The Dreamer Of Calle San Salvador

Roger Osborne's work has provided a range of innovative insights into our views of the past, and how they inform the present. His previous books include The Floating Egg: Episodes in the Making of Geology, The Deprat Affair: Ambition, Revenge and Deceit in French Indo-China, The Dreamer of the Calle San Salvador: Visions of Sedition and Sacrilege in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Civilization: A New History of the Western World and Of The People, By The People, A New History of Democracy. 
 
Roger Osborne is also a professional playwright. His plays include The Art Of Persuasion, first performed in 2011 and Laughton, staged in 2013 He lives in Scarborough.

Spell-binding, horrific, poetic, apocalyptic, heart-rending, disturbing, prophetic, seditious, compelling and utterly fascinating - the dreams of Lucrecia de Leon have lain virtually undisturbed in the archives of the Spanish Inquisition for more than four hundred years. Lucrecia was a nineteen-year-old Madrilena when, in 1587, her dreams began to be recorded and published by a disaffected group of clerics. Over the next three years they transcribed four hundred of Lucrecia's dreams which they considered to be messages from God. The dreams warned of the defeat of the Armada, of the death of King Philip II, of the fall of Spain and of a new beginning under a new king - all told in bold and highly original visions. As some of her prophecies came true and as the Spanish court grew more discontented, she fell foul of the authorities and was arrested by the Holy Order. The Dreamer of the Calle de San Salvador produces thirty-five of Lucrecia's most captivating dreams. The imagery and inventiveness of her visions are astonishing, while the stories that they tell are compelling and of immense historical significance. Roger Osborne weaves a commentary around each dream, which allows us to see the world through the eyes of Lucrecia and helps us to understand the nature of her visions and the time and place she inhabited. This pioneering work shows us what history is like seen from the inside out.

The Deprat Affair

'Immensely readable and beautifully written A detective story without a solution.' Ruth Rendell, Daily Telegraph

Detective story, social history, human drama, The Deprat Affair recreates the hothouse atmosphere of colonial Indochina in the early twentieth century. Among its cliques, its bitter rivalries, its nepotism and favours, how are we to disentangle the scientific, the moral and the legal 'truths' of the affair?   Most of all, the story centres on one compelling individual - Jacques Deprat. En route to a golden future as one of France's greatest geologists, he is suddenly accused of fraud and plunged into a desperate fight to save his reputation. Convicted of placing European fossils among samples collected in Indochina, he is dismissed from his job, and expelled from the Société Géologique de France. Thrown out of the science to which he has given everything, he re-invents himself, changes his name, and begins not one, but two fascinating new lives - each as extraordinary and colourful as the one he left behind. And even in the manner of his premature death, Deprat proved his ability to shake the world.   Eighty years on from his conviction, the truth of the Deprat affair is still in doubt - and is still passionately debated among French scientists. But innocent or guilty, Jacques Deprat is an astonishing figure, whose capacity to overcome the world's disgrace and the dissolution of his dreams makes an amazing and captivating story.

A New History of Democracy

Of The People, By The People

A fascinating and erudite history of the world's democracies - past and present - and the people who fought to bring democracy about.

There is much to admire in this book ...to retell the history of democracy so vividly is no mean feat.  His work serves as an important reminder that the price of democratic freedom is eternal vigilance

Includes all democracies - past and present, questioning our views, how they came about, and who fought for the cause and why

He writes lucid, accurate prose that carries heavy freights of information lightly

[Roger Osborne] impresses with another sweeping history

'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.' 
 
Churchill had more reason than most to rue the power of democracy, having been thrown out of office after leading Britain to victory in 1945. Democracy, when viewed from above, has always been a fickle master; from below it is a powerful but fragile friend. 
 
Most books on democracy focus on political theory and analysis, in a futile attempt to define democracy. Of The People, By The People takes the opposite approach, telling the stories of the different democracies that have come into existence during the past two and half millennia. 
 
From Athens to Rhaetia, Jamestown to Delhi, and Putney to Pretoria, the book shows how democratic systems are always a reflection of the culture and history of their birthplaces, and come about through seizing fleeting opportunities. 
 
Democracy can only be understood through the fascinating and inspiring stories of the peoples who fought to bring it about.

A New History of the Western World

Civilization

Through a vivid and dramatic interrogation of the past, this book examines and illuminates the nature of Western civilization from its earliest incarnations to the present.

The book is a brilliant example of authorial brevity, the writing neither hurried nor baldly functional

An immensely important book and an exhilarating read

It is a bold adventurer who proposes to survey the history of Western civilization in a mere 500 pages, and not only to say something fresh about many aspects of it, but to do so in a spirit of perceptive scepticism that refuses to go along with standard views and reflex valuations. Roger Osborne offers himself this challenge and meets it brilliantly

Roger Osborne's absorbing blockbuster... is an admirable achievement: a coherent narrative that gallops from the painting of the Lascaux buffalo to the cloning of Dolly the Sheep, from the Beaker people to the McDonald's people, in fewer than 500 crisply written pages

Urgent, compelling, breathtaking in scope, Osborne's Civilization confronts the vital question of our time

Osborne's book is a blessing.... Two weeks in, and the year's first necessary book is with us

Ever since the attacks of 11th September, western leaders have described a world engaged in 'a fight for civilization'. But what do we mean by civilization? We believe in a western tradition of openness and freedom that has produced a good life for many millions of people and a culture of enormous depth and creative power. 
 
