Bøger af Richard Denham

I opened Donna's journal that had lain on a shelf, unopened, for over 43 years. I was immediately transported back to 1967 the year I met the young nursing student who would within six months become my wife and with whom I would spend the next two years in Tanzania, East Africa as CUSO (Canadian University Services Overseas) volunteers; our two-year honeymoon. With little experience in love and marriage and even less experience in our chosen professions, we ventured out with a guitar, an accordion, our newly minted college certificates (architecture technology and nursing) and a whole lot of energy ready to see and experience the world. Living first in a mud hut, then for a couple of weeks in a down-at-the heels brothel, and finally in a flat owned and furnished by Public Works, I recall the travails of learning to prepare meals with one pot, keeping dry goods free from weevils, creating a Christmas tree out of a cactus - with disastrous results for the cactus - creating a home that soon became known as a stop-off point for volunteers, missionaries and travellers of all backgrounds, facing the reality that I had to change some of my personal habits if I wanted to keep the love I had just found, and of interacting with the local police and learning very quickly what it means to be "a minority". Much of the story focuses on the daily challenges and small victories that each of us enjoyed working with situations totally outside anything we had experienced to date. With the purchase of an undependable piki-piki (motorcycle), overcrowded slow and decrepit local buses, and thumbs made for hitchhiking, the reefs, beaches, national parks, mountains and plains all offered adventure and undreamt of beauty. The story describes in detail our participation in a hunting safari that would be impossible to do today, and, of course, no stay in Tanzania would be complete without a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro. The final chapters of the book highlight reflections that we now see these two years, how they shaped our career choices, and formed the basis for raising our four children and our lives as a couple for these past 45 years.

Jack Jones, National Treasure and the backbone of radio schedules and British resolve, has disappeared. Needless to say the powers that be are in something of a tizz, fearful of the disquiet this seems to be causing across the country. Although everyone is trying to keep calm and carry on, he really must be found. But it is more difficult than it would at first appear. To start with, it seems that he has no fixed abode. And no one is sure quite what he looks like. To find him, the top brass in the police send a rookie and a sergeant nearing retirement. The chase leads the policemen to the strangest corners, and oddest people, of Britain. Why has Jack Jones disappeared? Is he still alive and if so, is finding him really the best outcome for both the man and the policemen that pursue him?

King Arthur has fascinated the Western world for over a thousand years and yet we still know nothing more about him now than we did then. Layer upon layer of heroics and exploits has been piled upon him to the point where history, legend and myth have become hopelessly entangled. In recent years, there has been a sort of scholarly consensus that 'the once and future king' was clearly some sort of Romano-British warlord, heroically stemming the tide of wave after wave of Saxon invaders after the end of Roman rule. But surprisingly, and no matter how much we enjoy this narrative, there is actually next-to-nothing solid to support this theory except the wishful thinking of understandably bitter contemporaries. The sources and scholarship used to support the 'real Arthur' are as much tentative guesswork and pushing 'evidence' to the extreme to fit in with this version as anything involving magic swords, wizards and dragons. Even Archaeology remains silent. Arthur is, and always has been, the square peg that refuses to fit neatly into the historians round hole. Arthur: Shadow of a God gives a fascinating overview of Britain's lost hero and casts a light over an often-overlooked and somewhat inconvenient truth; Arthur was almost certainly not a man at all, but a god. He is linked inextricably to the world of Celtic folklore and Druidic traditions. Whereas tyrants like Nero and Caligula were men who fancied themselves gods; is it not possible that Arthur was a god we have turned into a man? Perhaps then there is a truth here. Arthur, 'The King under the Mountain'; sleeping until his return will never return, after all, because he doesn't need to. Arthur the god never left in the first place and remains as popular today as he ever was. His legend echoes in stories, films and games that are every bit as imaginative and fanciful as that which the minds of talented bards such as Taliesin and Aneirin came up with when the mists of the 'dark ages' still swirled over Britain - and perhaps that is a good thing after all, most at home in the imaginations of children and adults alike - being the Arthur his believers want him to be.

'A revealing and well-researched insight into the origins of the legend and its traditional influences.' - Robert White, chairman of the Worldwide Robin Hood Society We all have an idea of Robin Hood, England's most famous outlaw: a handsome and hooded woodsman in Lincoln green emerges from the crowd, effortlessly looses his bow at his target and splits another arrow in two to the astonishment of the spectators. We can imagine Robin Hood, but why, and where have our ideas of the man actually come from? What is most surprising about the legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men is how much his tales have deviated since they were first conceived. We start almost a thousand years ago with a group of bandits, comical and criminal in equal measure, who despised the Church, kidnapped strangers and waged war on lords and landowners, but astonishingly, and perhaps inexplicably, Robin was destined for greater things. Robin, like his readership, adapted, evolved and changed with the long centuries. We see him turn into a righteous partisan, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor and heroically defending the people from the tyranny of King John until the return of Richard the Lionheart. Stories that we think are ancient are often less than a century old, politically correct additions from the nascent age of cinema. We find him now a Hollywood heart-throb, with perfect teeth, designer stubble and an almost supernatural skill in combat and romance as he conquers enemies and lovers alike. And, as history always reminds us, the stories we know are rarely the stories that are true. Robin Hood: English Outlaw gives a fascinating account of the famed rogue, unraveling the layers of legend and myth in search of the man who has always been an enigma. The story of Robin is inextricably linked with the story of England; he shares our greatest achievements, our proudest moments and our darkest chapters. And this is the enduring legacy of Robin Hood, whether man or myth, whether hero or villain, he is part of England's story. We know Robin, the Merry Men and Sherwood Forest; we just don't remember why.

