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Enigma: The Battle For The Code
By Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. 2000
The complete story of how the German Enigma codes were broken. Perfect for fans of THE IMITATION GAME, the new…
film on Alan Turing's Enigma code, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.Breaking the German Enigma codes was not only about brilliant mathematicians and professors at Bletchley Park. There is another aspect of the story which it is only now possible to tell. It takes in the exploits of spies, naval officers and ordinary British seamen who risked, and in some cases lost, their lives snatching the vital Enigma codebooks from under the noses of Nazi officials and from sinking German ships and submarines. This book tells the whole Enigma story: its original invention and use by German forces and how it was the Poles who first cracked - and passed on to the British - the key to the German airforce Enigma. The more complicated German Navy Enigma appeared to them to be unbreakable.1848: Year Of Revolution
By X Mike Rapport. 2009
In 1848, Europe was engulfed in a firestorm of revolution. The streets of cities from Paris to Bucharest and from…
Berlin to Palermo were barricaded and flooded by armed insurgents proclaiming political liberties and national freedom. The conservative order which had held sway since the fall of Napoleon in 1815 crumbled beneath the revolutionary assault. This book narrates the breathtaking events which overtook Europe in 1848, tracing brilliantly their course from the exhilaration of the liberal triumph, through the fear of social chaos to the final despair of defeat and disillusionment. The failures of 1848 would scar European history with the contradictions of authoritarianism and revolution until deep into the twentieth century.Golden Lads: A Study of Anthony Bacon, Francis and Their Friends (Virago Modern Classics #114)
By Daphne Du Maurier. 1975
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA'A landmark book on a much-neglected figure, containing ground-breaking research . . . Vintage du…
Maurier - a page-turner, and a thundering good read!' Lisa JardineA fascinating historical figure, Anthony Bacon was a contemporary of the brilliant band of gallants who clustered round the court of Elizabeth I, and he was closely connected with the Queen's favourite, the Earl of Essex. He also worked as an agent for Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen's spymaster, living in France where he became acquainted with Henri IV and the famous essayist Michel de Montaigne.It was in France that du Maurier discovered a secret that, if disclosed during Bacon's lifetime, could have put an end to his political career . . . Du Maurier did much to shed light on matters that had long puzzled historians, and, as well as a consummate exercise in research, this biography is also a strange and fascinating tale.Have you ever wondered what it was like in the Valley of the Kings? To unlock the mysteries of the…
pyramids? Or sail down the Nile on Cleopatra's Barge? In her fascinating new introduction to the wonders of ancient Egypt expert Barbara Mertz tells the extraordinary history from the first stone age settlements to the age of Cleopatra and the Roman Emperors. It offers not just insights into the glories of the Pharaohs, but also intriguing glimpses of everyday life, folklore and culture.What's Tha Up To?: Memories of a Yorkshire Bobby
By Martyn Johnson. 2010
'A wonderful slice-of-life autobiography' Daily Express'I've turned boys into men and policemen into coppers,' said the Sergeant. 'Policemen have got…
brains, but coppers, they've got brains and common sense.'No two days were ever the same for bobby-on-the-beat Martyn Johnson. Come rain or come shine, he patrolled his patch with a sharp eye for troublemakers and a kind word for those in need of a friend. Whether he was pursuing unlikely coal thieves, tracking down peacocks gone AWOL or investigating mysterious flying saucers over Sheffield, PC Johnson faced every new challenge with a smile and a healthy dose of his copper's common sense. In his charming and funny memoir, Martyn Johnson recalls the rogues, cheats and scoundrels - as well as the many friends - who made his life on the beat so unforgettable.Because You Died: Poetry and Prose of the First World War and After
By Vera Brittain. 2008
This collection of Vera Brittain's poetry and prose, some of it never published before, commemorates the men she loved -…
fiancé, brother and two close friends - who served and died in the First World War. It draws on her experiences as a VAD nurse in London, Malta, and France, and illustrates her growing conviction of the wickedness of all war.Illustrated with many extraordinary photographs from Brittain's own albums, and edited with a new introduction by Mark Bostridge, Because You Died is an elegy to men who lost their lives in a bloody conflict, and a volume of remembrance to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice.The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed
By Gavin Menzies. 2000
The bestselling author of 1421: THE YEAR THE CHINESE DISCOVERED THE WORLD uncovers the truth behind the mystery of Atlantis.…
