Social and cultural history Books

Book Synopsis'Gripping and all too timely' James Hawes 'A brilliant mix of detailed research and vivid storytelling' Julia Boyd 'History at its very best – and a fabulous translation, too' Graham Hurley In March 1930, after the collapse of the coalition that had ruled Germany since 1928, President Hindenburg asked Heinrich Bruning, bespectacled and scholarly leader of the Catholic Centre Party, to form a government. Some three years later, in January 1933, Hindenburg appointed as chancellor the demagogic, virulently anti-Semitic leader of the National Socialist party. Within weeks, Adolf Hitler has begun the process of dismantling the flawed democracy of the Weimar Republic and replacing it with a one-party totalitarian state. Darkness Falling depicts in compelling fashion the serial crises and mounting violence of a febrile era. Peter Walther examines the slow death of Weimar through the prism of nine colourful protagonists, including leading German politicians of right, left and centre, the clairvoyant and occultist, Erik Jan Hanussen and the formidable American journalist Dorothy Thompson. He profiles these heterogeneous characters in intriguing detail, pulling together the threads of their lives to chart the demise of German parliamentary democracy and the rise of National Socialist tyranny. Along the way we gain fascinating insights into the machinations in the corridors of power to keep the 'Bohemian corporal' from the chancellorship, and the venality of the Nazi elite and its fellow travellers from the demi-monde of early 1930s Berlin. Walther evokes the louche nightlife of the German capital – 'a playground for charlatans and prophets, madmen and crooks' – memorably and atmospherically. A masterly fusion of meticulously researched historical writing and vividly propulsive storytelling, Darkness Falling is a distinctive and enthralling account of Germany's slide from democracy to dictatorship. Translated by Dr Peter Lewis.Trade ReviewGripping both as German history and as a timely warning for us all of how otherwise sane people can fatally overestimate the survivability of democracy, and keep scrabbling for petty advantage even as the darkness gather -- James Hawes, author of The Shortest History of GermanyA brilliant mix of detailed research and vivid storytelling, this intriguing account of Germany's terrifying slide from democracy to dictatorship is truly hard to put down -- Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the Third ReichAn astonishing achievement, meticulously researched, beautifully written, full of surprises both terrifying and deeply revelatory. This is history as its very best – and a fabulous translation, too -- Graham Hurley, author of Last Flight to Stalingrad

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Book SynopsisA oenophile's guide to all things wine.Red, white, sparkling or rosé – arguably no other alcoholic drink has had more impact on our society than wine. From its earliest iterations in earthenware jars all the way to the bottles we find lining supermarket shelves today, it has evolved from its use in religious rites along with culture, diet and society as a whole. And with literally billions of litres drank worldwide, our love of fermented grape juice shows no signs of waning.This little book gets to the heart of our love affair with wine. After taking a tour through a history of its evolution through the centuries, it delves into the nitty-gritty of production before we taste the fruits of all that labour – in moderation of course – and learn all about drinking (and hopefully appreciating) this most esteemed of beverages. As well as a whole caseload of quaffable facts and famous sayings about the nectar of the gods, there is also a glossary of useful wine terminology for the aspiring connoisseur, just in case you need a handy reminder during a particularly arduous tasting session..."A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world." Louis Pasteur"My only regret in life is that I didn't drink more wine." Ernest HemingwayVitis vinifera is the principal wine-producing plant, and the majority of the world's wine comes from varieties of this species, mostly because of its high sugar content.Table of ContentsA Brief History of Wine - Tracing the history of wine from Egypt to the present day • Nectar of the Gods - Everything you need to know about producing wine • Happy Hour - Quirky facts and fun trivia about wine • Wine O'Clock - How to drink and appreciate wine, with tasting notes on some of the most popular varieties • Nunc est Bibendum - Some of the best quotes about wine, from Horace to Hemmingway • An Oenophile's Glossary - Words any serious wine connoisseur should know – and try to remember after a few glasses.

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Book Synopsis‘A tale of kings and conquests and high-sea adventures … A must-read for those interested in the history of spices.’ – Shrabani Basu, author of Victoria and Abdul and Curry: The Biography of the Nation’s Favourite DishHumans have crossed the oceans and traversed the unknown in search of spice and flavour for thousands of years. Mustard has been found at Neolithic sites in Iran, Germany and Denmark; the Romans’ love affair with black pepper was insatiable; pepper, saffron, cinnamon, ginger, galangal and grains of paradise were ordered in large quantities for Richard III’s coronation feast; and vanilla was credited as helping 342 eighteenth-century men become ‘astonishing lovers’.Although the Romans had imported black pepper, and Eastern spices had trickled through to the West for centuries, it was only after Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape that huge quantities of spices were brought back from India and the Far East, starting vicious trade wars between the Portuguese, Dutch and English as they established their colonial empires. Spices came from the West too: when Columbus reached the Americas in the fifteenth century, he brought back chilies to Europe, and from there they spread rapidly across the globe.The History and Natural History of Spices looks at spices from both a botanical and historical perspective, from their uses and classification to their influence on trade, war and global events. Both comprehensive and entertaining, it is the story of how our passion for spices helped to change the world.Trade Review‘A tale of kings and conquests and high-sea adventures … A must-read for those interested in the history of spices.’ SHRABANI BASU, author of Victoria and Abdul and Curry: The Biography of the Nation's Favourite Dish

