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This interdisciplinary study examines painted portraiture as a defining metaphor of elite self-representation in early modern culture. Beginning with Castiglione's Book of the Courtier (1528), the most influential early modern account of the formation of elite identity, the argument traces a path across the ensuing century towards the images of courtiers and nobles by the most persuasive of European portrait painters, Van Dyck, especially those produced in London during the 1630s. It investigates two related kinds of texts: those which, following Castiglione, model the conduct of the ideal courtier or elite social conduct more generally; and those belonging to the established tradition of debates about the condition of nobility -how far it is genetically inherited and how far a function of excelling moral and social behaviour. Van Dyck is seen as contributing to these discussions through the language of pictorial art. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, cultural history, early modern history and Renaissance studies.

First published in 1992. This book invites the reader to cast the mind a hundred and fifty years back to a short span of time between 1829 and 1842. This was an exciting period when Britain’s might, demonstrated to the world at Trafalgar and Waterloo, was fortified by leadership in steam technology and was given a new direction by the liberal philosophy that British statesmen, thinkers and poets proclaimed at home and abroad. The Euphrates expedition was an attempt by well-intentioned British governments to achieve a geopolitical end by a technological means. The objective was to halt Russian expansion in the Near East, where some observers saw a threat to Britain’s control of India.

"Old Captain Noah is frustrated. He and his wife are at odds about what could and should be done as to enticing an entire menagerie into his ark for their own self preservation. Pairs of animals arrive and complications arise about signing them up and finding them proper quarters. Only the intercession of a dynamic blues singing angel spiced with written messages from the Lord helps to restore some semblance of sanity to the situation. Then discrimination among the animals takes place. Unicorns and Griffins prefer to become extinct rather than associate with the likes of rats, skunks and others. But after forty days and nights, their stormy voyage on the ark is ended -- and its passengers depart for a brave new world and new complications in accommodations on terra firma. "--Publisher.