After a chance conversation in Egypt in 2008, bestselling historian Gavin Menzies launched himself on a quest that would reveal the truth behind the mystery of Atlantis and her destruction.Through an examination of documentary and academic research, metallurgy, ancient shipbuilding and navigation techniques, artefacts and DNA evidence, Menzies slowly and painstakingly reveals a trading empire that spanned from the Great Lakes in North America to Kerala in India. And in doing so finally explains the incredible reality behind the legendary civilisation described by Plato and its disappearance.Reading like a real-life Indiana Jones story as ex-Royal Navy submarine captain Menzies travels round the world in pursuit of his goal, this is epic, iconoclastic popular history.Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made
By Steve Miller. 2016
Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made is a vivid journey into the heart of a misunderstood subculture.…
Through firsthand reporting, including interviews with Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse, their friends and family, and numerous devoted fans, Juggalo explores the lives of the proud outsiders who are frequently labeled as a threat or dismissed as a joke.Author and journalist Steve Miller follows ICP across America, hanging out with Juggalos before and after shows, at the legendary annual Gathering of the Juggalos, and at work and home to share their stories. In addition, Juggalo dives deep into the FBI's misguided assault on Juggalo culture and the misidentification of this devoted group of horrorcore fans as a gang.Juggalo is also the chronicle of two hard-luck kids from Detroit who created an empire and became the unwitting stars of a uniquely American grassroots success story. Without the help of radio airplay and with little love from the music industry establishment, ICP went platinum and fostered one of America's most durable subcultures.Juggalo is required reading for the hardcore fan and pop culture buff alike, a scrupulously researched account of a subculture unlike any other-one that so shook the establishment it launched a federal investigation-as well as a window into the world of the Juggalos and the singular mythology of their underworld apocalypse.A fascinating history of the lives of two of Africa's most notorious dictators. Each in their own ways, Idi Amin…
and Bokassa set new levels of sheer madness and cruelty, and helped to define the modern tyrant. From Idi Amin's obsession with Queen Victoria, to Bokassa's cruel, cannibalistic excesses, this is a brief, but very readable guide to two dark chapters in post-colonial African historyThe First London Olympics: 1908
By Rebecca Jenkins. 2008
In the summer that saw the first successful flight of the Zeppelin, a 140 acre site of scrubland in West…
London was transformed into the White City, which housed the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition - and a state-of-the-art stadium built to house the first London Olympics. The Olympics were organised by volunteers in just 18 months and at a fraction of the cost of the modern Olympics and yet, just as today, the sport was overshadowed by doping scandals and caused international uproar. The ferocious competitiveness of a US team dominated by New York Irish Americans led to a succession of 'scandals' culminating in the historic marathon when Italian confectioner baker Dorando Pietri's heroic efforts at the limits of exhaustion so entranced on-lookers that track officials helped him across the finish line. Coinciding with the 100th Anniversary of the first London Olympics, this delightful social and sporting history - illustrated with over 70 contemporary images - provides a thought-provoking contrast to the forthcoming 2012 Olympic Games.A Brief History of Slavery: A New Global History (Brief Histories)
By Jeremy Black. 2011
A thought-provoking and important book that raises essential issues crucial not only for understanding our past but also the present…
day.In this panoramic history, Jeremy Black tells how slavery was first developed in the ancient world, and reaches all the way to the present in the form of contemporary crimes such as trafficking and bonded labour. He shows how slavery has taken many forms throughout history and across the world - from the uprising of Spartacus, the plantations of the West Indies, and the murderous forced labour of the gulags and concentration camps.Slavery helped to consolidate transoceanic empires and helped mould new world societies such as America and Brazil. Black charts the long fight for abolition in the nineteenth century, looking at both the campaigners as well as the harrowing accounts of the enslaved themselves.Slavery is still with us today, and coerced labour can be found closer to home than one might expect.The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
By Vincent Van Gogh. 2003
A carefully selected edition of the letters of Van Gogh. For this great artist it is unusually difficult to separate…
his life from his work. These letters reveal his inner turmoil and strength of character, and provide an extraordinary insight into the intensity and creativity of his artistic life.Rabbit Stew And A Penny Or Two: A Gypsy Family's Hard and Happy Times on the Road in the 1950s
By Maggie Smith-Bendell. 2009
Born on a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived…
through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie rode and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional ways disappeared. Eventually Maggie married a house-dweller and tried to settle for bricks and mortar, but she never lost the restless spirit, the deep love of the land and the gift for storytelling that were her Romani inheritance.Maggie's story is one of hardship and prejudice, but also, unforgettably, it recalls the glories of the travelling life, in the absolute safety of a loyal and loving family.The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall (Virago Modern Classics #131)
By Daphne Du Maurier. 1976
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCAMany accounts of the life of Francis Bacon have been written for scholars. But du…
Maurier's aim in this biography was to illuminate the many facets of Bacon's remarkable personality for the common reader.To her book she brought the same gifts of imagination and perception that made her earlier biography, Golden Lads, so immensely readable, skilfully threading into her narrative extracts from contemporary documents and from Bacon's own writings, and setting her account of his life within a vivid contemporary framework.This is truly history made alive.Unlike many authors of popular historical biographies, du Maurier resembled Antonia Fraser in being an indefatigable researcher - Francis KingThe Art of Betrayal: Life and Death in the British Secret Service
By Gordon Corera. 2011
The secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day.The British Secret Service has been cloaked…
in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carre. THE ART OF BETRAYAL provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction. It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of World War II and by focusing on the people and the relationships that lie at the heart of espionage, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence. From the defining period of the early Cold War through to the modern day, MI6 has undergone a dramatic transformation from a gung-ho, amateurish organisation to its modern, no less controversial, incarnation. Gordon Corera reveals the triumphs and disasters along the way.The grand dramas of the Cold War and after - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 11 September 2001 attacks and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies whose stories form the centrepiece of the narrative. But some of the individuals featured here, in turn, helped shape the course of those events. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. Many of these accounts are based on exclusive interviews and access. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.British Summer Time Begins: The School Summer Holidays 1930-1980
By Ysenda Maxtone Graham. 2020
British Summer Time Begins is about summer holidays of the mid-twentieth century and how they were spent, as recounted to…
Ysenda Maxtone-Graham in vividly remembered detail by people who were there. Through this prism, it paints a revealing portrait of twentieth-century Britain in summertime: how we were, how families functioned, what houses and gardens and streets were like, what journeys were like, and what people did all day in their free time. It explores their expectations, hopes, fears and habits, the rules or lack of rules under which they lived, their happiness and sadness, their sense of being treasured or neglected - all within living memory, from pre-war summers to the late 1970s. Ysenda takes us back to the long stretch of time from the last days of June till the early days of September - those months when the term-time self was cast off and you could become the person you really were, and you had (if you were lucky) enough hours in the endless succession of days to become good at the things that would later define your adulthood. The 'showpiece' part of the summer holidays was 'the summer holiday', when families took off to the seaside, or to grandparents' houses teeming with cousins, or on early package holidays to France or Spain, siblings wedged into the back of small cars, roof-racks clattering, mothers preparing picnics. British Summer Time Begins is as much about the long weeks either side of that holiday as the trip itself: the weeks when nothing much officially happened, boredom often lurked nearby, and you vanished for hours on end, nobody much knowing or even caring where you were. Could it be that those unscheduled days were actually the most important and formative of your life?From the author of the beloved Terms & Conditions, British Summer Time Begins is a delightful, nostalgic and joyous celebration of summers.The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward: Sex, Scandal and Deadly Secrets in the Profumo Affair
By Anthony Summers, Stephen Dorril. 2013
The Profumo Affair was the political scandal of the twentieth century. The Tory War Minister, John Profumo, had been sleeping…
