The Oriental Obsession begins in the early sixteenth century with Cardinal Wolsey waiting two years for the delivery of sixty rare Turkey carpets from Venice, and ends in the age of the great exhibitions and emporia on both sides of the Atlantic, before and after 1900, when Islamic objects were seen, appreciated, and bought by millions of the public. The book is concerned with a subject which has not been treated before - the history over four centuries of Islamic artistic traditions and European ideas of Islam as they affected the visual arts of the west and particularly the English-speaking...

Osprey's examination of one of the most important battles of the Crimean War (1853-1856). The port of Balaclava was crucial in maintaining the supply lines for the Allied siege of Sevastapol. The Russian attack in October 1854 therefore posed a major threat to the survival of the Allied cause. This book examines in detail the crucial battle of Balaclava, including: the attack on the redoubts; the action of the thin red line" in which an assortment of about 700 British troops, some invalids, were abandoned by their Turkish allies; the subsequent charge of the Heavy Brigade; and the most famous...