The Byrom Collection - Couverture rigide

Hancox, Joy

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0224030469 ISBN 13 : 9780224030465

Editeur : Jonathan Cape, 1992

Synopsis

Before he was executed for his part in the Jacobite rebellion, Siddal had lived near Manchester in a farmhouse now altered and the home of the author of this book. Curious about Siddal's silence at the trial, Joy Hancox came to believe he had gone to the gallows to protect someone else. Her investigations revealed a close connection between Siddal and his neighbour John Byrom, a respected member - along with Newton, Wren and Hans Sloane - of The Royal Society. Byrom, who was known to harbour Jacobite sympathies, invented a system of shorthand (later developed by Pitman) which might well have provided protection against any charge of heresy after he formed his Cabala Club. Already his loyalty to the Stuarts had denied him a career at Cambridge and in the Church. When Joy Hancox finally tracked down Byrom's collection of 516 drawings, scholars of several disciplines began to testify to the incalculable value of the discovery. She little expected the revelations these drawings were to yield, nor the clandestine history she was to uncover in the search for their origins. The collection spans two centuries, from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of George II, and involves the courts and noble families of Europe. Cabalistic philosophy, mysticism, freemasonry, cosmology and navigation link the drawings to the emergence of experimental science from its association with magic. The power of number and proportion is the key to the whole collection, which includes designs for medieval Templar churches, the hidden geometry of such buildings as King's College Chapel in Cambridge and Westminster Abbey, working drawings for early precision instruments and, perhaps most remarkable of all, plans for the original Globe Theatre, the Rose and five other Elizabethan playhouses.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Among the Collection's precise geometric drawings of little observed features of Westminster Abbey, the Temple Church in London, King's College Chapel in Cambridge and Milan Cathedral are what purport to be the setting-out plans for the original Globe Theatre, the Rose and five other Elizabethan playhouses.

The author made these extraordinary documents available to researchers involved in rebuilding the Globe on Bankside, who chose to discount their validity and Joy Hancox's interpretation of them. Since then archaeological excavations at the Globe site have lent support to the accounts in this book. Now that the new theatre is completed, it is already receiving criticism for its size, inadequate acoustics and poor sightlines. As the author reveals in her new Preface to the paperback edition of her book, her own interpretation of the Byrom drawings would result in a smaller structure of only eight sides in which an overall harmony of design comes together to provide good sightlines and good acoustics.

Additional evidence is provided in a new book (to be published shortly) by Professor John Gleeson of the University of San Francisco in support of the Globe plans found in the Byrom Collection. Even more remarkable, the concept behind all these architectural designs

Biographie de l'auteur

Joy Hancox, an Associate of the Royal Collge of Music, is also the author of a biography of John Byron called The Queen's Chameleon - 'A fascinating account', The Times.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Jonathan Cape
• Date d'édition: 1992
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0224030469
• ISBN 13: 9780224030465
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 320
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: WordUnited GmbH; distribution@wordunited.com; ; Theodorstrasse 105; DUSSELDORF; 40472; Allemagne