Our book Jack Tar plays a role in a blog post called ‘Nelson’s Floating Menagerie’ (for November 14, 2016). This is a wonderful blog called ‘Seafurrers: True Tales of the Ships’ Cats that Lapped and Mapped the World’, which you can enjoy here.
Picture credit: “Illustration cobbled together by Ad Long”
Seafurrers is hosted by Bart the Cat, though we do suspect some human participation as well. Continue reading
‘Jack Tar’ remains one of our most popular talks, though until we finish our new book on the Great Siege of Gibraltar, we are not booking any more talks. We are, though, looking forward to giving a ‘Jack Tar’ talk (called ‘All at Sea in the Time of the Austens’) at the January 2017 meeting of the Jane Austen Society South-West (on the 28th). This is a very active branch of the Jane Austen Society, and it holds four conferences a year, each one lasting from 10.30am to 3.30pm, with morning coffee, buffet lunch and two talks. They are held in central Exeter (at Southernhay Hall, Dix’s Field, EX1 1QA). This gives you plenty of time to join – for further details, see their website page here (you do not have to be a member of the main Jane Austen Society to join).
We were recently alerted to a well-crafted and generous review of Jack Tar by author and historian Jonathan North. He posted the review on his interesting website that focuses on the French Revolution and Napoleonic history Continue reading
On Wednesday 18th May 2016, we are giving an illustrated talk on ‘Jack Tar: Life in Nelson’s Navy’ at the library in Denmark Street, Wokingham, Berkshire, RG40 2BB, at 2.30pm. A large car park is close by. Tickets cost only £3, available from the library. You can phone and book a place, tel. 0118 978 1368. The library is open daily from 9.30am, except Sunday, and on Wednesday it closes at 1pm, reopening for events like ours in the afternoon. Alternatively, you can turn up on the day, but you may not get in!
The year before last, we gave a talk at this same library on ‘Eavesdropping on Jane Austen’s England’, and it was packed out. Wokingham Borough Libraries do all sorts of events for their community, and we really like the library at Wokingham itself. Our talk on ‘Jack Tar’ will describe what life was like at sea during Jane Austen’s lifetime, something she was very familiar with as two of her brothers joined the Royal Navy. Our book Jack Tar has the subtitle ‘Life in Nelson’s Navy’ for the hardback, but it was changed to ‘The extraordinary lives of ordinary seamen in Nelson’s navy’ for the paperback.
We should have added a note to say that Jack Tar is available in paperback, published by Abacus. You can find it in some bookstores, order it from bookstores or buy it from online retailers . The ISBN is 978 0 349 12034 8. It was not published in the US, but is sold there by our UK publisher. To our frustration, it seems to be unavailable on most US retail websites at present. It is available as an e-book in various forms. If you have a good public library, they will have copies for you to borrow! Click here to the ‘Jack Tar’ page on our website.