees in some peaceful square, enlivened by the sound of water from an ancient fountain. Sometimes calm, sometimes vibrant, but always timelessly appealing, the most beautiful country towns of Provence are presented here in Alex Ramsay's perceptive photographs and Helena Attlee's evocative commentaries.

This magnificently illustrated survey opens in the west of the province, marked by the Roman presence and home to the lively regional centers of Arles and Uzès. In the center of Provence—the départements of Var and Vaucluse—are such attractions as L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, famous for its antique markets, and Hyères, one of the first resorts on the Riviera. Haute-Provence and Maritimes, which sweep around the north of the province and finally descend to the sea in the east, embrace the varied gems of mountainous Saint-Martin-Vésubie, coastal and Italianate Menton, and Grasse, perfume capital of the world. The variety revealed in this visual and textual feast is incredible—and all set in the dramatic contours of one of Europe's most striking landscapes.

Like other volumes in this internationally best-selling series, The Most Beautiful Country Towns of Provence is completed by lists of sights to visit and places to stay and to eat. 260 color photographs.

Tendentiously selected parts of this correspondence were published outside the Soviet Union at difference times resulting in a distorted picture of the Soviet attitude during the war years.

This publication is to help restore historical truth. It contains the full texts of all documents available in the Soviet Union of J.V. Stalin's correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Winston S. Churchill and Clement R. Attlee during the period in question. Certain messages quoted or otherwise mentioned in publications abroad are missing from this book, as their texts have not been found in the Soviet archives.

The correspondence between the heads of the Governments published here was conducted chiefly by exchanging code messages through the Soviet Embassies in Washington and London and through the Embassies of the U.S.A. and Great Britain in Moscow. The messages were decoded in the respective language. Some of the messages were delivered by diplomatic post or by authorized representatives of the Power concerned.

I have become fascinated with the Shackleton story, not only for the awesome testament to dogged determination to succeed in the face of seemingly daunting odds that it is, but because apparently my Grandfather knew him quite well and worked on the planning of the journey back in London. Somewhere we have a signed original of the book from 1919 amongst Mother's belongings, back in England.

This is a bone chilling visual and literary step by aching step trudge through the most inhospitable place on Earth. As the Endurance, their ship, died so their own endurance was born. And what an endurance that was!

As my eyes wander the pages in the warm comfort of bed my mind is wind-whipped by the Antarctic blasts Shackleton and his team ultimately survived! It is quite simply one of the most amazing stories it has ever been my pleasure to absorb. I am in awe of the achievement described and pictured in this book.

Everybody should read it!

South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917

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South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917
Ernest Henry, Sir Shackleton
Manufacturer: IndyPublish.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Travel | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1421900998

Average customer rating:

South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917
Ernest Henry, Sir Shackleton
Manufacturer: IndyPublish.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Adventurers & Explorers | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1414268386

Average customer rating:

South: The story of Shackleton's last expedition, 1914-1917
Ernest Henry Shackleton
Manufacturer: MacMillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00088L1SO

Average customer rating:

South: The story of Shackleton's last expedition, 1914-1917
Ernest Henry Shackleton
Manufacturer: MacMillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding