I could see -and almost hear- Philip walking around the monastery at El Escorial. They seemed to make reading difficult, Parker made historical figures come alive on the page. Up to then I had found most of them very boring. As an editor at Taurus (a non-fiction imprint now part of Penguin Random House Spain), one of the first books I would work on would be El éxito nunca es definitivo ( Success is never final), by Geoffrey Parker.Īs soon as I met him in person I told him his book on Philip II had changed my view of historians. I drifted away from History, with a capital H, and began working in publishing.

Some years passed without me thinking about Parker or any other hispanist, for that matter. (You won’t find my name on it, by the way, translators were invisible in those days). There I was asked to translate a short summary of Felipe II, which would appear in the form of a booklet, in a series called Cuadernos de Historia16.

I had never read anything quite like it, and I soon began to discover other British historians, who we call hispanistas, for their research matter is Spain.Īfter school I landed a job at a historical monthly called Historia16. I myself had never heard of him, when in 1987 my Modern History Professor recommended that we read his book Felipe II, first published by Alianza Editorial in Spain in 1984. First, about the making of a historian, where it all began, and second, how Geoffrey Parker writes his books, where all that begins.

I have known him for some years now, and I wanted to write about two things. OL26196856W Page_number_confidence 91.81 Pages 1446 Partner Innodata Pdf_module_version 0.0.15 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20211014124450 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 1601 Scandate 20211012231534 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9788408094845 Tts_version 4.For those of you who don’t know, Geoffrey Parker is a renowned historian, Distinguished University Professor and Andreas Dorpalen Professor of European History, and Associate of the Mershon Center at The Ohio State University. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 22:06:04 Associated-names Gordo del Rey, Victoria Martínez Hernández, Santiago Boxid IA40260007 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

Philip II by Geoffrey Parker