with the teenage Christine Keeler, while at the same time she had been sleeping with a Russian spy. The ensuing investigation revealed a secret world where titled men and prostitutes mixed, of orgies and S&M parties. The revelations rocked the British establishment to its core and lead to the resignation of the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. And seemingly at the centre of it all was one man, Dr Stephen Ward.Stephen Ward was many things to many people. He was a successful osteopath to an establishment list of clients. He was a part-time artist who had drawn portraits of members of the Royal Family. To some he was a 'provider of popsies to rich people'; a man who knews lots of pretty girls of flexible morals. And finally, when the scandal came crashing down on the government, he was a scapegoat, put on trial and, ultimately, hounded to his death.The Secret Worlds of Stephen Ward is the definitive investigation into the Profumo scandal and the life and mysterious death of the man at its heart.Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey
By The Countess Of Carnarvon. 2013
**Explore the fascinating history of the real Downton Abbey as the Crawley family saga makes its way on to the…
big screen with Downton Abbey, the major motion picture**'An excellent depiction of English aristocratic life ... a compelling portrait' Publisher's Weekly* * * * * *The follow-up to the international bestseller Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, this book moves the story into the 1920s, and focuses on the remarkable American heiress who came to reign at Highclere Castle.Sometimes the facts are even more extraordinary than the fiction ... This book tells the story of Lady Catherine, a beautiful American girl who became the chatelaine of Highclere Castle, the setting for Julian Fellowes' award-winning drama Downton Abbey. Charming and charismatic, Catherine caught the eye of Lord Porchester (or 'Porchey', as he was known) when she was just 20 years old, and wearing a pale yellow dress at a ball. She had already turned down 14 proposals before she eventually married Porchey in 1922. But less than a year later Porchey's father died suddenly, and he became the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, inheriting a title and a Castle that changed both their lives forever. Catherine found herself suddenly in charge of a small army of household staff, and hosting lavish banquets and weekend house parties. Although the couple were very much in love, considerable challenges lay ahead for Catherine. They were immediately faced with the task of saving Highclere when debts threatened to destroy the estate. As the 1920s moved to a close, Catherine's adored brother died and she began to lose her husband to the distractions London had to offer. When the Second World War broke out, life at the Castle would never be the same again. Drawing on rich material from the private archives at Highclere, including beautiful period photographs, the current Countess of Carnarvon transports us back to the thrilling and alluring world of the 'real Downton Abbey' and its inhabitants.Cardinal Newman
By Michael Ffinch. 2020
The fascinating and insightful biography of one of the most intriguing, thoughtful and controversial figures of the 19th century.'Growth is…
the only evidence of life' - so said poet, academic and theologian John Henry, Cardinal Newman. Canonised in 2019 (despite having said 'I have nothing of the saint about me'), Newman was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of the 19th century.This highly lyrical and accomplished biography not only covers his religious life (he played a vital role in the Oxford Movement, and subsequently converted to Catholicism), but also places him in the context of 19th-century religious revival and changing attitudes. In addition to his sometimes controversial teachings, Cardinal Newman was also a poet who wrote the text of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and was responsible for the foundation of the Oratorian Order in England.Michael Ffinch shows an unusual insight into Newman's character, finding an unexpected warmth and humour in a man often thought of as cold and austere. This fascinating biography also shows a deep understanding of a church emerging from dark centuries of persecution and misunderstanding into the light of what Newman himself chose to call 'The Second Spring'.The Seeker: A prizewinning historical thriller set in Cromwell's London (The Seeker #1)
By S. G. MacLean. 2015
A bloody murder. An open and shut case? In Oliver Cromwell's London, nothing is as it seems - Captain Damian…
Seeker must battle to find justice, when an innocent man's life hangs in the balance.'Challenges CJ Sansom for dominion of historical crime' Sunday Times'The best historical crime novel of the year' Sunday ExpressLondon, 1654. Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord Protector. Yet he has many enemies, at home and abroad. London is a complex web of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins. One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector. No one knows where Seeker comes from, who his family is, or even his real name. All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be long hidden from him. In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip. Suddenly they are ringing with news of a murder. John Winter, hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army, is dead, and the lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found standing over the bleeding body, clutching a knife. Yet despite the damning evidence, Seeker is not convinced of Ellingworth's guilt. He will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice: and Seeker knows better than any man where to search.