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Book SynopsisDeft and era-spanning . . . Uta Seeburg compresses a vast culinary history into a collection that's equal parts lively and illuminating. Mayukh Sen, author of Taste Makers What foods did ancient Egyptians think worthy of accompanying pharaohs into the afterlife? How could canned meat have doomed the 1845 Franklin expedition? Why did a king have to order his subjects to eat potatoes? Why did a sixteenth-century cookbook author argue that beavers should be considered fish? A revelatory romp through the history of humanity, this collection of fifty snackable essays answers all of these baffling culinary enigmas and more. Packed to the brim with juicy tidbits and cultural insights, How Would You Like Your Mammoth? is a fascinating look at how the food we eat defines us and always has.

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Book SynopsisSince the dawn of humanity, women have changed the world as leaders, warriors, athletes, innovators, reformers, advocates, activists, and scholars. They have ruled empires, traversed the skies, fronted political and social movements, produced prolific literature, art, and music, and pioneered ground-breaking inventions and discoveries. This wonderfully illustrated full-color hardback explores the history of women through many different cultural systems and historical eras - from First Nation women resisting gender-based violence to queer feminism - shining a light on the influential role that women have played in challenging and resisting gender stereotypes and inequalities through creative strategies. Julia Morris tells how the story of women''s history, identity, and influence is a record of dynamism, brilliant creativity, and determination where women of all backgrounds have dreamt big and broken barriers. Featuring figures such as Cleopatra, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Katherine Johnson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Toni Morrison, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and many more, this book explores the triumphs and challenges evident in the amazing achievements and legacies of these heroes past and present provides the foundations for the modern heroes of today. Illustrated with hundreds of fascinating contemporary artworks, illustrations and photographs, this reference guide is an inspiring study of women across history and their battle for equality.

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Book SynopsisThe border between Scotland and England is rich in history. It has been the site of battles, treaties, castles and crossroads. It is also a place where both countries display their nationalism: Saltires flying in the north, the Cross of St George to the south. But it can also be a lens through which to look at the changing history and identities of these two countries.Alistair Moffat is a life-long borderer and the ideal guide on this one-hundred-mile journey. We begin just north of the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Already the battlelines have been drawn - the town having been grabbed by the English from Berwickshire in 1482 and never given back. From here we will head west as our tour travels backwards and forwards through history. In all, we will walk through eight centuries before we reach our journey's end at the mouth of the River Sark.Between Britain is a history book, a travelogue, a personal reminiscence and a gently prodding examination of national identity. But above all it is a celebration of a place and the people who live there.Trade ReviewA study in nationalism . . . A journey of 100 miles but one that time travel[s] through 800 years of complex history * * Sunday Post * *Praise for Alistair Moffat: [To the Island of Tides] is often beautifully evocative of places, the past and the landscape . . . compelling and revealing * * The Times * *Extraordinary . . . There is a powerful, natural beauty in Moffat's writing * * Herald * *[Moffat] is a great teacher . . . Alert though he is to change and to the world we have lived into, he is forever in search of time that is lost and can be recovered. Enthralling . . . * * Scotsman * *Joyous . . . [The Secret History of Here] is a delightful meditation on a place, and on the role that humans played in its evolution * * Foreword * *Absorbing and thought-provoking * * Countryfile * *Truly fascinating * * Sunday Mail * *

