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Imprint: Chatto & Windus
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Published: 23/08/2018
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ISBN: 9781784740900
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Length: 432 Pages
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Dimensions: 240mm x 39mm x 162mm
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Weight: 700g
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RRP: £20.00
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. An inventive biography of one of the most famous ships of all time – an alluring combination of history, adventure and science.
‘HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR’ Christopher Hart, Sunday Times
The Enlightenment was an age of endeavours. Britain was consumed by the impulse for grand projects. In 1768 the Royal Navy bought a Whitby collier for an expedition to the South Seas. No one could have guessed she would become the most significant ship in the history of British exploration. Her name was Endeavour.
Endeavour was a ship with many lives, famously carrying James Cook on his first great voyage to the Pacific islands. She was there at the Wilkes Riots in London and witnessed the bloody birth of the United States. A Polynesian priest, botanists, the first kangaroo to arrive in Britain and Hessian soldiers were just a few amongst her many passengers. According to Charles Darwin, she helped Cook add a hemisphere to the civilised world. NASA named a space shuttle after her. Yet to others, she was a toxic symbol, responsible for the dispossession and disruption of societies.
For the first time, Peter Moore tells Endeavour’s complete story, exploring the different lives of this remarkable ship -- from the oak that made her to her rich and complex legacy.
‘Fascinating and richly detailed... Peter Moore has brought us an acute insight into the ship that carried some of the most successful explorers across the world. A fine book that’s definitely worth exploring’ Michael Palin
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Imprint: Chatto & Windus
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Published: 23/08/2018
-
ISBN: 9781784740900
-
Length: 432 Pages
-
Dimensions: 240mm x 39mm x 162mm
-
Weight: 700g
-
RRP: £20.00
Reviews
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"A joy of a biography, offering up a blizzard of maritime and political fascinations... Moore has written a book that makes the case for his little ship both compelling and irrefutable"
Simon Winchester, New York Times
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"Moore uses Endeavour as a window to the age of enlightenment. Like the period it recounts, this book has enormous energy, creativity and self-confidence. It's a feast of endless exotic dishes, all delivered with immense style"
Gerard DeGroot, The Times Books of the Year
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"Beautifully constructed, his book is not just the history of a single vessel, but a window into the intellectual and political life of the age of enlightenment, from the thrill of botanical discovery to the horror of Cook's last moments on the beaches of Hawaii"
Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times Books of the Year
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"A dazzling combination of science and adventure, lyrically evocative descriptions of lush tropical landscapes and salt-stung seascapes, and a portrait of an age…an absolute joy from start to finish, and surely my history book of the year"
Christopher Hart, Sunday Times
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"Fascinating and richly detailed... Peter Moore has brought us an acute insight into the ship that carried some of the most successful explorers across the world. A fine book that’s definitely worth exploring"
Michael Palin
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"Endeavour is an extraordinary book about an unlikely ship that defined an age... Like the age it recounts, it is a book of energy, creativity and self-confidence"
Gerard DeGroot, The Times, **Books of the Year**
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"Pays brilliant tribute to what was arguably the most significant ship in the history of British exploration"
Nick Rennison, Daily Mail
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"Bold and imaginative... the same brave wind that filled Endeavour's sails blows through this book and it is hard to resist"
David Crane, Spectator
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"Moore’s richly detailed book is an engrossing love letter to a work, an attitude and a ship: it is an endeavour that honours Endeavour, without denying the death and destruction that followed in her wake"
Ruth Scurr, Guardian
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"Moore’s approach is lavishly digressive… A rollicking yarn"
Lewis Jones, Sunday Telegraph
