1847

Having grown up in an Irish country house built in 1847, author and historian TURTLE BUNBURY has long been fascinated by that epic year. Determined to understand its zeitgeist, he has assembled 38 remarkable stories that took place across the planet during those twelve tumultuous months. 

With his penchant for the quirky, Bunbury confronts all manner of human enterprise to reveal a world of nobility and generosity, of bold genius and fearsome savagery, embracing everything from the salty seadogs who explored the Pacific and Arctic oceans to show-stopping entertainers like Lola Montez and General Tom Thumb - the intrepid pioneers who stumbled through the mountains and prairies of the Americas to the ground-breaking inventors of the doughnut, the gumball and the Christmas cracker - the famine-starved Irish and persecuted German emigrants to the Vietnamese emperor's war with the French - the ivory-tinkling genius of Liszt and Mendelssohn to the horse-bound Comanche warriors who dominated Texas - the American opium magnates who ran roughshod over China to the Irish soldiers who fought for Mexico.