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Book SynopsisAn affectionate but meticulously researched history of one of the most beautiful and best-loved corners of England – Crosthwaite Parish, nestling deep within the mountains and valleys of the Lake District. 'A unique contribution to English history' Hunter Davies 'A delightful, refreshingly written book, attentive to social detail and telling the only story that matters – history' Simon Jenkins 'A wonderful book' Margaret Drabble 'A completely fresh perspective on the Lakes and Lake Poets... I hugely enjoyed it' Andrew Marr Bounded by the peaks of Scafell, Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and embracing such well-known landmarks as Borrowdale, Derwentwater and Keswick, it lies within the heart of the Lake Poets' landscape and its rugged terrain excites passion in all those who know it. The Parish also boasts a remarkable history. Its 90 square miles were governed, from medieval times, by eighteen annually chosen 'customary tenants'; ancestors of the people who later prompted Wordsworth's portrayal of the area as 'a perfect Republic of Shepherds and agriculturalists'. His fellow poet Robert Southey lived within the Parish for forty years, was an active parishioner and rests in St Kentigern's churchyard. Here he is given his rightful position as a Lake Poet. In the nineteenth century, the Victorian state killed off the old parish system, sweeping away the egalitarian rule of the Eighteen Men. But a degree of redemption was at hand. Canon Rawnsley, vicar of Crosthwaite from 1883, pledged to defend the Lake District for future generations. So the Parish was at the heart of the creation of the National Trust and blazed a trail for a wider movement to preserve the English landscape. Writing with a historian's rigour and bearing aloft the banner of the Lake District statesmen, Philippa Harrison has produced a magisterial and fascinating record of a parish with a unique social, cultural and aesthetic resonance in English history.Trade ReviewHas there ever been a parish history so well researched, so filled with history and literature, campaigns and causes, and so fascinating? No chance. This is a unique contribution to English history -- Hunter Davies, author of LakelandStimulating, wide-ranging and full of interest -- Angus J L Winchester, Emeritus Professor of History, Lancaster UniversityA delightful, refreshingly written book, attentive to social detail and telling the only story that matters – history -- Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust 2008-2014A completely fresh perspective on the Lakes and Lake Poets... I hugely enjoyed it' -- Andrew MarrI love Mountain Republic. Both intimate and authoritative, it is a wonderful book -- Margaret DrabbleThis remarkable chronicle introduces the reader to Christian missionaries, Anglo-Saxon and Norse invaders, Scottish royals, local gentry, the 'Eighteen Men', Romantic poets, a succession of clergy with widely and sometimes wildly diverse convictions, and the local people who shaped the land in which they were rooted as the land shaped them. With a rare combination of finely detailed erudition and engaging, elegant, page-turning prose, Philippa Harrison charts the evolution of the Lake District. Anyone who reads her narrative will be richly rewarded -- Dr John Inge, Bishop of WorcesterPhilippa's perspective as both a local and a historian provides a fascinating take * This England *[An] affectionate scholarship grounded in the Lake District parish of Crosthwaite... [An] appropriately monumental book' * Church Times *At its heart this is a history of the farming communities of the region [...] with the ability to appeal to all those attracted to the region and not just the Lake district. A very difficult book to put down, sparking interest at each turn of the page -- Chris Craghill, Cumbria Local History FederationThere must have been thousands of books written about the Lake District, but if you thought that there could be nothing left to say about it, then think again; this fascinating social history of Crosthwaite parish stopped even this Cumbrian reader and writer in her tracks... It already looks destined for a place in the Lake District literary canon -- Sue Allan, Cumbria LifeA remarkable book with great merit... A well-written work which provides a valuable chronicle of the interplay over centuries between local management and national and regional controlling institutions, which is relevant to so many local parishes and townships -- Dr Derek Denman, Wanderer, L&DFLHSAn amazing achievement. I learned such a lot from it, from the history, from the industry, from agriculture, social history, land-ownership, museums, the economy, and then whole substories which I just found fascinating: the history of the churches in the 1830s, the sewage... Tthe mass trespass on 'Skiddaw's cub' which I knew nothing about. At times it was as though our collection was being brought alive by the portraits of some often-mentioned names, and I particularly want to thank Philippa for changing and opening my eyes about Robert Southey -- Jeff Cowton, Curator and Head of Learning, Wordsworth Grasmere, The Lake Poets: Hill Farming, Mountaineering and PoliticsA big-hearted-embrace of a book, and there are riches in it for all readers ... Philippa Harrison is a gifted narrator, Mountain Republic is a great read and a treasure trove of anecdote and fact for regional historians -- Terry McCormick, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society NewsThis authoritative and well-researched history is very accessible, very enjoyable and full of fascinating details... A joy to read from beginning to end * The Local Historian *

