HBT Archives - Duckworth Books

Duet

An ancient shaman raises a conch shell to her lips in a painted cave. A scholar in a Shaolin monastery bends over a manuscript and invents a musical scale. A 21st-century pop star takes her seat at a candyfloss-pink piano.

Music is interwoven into the fabric of our lives. We listen to it. Some of us play it. And from the earliest traces of human existence, we have attempted to capture it – through the instruments we decorate, the spaces we perform in, and in kaleidoscopic paintings, medieval illuminated manuscripts and haute couture.

In this startlingly original and beautifully illustrated history of music, classically trained musician, art historian and BBC Next Generation Thinker Dr Eleanor Chan takes us on an unforgettable journey through sound and vision that will forever change the way we see music.

Fall of Civilizations

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‘You need to read this book’ Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

‘Cooper is a phenomenon’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times

**Based on the hit podcast with over 200 million streams**

The world is full of ruins. From the Colosseum of Rome to the crumbling suburbs of Detroit, the vine-wreathed temples of the Maya to the shell-pocked buildings of Bakhmut and Gaza. Each of these ruins has a different history, but all of them are places where, one day, the future ended.

In Fall of Civilizations, historian Paul Cooper tells the stories behind our greatest civilizations, how they rose to power and what life was like for the people who witnessed their downfall. Based on the critically acclaimed podcast, this extraordinary book turns a clear eye on to humanity’s past mistakes – and whether we are doomed to repeat them.

Black Victorians

Beyond the patrician vision of Victorian Britain traditionally advanced in our textbooks, there always existed another, more diverse Britain, populated by people of colour marking achievements both ordinary and extraordinary.

In this deeply researched and dynamic history, Woolf and Abraham reach into the archives to recentre our attention on marginalised Black Victorians, from leading medic George Rice to political agitator William Cuffay to abolitionists Henry ‘Box’ Brown and Sarah Parker Remond; from pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Eaton to renowned composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. While acknowledging the paradoxes of Victorian views of race, Black Victorians demonstrates, with storytelling verve and a liberatory impulse, how Black people were visible and influential, firmly rooted in British life.

David Bowie Made Me Gay

‘Lovingly detailed and exhaustively researched – easily the most readable and comprehensive guide I’ve seen to this fascinating hidden history’ Tom Robinson, musician, broadcaster and long-time LGBT rights activist

From Sia to Elton John, Dusty Springfield to Little Richard, LGBT voices have changed the course of modern music. But in a world before they gained understanding and a place in the mainstream, how did the queer musicians of yesteryear fight to build foundations for those who came after?

Pulling back the curtain on the colourful world that shaped our musical and cultural landscape, Darryl W. Bullock reveals the inspiring and often heartbreaking stories of internationally renowned stars, as well as lesser-known names, who have led the revolution from all corners of the globe. David Bowie Made Me Gay is a treasure trove of moving and provocative stories that emphasise the right to be heard and the need to keep up the fight for equality in the spotlight.

Vagabonds

Dickensian London is brought to real and vivid life in this Wolfson History Prize-shortlisted portrait by a rising-star historian and New Generation Thinker

Until now, our view of bustling late Georgian and Victorian London has been filtered through its great chroniclers, who did not themselves come from poverty – Dickens, Mayhew, Gustave Doré. Their visions were dazzling in their way, censorious, often theatrical. Now, for the first time, this innovative social history brilliantly – and radically – shows us the city’s most compelling period (1780–1870) at street level.

From beggars and thieves to musicians and missionaries, porters and hawkers to sex workers and street criers, Jensen unites a breadth of original research and first-hand accounts and testimonies to tell their stories in their own words. What emerges is a buzzing, cosmopolitan world of the working classes, diverse in gender, ethnicity, origin, ability and occupation – a world that challenges and fascinates us still.

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