He sits on his jewelled throne on the Horn of Africa in the maps of the sixteenth century. He can see his whole empire reflected in a mirror outside his palace. He carries three crosses into battle and each cross is guarded by one hundred thousand men. He was with St Thomas in the third century when he set up a Christian church in India. He came like a thunderbolt out of the far East eight centuries later, to rescue the crusaders clinging on to Jerusalem. And he was still there when Portuguese explorers went looking for him in the fifteenth century. He went by different names. The priest who was also a king was Ong Khan; he was Genghis Khan; he was Lebna Dengel. Above all, he was a Christian king who ruled a vast empire full of magical wonders: men with faces in their chests; men with huge, backward-facing feet; rivers and seas made of sand. His lands lay next to the earthly Paradise which had once been the Garden of Eden. He wrote letters to popes and princes. He promised salvation and hope to generations. But it was noticeable that as men looked outward, exploring more of the natural world; as science replaced superstition and the age of miracles faded, Prester John was always elsewhere. He was beyond the Mountains of the Moon, at the edge of the earth, near the mouth of Hell. Was he real? Did he ever exist? This book will take you on a journey of a lifetime, to worlds that might have been, but never were. It will take you, if you are brave enough, into the world of Prester John.

THE END OF ROMAN BRITAIN CONCLUDES. Did the Romans leave Britain, or did Britain leave Rome? The death throes of Rome are resounding in every corner of the Empire. The rebellion of Magnus Maximus has come to a bloody end and Britannia now knows only suffering, standing at the edge of calamity, with each new disaster shaking the fragile foundations of a neglected province. The soldiers who remain are growing increasingly seditious with the incompetence and failures of their masters. While some seek to curb this dissent, more ambitious men will try to exploit it for their own ends. Justinus Coelius, general of Britain, is fighting increasingly desperate odds to defend the land from threats which come from near at hand as well as from across the German Sea, while trying to hold on to his dying world; Vitalis Celatius, a Christian convert, is haunted by what is, and isn't, happening in the name of his God; Brenna and her sons face new danger from north of Hadrian's Wall and realise they are alone for the first time. And the ageing Honoria begins to realise she can no longer rely on her beauty alone to remain Queen of the Underworld. The Warlords examines the twilight of Britannia. Nearly four centuries of Roman rule will collapse in a few chaotic years. Will the Heroes of the Wall survive the storm to come? And would they recognise the new world that has descended unknowingly into the Dark Ages?

THE END OF ROMAN BRITAIN BEGINS. The story opens in 367 AD. Four soldiers - Justinus, Paternus, Leocadius and Vitalis - are out hunting for food supplies at an outpost of Hadrian's Wall, when the Wall comes under attack. The four find their fort destroyed, their comrades killed, and Paternus is unable to find his wife and son. As they run south to Eboracum, they realize that this is no ordinary border raid. Ranged against the Romans at the edge of the world are four different peoples, and they have banded together under a mysterious leader who wears a silver mask and uses the name Valentinus - man of Valentia, the turbulent area north of the Wall. Faced with questions they are hard-pressed to answer, Leocadius blurts out a story that makes the men Heroes of the Wall. Their lives change not only when Valentinus begins his lethal sweep across Britannia but as soon as Leo's lie is out in the world, growing and changing as it goes. WILL THE WALL BE REBUILT AND THE POWER OF ROME RE-ESTABLISHED? AND WILL OUR FOUR HEROES REACH THE END OF THEIR JOURNEY? 367 AD is one of the critical dates in British history, but the year means little to most people now, and it is only rarely mentioned in historical books. Britannia: Part I - The Wall introduces the reader to this tumultuous age, as we share the adventure, confusion and bewilderment of our heroes - four common soldiers stationed at Hadrian's Wall. We find them caught up in the madness of a chain of events which will eventually lead to the fall of Roman Britain, and the descent into the Dark Ages.

THE END OF ROMAN BRITAIN CONTINUES. 'We are the watchmen; the keepers of the flame.' Britannia in the late fourth century is a wild, dark place and the Pax Romana that has held for three hundred years is crumbling. Justinus Coelius is commander of the Wall and he is facing invasion from Saxons and treachery from within. Leocadius Honorius is consul of Londinium, but his fragile grasp on his lifestyle is broken when he plays dice with the wrong people. Vitalis Celatius just wants a quiet, peaceful life but his sister Conchessa is desperate to find her husband who has fallen foul of the Emperor. And the Emperor is about to face a challenge from Magnus Maximus, the general who takes Britannia's legions to overthrow him. Celtic legend, Egyptian mysticism and Gaelic battle-fury are all interwoven in this dark tale. The surviving Heroes of the Wall are once again thrown into the melting pot of history. How many of them will still be standing at the end? "An impressive followup volume to The Wall. True to the first book, Roman Britain is expertly portrayed with historical accuracy and detailed descriptions and characterization. I will await volume 3 eagerly." Polly Krize - Reviewer