• The first evaluation for many years of Scott as a traveller, and the first ever single treatment of all his Continental travels • Detailed discussion of his late-in-life venture to the Mediterranean in 1831-1832, drawing on fresh source material and re-evaluating evidence for his time in Naples and Rome in a new light • Deals as much with those trips dreamed of and planned – but not accomplished – as with those actually achieved: projected journeys to Spain and Portugal, Germany and Switzerland • Profusely illustrated with some unpublished colour and mono photographs from the author’s and other private collections Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote frequently of his desire to travel widely in Europe. He made, however, only three Continental ventures. Two were to Belgium and Paris. Shortly before his death, he at last journeyed to the Mediterranean. His time in Naples and Rome provoked both interest and sadness: most of all, it caused him to reflect on the Scotland of his mind and heart. These trips are full of interest – but so are the many other schemes Scott entertained for wider travelling, notably to Spain and Portugal, Switzerland and Germany. In Frolics in the Face of Europe: Sir Walter Scott, Continental Travel and the Tradition of the Grand Tour, all are examined in the context of the Grand Tour tradition, and in the new kind of ‘romantic’ travel that, after 1815, came to replace it. By drawing on Scott’s letters and journal, on his verse, prose fiction and the literature of travel, which gave him such a wide knowledge of the world without even leaving his library at Abbotsford, many social, literary and artistic connections are made. Events, places and personalities are linked, often in surprising ways. This book offers a fresh view of Scott as the 250th anniversary of his birth approaches.

In the years between about 1810 and 1840, Edinburgh―long and affectionately known as ‘Auld Reekie’―came to think of itself and be widely regarded as something else: the city became ‘Modern Athens’, an epithet later turned to ‘the Athens of the North’. The phrase is very well-known. It is also much used by those who have little understanding of the often confused and contradictory messages hidden within the apparent convenience of a trite or hackneyed term that conceals a myriad of nuanced meanings. This book examines the circumstances underlying a remarkable change in perception of a place and an age. It looks in detail at the ‘when’, the ‘by whom’, the ‘why’, the ‘how’, and the ‘with what consequences’ of this most interesting, if extremely complex, transformation of one city into an image―physical or spiritual, or both―of another. A very broad range of evidence is drawn upon, the story having not only topographical, artistic, and architectural dimensions but also social, cerebral, and philosophical ones. Edinburgh may well have been considered ‘Athenian’. But, in essence, it remained what it had always been. Maybe, however, for a brief period it was really a sort of hybrid: ‘Auld Greekie’.

Sir Walter Scott's journeys, both achieved (Belgium and Paris) and dreamt of (Iberia and the Alps), are examined in the context of the traditional Grand Tour, and the romantic age of travel that followed - though when Scott actually reached Naples and Rome, Scotland was still most in the heart and mind of this fascinating but unusual traveler.

For centuries, duelling played an integral role in the preservation of the aristocratic order in Europe, defying attempts by both church and state to ban the practice. Moreover, the romance and drama of the duel has made it an enduring fixture in films, literature, and the theatre. In The Duel in European History, renowned historian Victor Kiernan writes with his characteristic wit and insight of duelling's evolution from its medieval origins – when it was regarded as a badge of rank - to the early twentieth century, by which time it was seen as an irrational anachronism. In doing so, he shows how the duelling tradition was something unique to Europe and its colonies, and, in its contribution to the development of the officer corps, played a key part in shaping European military power. Drawing on a vast range of historical and cultural sources, this is the definitive account of a violent ritual that continues to fascinate even today.