King louis 14 biography of christopher

One of the finest portrait busts carved in England during the late 17th century can be seen in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Made in 1673, it shows Christopher Wren at the age of 40, with rich curly locks tumbling to his shoulders and a loose shirt beneath the classical robe in which he’s swathed. The features are alert, mobile, determined; high eyebrows suggest scepticism, with Wren’s somewhat bulging eyes seemingly trained on a distant object that only he can see.

Edward Pierce, the stone carver and mason who made this tour de force, perhaps after a lost French original, worked with Wren on several projects and must have been in his company many times. He knew his subject well and brilliantly captures the quality for which Wren has always been known: genius.

Every contemporary description of Wren confirms the evidence of the bust. Although diminutive in stature, he was a handsome man, whose dazzling gifts were recognised from childhood. As an adolescent at Oxford, he would be called ‘that miracle of a youth Mr Christopher Wren’. Unlike some other prominent figures in the Royal Society — the uncouth Isaac Newton, the distinctly peculiar Robert Hooke — he was invariably courteous and frequently to be seen in Hooke’s company in the coffee houses around Whitehall, where he lived and worked.

In architecture, his immense oeuvre, from St Paul’s Cathedral and the City churches to Hampton Court, Kensington Palace and the Trinity College library in Cambridge, seems to reflect the balance and reasonableness of his personality. As a mathematician and astronomer, he sought to achieve the ‘natural beauty’ (as he called it in one of the tracts gathered in Parentalia by his son, also Christopher), which belonged to geometry and ideal proportions. ‘Customary beauty’ might be attached to things we have grown up with, ‘as familiarity breeds a love to things not

Italian navigator and explorer (1451–1506)

"Cristoforo Colombo" and "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" redirect here. For his direct descendant, see Cristóbal Colón de Carvajal, 18th Duke of Veragua. For other uses, see Christopher Columbus (disambiguation) and Cristoforo Colombo (disambiguation).

Christopher Columbus (; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America.

The name Christopher Columbus is the anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. Growing up on the coast of Liguria, he went to sea at a young age and traveled widely, as far north as the British Isles and as far south as what is now Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, who bore a son, Diego, and was based in Lisbon for several years. He later took a Castilian mistress, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana, who bore a son, Ferdinand.

Largely self-educated, Columbus was knowledgeable in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade. After the Granada War, and Columbus's persistent lobbying in multiple kingdoms, the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, agreed to sponsor a journey west. Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas on 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in the Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era. His landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by its native inhabitants as

King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV

Hardcover – published in the UK July 2019

Louis XIV wanted to conquer time and space - to push the borders of France which he inherited out into Flanders, Burgundy and Alsace, and beyond, to expand French dominion in the Americas and the East, to win what he called ‘the exquisite praises of history’ through conquests and to create a great palace which would surpass all others and secure his immortality. He became the epitome and exemplar of monarchy, the king all his contemporaries and successors imitated, envied, or fought against.

King of the World is a magnificent and perceptive account of the man who dominated the seventeenth century more than any other. To what extent did Louis have absolute power, or was decision-making in the hands of ministers and mistresses? How much of the extravagance of Versailles was for show, and how far was Louis himself the show? How could such a civilized man commit so many acts of barbarism? How effective was he as a ruler and a general? Did he leave his country stronger or weaker than it was before? Mansel offers original and persuasive answers to these questions, and weaves a brilliant tapestry of the life of one of the most compelling figures in European history.

‘No other English-language biography has so successfully given us a portrait of him as man and monarch…Mansel renders his satellites in fascinating detail… His grasp of the sources is superb’ - Gareth Russell, The Times, 29 June 2019.

‘the best single-volume account of the reign in any language’ - John Adamson, The Sunday Times, 14 July 2019.

‘superb… wonderfully detailed and fluent… hard to believe that this biography, in the English language at least, will ever be surpassed’ Hamish Robinson, The Oldie, August 2019.

‘Authoritative and nuanced… thorough success… Time and space both yield before Mansel’s authorial ambition’, Minoo Dinshaw, The Daily Telegraph, 13 July 2019.

‘Louis XIV loved his mother and mul