When Marjory Wardrop joined her diplomat brother Oliver in Georgia in 1894, the two siblings found themselves witnessing the birth pangs of a modern nation. Recognizing the significance of these transformative years, they actively participated in the work of Ilia Chavchavadze and other leaders of the independence movement, which culminated in Georgia’s declaration of independence in 1918.
            Becoming increasingly fascinated by Georgian history and culture, the Wardrops gathered a significant collection of manuscripts dating from the eleventh to the twentieth century, including a seventeenth-century manuscript of Georgia’s national epic poem The Man in the Panther’s Skin, which Marjory famously translated. Through the items of the Waldrop collection—manuscripts, royal charters, correspondence, notebooks, and a draft of the 1918 declaration of independence—Nikoloz Aleksidze narrates a history of Georgian literature and culture, moving from epic and folk tales, to the Georgian Church’s battle against persecution, to the political activism of women in Georgia at the end of the nineteenth century.
            Richly illustrated with rare and previously unpublished images from the collection, this book offers unique insight into Georgian culture and political history through the remarkable lens of an eccentric English diplomat and his talented sister.

For centuries the Gough Map has amazed observers with its remarkable detail and baffled historians with its hidden secrets: who made it and why was it made? This gorgeously illustrated volume offers possible answers to these questions with a detailed examination of the map that employs the latest in technology, cartographic theories, and historical research.

Recent digitization of the Gough Map has made it more legible than at any other time since its arrival at the Bodleian Library in 1809. This work utilizes new georectification technology to project a modern map of Britain over the Gough Map, revealing the incredible accuracy of the 700-year-old manuscript. In stunningly detailed reproduction, The Gough Map charts a vast array of cities, routes, and landmarks, including the principal medieval settlements of Bristol, Oxford and Norwich; the Severn, Thames, and Humber rivers; the loop of the Wear at Durham; and routes between towns with distances marked in Roman numerals.

The volume also features a color fold-out print of the Gough map, as well as numerous close-up images of each area. The Gough Map offers an unparalleled opportunity to examine this fascinating example of medieval mapmaking.

The “miracle drug” penicillin was first administered in Oxford in February 1941, leading to a full-blown transformation in the way bacterial infection was diagnosed and treated. What was to become one of the greatest stories of the “golden age of medical discovery” not only had its roots in Oxford, but was the latest in a line of pivotal medical discoveries made in the city.
           
Great Medical Discoveries offers a short illustrated history of the city’s contribution to the medical sciences, from the medieval period to the present day, when it is home to some of the world’s leading large scientific institutions. In charting this remarkable history, the book showcases twenty discoveries across the centuries. In the mid-twentieth century, for instance, Oxford led the field of experimental medicine, and William Harvey, Thomas Willis, and Thomas Sydenham all gained eponymous status with their pioneering research into the workings of the human body. In the mid-seventeenth century, Dorothy Hodgkin’s development of x-ray crystallography earned her a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Meanwhile, the work of epidemiologist Richard Doll saved millions of lives by making clear the long-term dangers of smoking and the benefits of quitting.
           
Great Medical Discoveries traces these and other examples of groundbreaking research—from the scientific application of anesthetics to new treatments for hemophilia and life-saving advances in neurosurgery—and shows how they form part of a wider tapestry of work that has helped shape the medical sciences and improve human health.