Books by David Barrie

A book about animal navigation - how creatures, great and small, find their way and how brilliantly they manage without benefit of maps or instruments - and what lessons there are for human beings.

This is the first book specifically devoted to exploring one of the longest-running religious, social and political controversies in nineteenth-century Britain ¿ the sixty five year campaign to legalise marriage between a man and his deceased wife¿s sister. The issue captured the political, religious and literary imagination of the United Kingdom and provoked huge parliamentary and religious debate and aroused national, ecclesiastical and sexual passions. The campaign to legalise such unions, and the widespread opposition it provoked, spoke to issues not just of incest, sex and the family, but also to national identity and political and religious governance.

In the tradition of Dava Sobel's `Longitude' comes sailing expert David Barrie's compelling and dramatic tale of invention and discovery - an eloquent elegy to one of the most important navigational instruments ever created, and the daring mariners who used it to explore, conquer, and map the world.