Bøker av Nicholas Blincoe

We all think we know the tale. As a child, Charles Dickens was forced to work in a blacking factory in terrible conditions, an event that scarred him for life and inspired his great novel about a vulnerable child Oliver Twist. Except that only tells one part of the story. Dickens actually lifted significant parts of the narrative from one of the earliest working-class memoirs by genuine factory boy Robert Blincoe. In Oliver Twist & Me, Robert Blincoe's great-great-grandson, the novelist Nicholas Blincoe, presents a dual biography of the early years of Robert and Dickens, including reflections on his own quasi-Dickensian upbringing in Rochdale. He retraces the steps of his ancestor, whose life story was scarred by tragedy and redeemed by hope, as well as traipses the streets of Camden in search of the real workhouse that inspired the novel. Both an affectionate reassessment of a beloved classic and a trenchant investigation into what it takes for working-class voices to be heard on their own terms, Oliver Twist & Me will show you Dickens as you've never seen him before.

"[Bethlehem] brings within reach 11,000 years of history, centering on the beloved town's unique place in the world. Blincoe's love of Bethlehem is compelling, even as he does not shy away from the complexities of its chronicle." -- President Jimmy Carter Bethlehem is so suffused with history and myth that it feels like an unreal city even to those who call it home. For many, Bethlehem remains the little town at the edge of the desert described in Biblical accounts. Today, the city is hemmed in by a wall and surrounded by forty-one Israeli settlements and hostile settlers and soldiers. Nicholas Blincoe tells the town's history through the visceral experience of living there, taking readers through its stone streets and desert wadis, its monasteries, aqueducts, and orchards to show the city from every angle and era. His portrait of Bethlehem sheds light on one of the world's most intractable political problems, and he maintains that if the long thread winding back to the city's ancient past is severed, the chances of an end to the Palestine-Israel conflict will be lost with it.

An unforgettable history of the beloved little town at the heart of the world's longest conflict, chronicling times of peace and war over the course of 11,000 years