Books by David Crane
Went the Day Well?: Witnessing Waterloo
by David Crane
Midnight, Sunday, June 18, 1815. Britain holds its breath. Since Napoleon’s escape from Elba in February, Europe has been jolted from eleven months of peace back into the frenzied panic of a war it believed had ended. “The whole complexion of the world is changed again,” writes George Ticknor, then a young American lawyer in Britain for the first time. “God only can forsee the consequences.” The nation is awash in reports and rumors. The Battle of Waterloo is close at hand.
Went the Day Well? is an astonishing hour-by-hour chronicle that starts the day before the battle that reset the course of world history and continues to its aftermath. Switching perspectives between Britain and Belgium, prison and palace, poet and pauper, lover and betrothed, husband and wife, David Crane paints a picture of Britain as it was that summer when everything changed. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources—from newspapers and journals to letters and poems—Went the Day Well? offers a highly original view of Waterloo, grand in scope but meticulous in detail.
What was Britain doing on that Sunday, from the mad king downward? Who were born to live out their lives in the Britain created at Waterloo? Who died? Who was preaching, who was writing and who was painting? Lyrically rendered in Crane’s signature prose style, Went the Day Well? freeze-frames the men and women of Britain in 1815 as they went about their business, attended lectures, worked in fields and factories—all on the cusp of a new, unforeseeable age.
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Went the Day Well?: Witnessing Waterloo
by David Crane
In these pages, acclaimed historian David Crane gives us an astonishing, intimate snapshot of the people and places surrounding the battle that changed the course of world history. Switching perspectives between Britain and Belgium, prison and palace, poet and pauper, husband and wife, Went the Day Well? offers a highly original view of Waterloo, showing how the battle was not only a military landmark, but also a cultural watershed that drew the line between the rural, reactionary age of the past and the urban, innovative era to come. Lyrically rendered in Crane’s signature prose style, this essential account freeze-frames the ordinary men and women of 1815 who went about their business, attended lectures, worked in fields and factories—all on the cusp of a new, unforeseeable age.
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The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons
by David Crane
A stunningly original account, revolutionary in technique, examining the character of the great Romantic poet Lord Byron through the lives and deadly rivalry of the two women he left behind.
The heart of David Crane’s account is the lifelong feud between Augusta—Byron’s half sister with whom he had a passionate affair—and Annabella, his society wife, both of whom bore him daughters. Crane reimagines the famous meeting between the two women years after Byron’s death, a chillingly dramatic scene through which he explores the emotional and sexual truths that lay at the center of these tragic relationships. In the encounter between the two women—one in chronic ill health, the other dying—we have the ultimate display of their mutual obsession with the memory and compulsive influence of Byron that makes their story that of the Romantic Age itself.
It is a story full of dubious motives, especially Annabella’s “saving” of Augusta and her child, Medora, and her twisted revenge on them both. And as the curses of incest and abuse play themselves out in the fates of Byron’s daughters, we see their lives assuming the shape of Greek tragedy.
In the meeting of the two women and the consequences of their battle, Crane shows us the Romantic Age in its terrible collision with the new world of the Victorians. The Kindness of Sisters establishes Crane as a biographer of formidable gifts.
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Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy
by David Crane
A richly illuminating biography of Robert Falcon Scott, and the first to transcend the myths that have taken root in the story of his life.
Since Scott’s death in 1912, he has been the subject of innumerable books—some declaring him a hero, others dismissing him as an irresponsible fool. But in all the pages that have been written about him, the man behind the legend has been forgotten or distorted beyond all recognition. Now, with full access to all family papers and to the voluminous diaries and records of key participants in the Antarctic expeditions, and with the inclusion in the book of excerpts from Scott’s own letters and diaries, David Crane gives us a portrait of the explorer that is more nuanced and balanced than any we have had before. In reassessing Scott’s life, Crane is able to provide a fresh perspective on both the Discovery expedition of 1901–04 and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910–13, making clear that although Scott’s dramatic journeys are the most compelling parts of his story, they are only part of a larger narrative that includes remarkable scientific achievement and the challenges of a tumultuous private life.
Scott’s own voice echoes through the pages. His descriptions of the monumental landscape of Antarctica and its fatal and icy beauty are breathtaking. And his honest, heartfelt letters and diaries give the reader an unforgettable account of the challenges he faced both in his personal life and as a superlative leader of men in possibly the world’s harshest environment.
The result is an absolutely convincing portrait of a complicated hero.
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Scott of the Antarctic: A Biography
by David Crane
Historian David Crane, with full access to the explorer’s papers, diaries, and expedition records, gives us an illuminating portrait of Robert Falcon Scott that is more nuanced and balanced than any we have had before.
In reassessing Scott’s life, Crane is able to provide a fresh perspective on not only the Discovery expedition of 1901—4 and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910—13, but his remarkable scientific achievements and the challenges of his tumultuous private life. Neither foolhardy dilettante, nor the last romantic champion of his age, Scott is presented as a man of indomitable courage and questionable judgment. The result is an absolutely compelling portrait of a complicated hero.
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First World War Poets (National Portrait Gallery Companions)
by David Crane, Alan Judd
This collection of short biographies of those remarkable men who sought to record the First World War in poetry draws on letters, memoirs and portraits. Key poems by each of the poets are included, alongside images of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg and Ivor Gurney, to provide a new approach to one of the most devastating events of the last century.
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Empires of the Dead: How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s War Graves
by David Crane
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.
The extraordinary and forgotten story of the building of the World War One cemeteries, due to the efforts of one remarkable man, Fabian Ware.
In the wake of the First World War, Britain and her Empire faced the enormous question of how to bury the dead. Critically-acclaimed author David Crane describes how the horror of the slaughter motivated an ambulance commander named Fabian Ware to establish the Commonwealth war cemeteries.
Behind these famous monuments – the Cenotaph, Tyne Cot, Menin Gate, Etaples amongst them – lies a deeply moving story; ‘Empires of the Dead’ chronicles a generation coming to terms with grief on a colossal scale.
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