But the history of our civilisation is also filled with unspeakable brutality - for every Leonardo there is a Mussolini, for every Beethoven symphony a concentration camp, for every Chrysler building a My Lai massacre. How can we come to the defence of a civilisation whose benefits seem so questionable? In this ambitious and important book Roger Osborne shows that we can only truly understand our civilization by re-examining and confronting our past, with all its glories and catastrophes. 
 
Sweeping in its scope and comprehensive in its coverage, Civilzation tells the story of the western world from its origins to the present. At such a dangerous time in the world's history, this brilliant book is required reading.

Episodes in the Making of Geology

The Floating Egg

'If you have never read a book about geology, and didn't even think you were interested, Roger Osborne could change your life.... He succeeds magnificently in communicating his enthusiasm' - Independent on Sunday

A wonderful tome...beautifully structured...utterly fascinating... Reading The Floating Egg is a captivating experience because there is at least one surprise in every chapter... Roger Osborne has combined portions of history, biology, architecture, palaeontology, astronomy - and a large dose of humour - and produced the fascinating story of how geology came to be

His exploration of geology's Yorkshire roots is infallibly entertaining...A delightful book...quirky and thoroughly Yorkshire, and all the better for that

The Floating Egg begins with the search for an alchemist's secret, and ends with the re-imagination of a past world. Each chapter is connected to a particular corner of north-east England, and each explores the uncertain line where myth is dissolved into science, and belief gives way to knowledge. 
 
Different episodes show how the fall of Constantinople converted the common rock of the Yorkshire cliffs into a source of extraordinary wealth and power, and how this in turn uncovered the inhabitants of a succession of past worlds; how a stone falling from the sky near this same coast changed the minds of all the natural philosophers of Europe; and how a new science was born on the top of the tower of York Minster. We learn about the cloak-and-dagger world of fossil trading in the town of Whitby; and we see the entire life-work of a forgotten scientific genius who died from consumption at the age of twenty-five, having revolutionised his science. 
 
The stories move from documentary accounts to fictional recreations of historic events, from contemporary writing and illustrations to present-day reflection. By using different ways of describing the world of scientific endeavour, the author has produced a fascinating visually beautiful and highly entertaining book which allows us to witness the birth of a new science - the science of geology.

Roger Osborne

Ably handling a mass of material, Osborne explores both the technological side of his subject and its human aspect

Osborne fires [the Industrial Revolution] up with great gusto

Iron, Steam &amp; Money is an engaging and enjoyable read, and Osborne’s clear prose and simple explanations provide shape and meaning to a concept that in many people’s minds remains a muddled memory from school days

The Making of the Industrial Revolution

In late eighteenth-century Britain a handful of men brought about the greatest transformation in human history. Inventors, industrialists and entrepreneurs ushered in the age of powered machinery and the factory, and thereby changed the whole of human society, bringing into being new methods of social and economic organisation, new social classes, and new political forces. The Industrial Revolution also dramatically altered humanity's relation to the natural world and embedded the belief that change, not stasis, is the necessary backdrop for human existence. 
 
Iron, Steam and Money tells the thrilling story of those few decades, the moments of inspiration, the rivalries, skulduggery and death threats, and the tireless perseverance of the visionaries who made it all happen. Richard Arkwright, James Watt, Richard Trevithick and Josiah Wedgwood are among the giants whose achievements and tragedies fill these pages. In this authoritative study Roger Osborne also shows how and why the revolution happened, revealing pre-industrial Britain as a surprisingly affluent society, with wealth spread widely through the population, and with craft industries in every town, village and front parlour. The combination of disposable income, widespread demand for industrial goods, and a generation of time-served artisans created the unique conditions that propelled humanity into the modern world. 
 
The industrial revolution was arguably the most important episode in modern human history; Iron, Steam and Money reminds us of its central role, while showing the extraordinary excitement of those tumultuous decades.

Roger Osborne

Praise for Iron, Steam & Money

Ably handling a mass of material, Osborne explores both the technological side of his subject and its human aspect

Osborne fires [the Industrial Revolution] up with great gusto

Detailed and scholarly

Ably handling a mass of material, Osborne explores both the technological side of his subject and its human aspect

Osborne fires [the Industrial Revolution] up with great gusto

Detailed and scholarly

Ably handling a mass of material, Osborne explores both the technological side of his subject and its human aspect

Osborne fires [the Industrial Revolution] up with great gusto

Detailed and scholarly

Books by Roger Osborne

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