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Book Synopsis'Delicious... Wonderful' Guardian'Fascinating... Full of incident and food for thought' Mail on Sunday'Delightful... Vogler offers up a feast of tales about popular British foods' Financial TimesA SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA WATERSTONES BEST FOOD & DRINK BOOK OF 2023The fascinating history of the people, the ideas and the dishes that have fed - and starved - the nation, by the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Scoff.In times of plenty, we stuff ourselves. When the food runs out, we're stuffed too. How have people in the British Isles shared the riches from our fields, dairies, kitchens and seas, as well as those from around the world? And when the cupboard is bare, who steps up to the plate to feed the nation's hungry children, soldiers at war or families in crisis?Stuffed tells the stories of the food and drink at the centre of social upheavals from prehistory to the present: the medieval inns boosted by the plague; the Enclosures that finished off the celebratory roast goose; the Victorian chemist searching for unadulterated mustard; the post-war supermarkets luring customers with strawberries. Drawing on cookbooks, literature and social records, Pen Vogler reveals how these turning points have led to today's extremes of plenty and want: roast beef and food banks; allotment-fresh vegetables and ultra-processed fillers.It is a tale of feast and famine, and of the traditions, the ideas and the laws which have fed - or starved - the nation, but also of the yeasty magic of bread and ale, the thrill of sugary treats, the pies and puddings that punctuate the year, and why the British would give anything - even North America - for a nice cup of tea.Trade ReviewA fact-stuffed romp through our edible history... Impressively wide-ranging... [Vogler] relishes the moments where the past crashes up against the present. * The Times *A banquet of fascinating titbits, deep research and intellectual nourishment... Stuffed is dusted, metaphorically speaking, all over with icing sugar: a delicious and tempting thing. -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *Fascinating... A scholarly and imaginative book full of incident and food for thought * Mail on Sunday *Delightful... Vogler offers up a feast of tales about popular British foods, ranging from potatoes to kippers and ale. -- Gillian Tett * Financial Times *Delicious... [Vogler] is excellent, as in her 2020 book Scoff, at foraging among the sources to bring us wonderful stories of older food cultures. * Guardian *In this provocative history of British food, Pen Vogler goes back 400 years to lay the blame for our absurd modern eating habits. * Sunday Times *Engaging... Vogler shows how ongoing - and vital - the battle is to eat well... Deeply researched and great fun. It might make you think twice about what you eat, too. * Evening Standard *There is so much to enjoy in Stuffed... Vogler is a hands-on historian for whom the past is right there in the kitchen, the supermarket and the everyday ingredient. In Stuffed, her delight in the taste and craft of food-making, its stories and its skills is irresistibly palpable. * Literary Review *Vogler's book is divided into the histories of different foods - each telling of supply and demand falling into the right or wrong hands. The stories span pre-Enclosure times to the recent pandemic. They are deeply unsettling and anger-provoking, and it's a book that those who have influence over what we eat should read. -- Rose Prince * Spectator *Persuasive... This clever and informative account confirms that we are indeed what we eat, and that our history is a product of it too. * New Statesman *Eating and feeding are the central projects of all human societies and Stuffed reveals that they are the very best lenses through which to understand our shared history. This is an extraordinary book about food, health and power; meticulously scholarly and extremely funny; as important as it is entertaining. Crucially it slices through the contemporary and historical politics of state versus individual responsibility: eating well is our responsibility, but it is the responsibility of the state to ensure we have that ability. And the book furnishes some ability itself with a series of recipes so that you can dine like a 17th central nobleman or a medieval peasant and feel a little more connected to the story of why we eat what we eat. Shot through with wit and humanity Stuffed is an all-consuming read. -- Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed PeopleThoughtful, thought-provoking and full of fascinating detail (and intriguing recipes), this is a timely reminder we should never take our food for granted. -- Felicity CloakePen Vogler's Stuffed may tackle the question of hunger, but it is a generous and irresistible feast of a book. Spanning more than one thousand years of history, and focussing on 26 staple foods, Stuffed details the complex forces that determine diet, making clearer than ever that what we feed ourselves, our families and our communities is socially and politically shaped, and it always has been. -- Polly RussellAn ambitious book, leaping merrily from the Neolithic to the modern day... A wry sense of humour keeps it light, widening the appeal beyond food-history devotees, and modernised recipes are cleverly used to illustrate Vogler's points... A fun read and an illuminating look at food inequality - and responsibility - in the past. -- Annie Gray * BBC History Magazine *This culinary history of Britain looks at the foods that sustained, nourished or delighted its inhabitants in times of plenty and hardship... Pen Vogler is warm, wise company throughout * History Revealed, 'Book of the Month' *Serves up a veritable smorgasbord of delicious tidbits as it charts the history of our island through the contents of its dinner plates * Buzz Magazine *This mouthwatering, kaleidoscopic history is infused with a light, informative tone and is convincingly argued... Meticulously researched, spiced with penetrating analysis and rich in colourful detail, Stuffed is a sparkling banquet. * Business Post *Informative, enraging and entertaining in equal measure * Choice Magazine *Packed with facts - fascinating, illuminating, sometimes funny and at times shocking - about the history of food and society... You'll be engrossed from the first page. * Delicious Magazine *Table of ContentsPart One: Before the Enclosures 1: Introduction 2: Beans Recipe:: Fried Beans 3: Worts 4: Bacon 5: Bread and Ale 6: Carp Part Two: The Enclosures and After 1: Introduction 2: Turnips Recipe: Beef Stew with Turnips 3: Goose 4: Herring 5: Potatoes and Jam 6: Cheese Part Three: Organization 1: Introduction 2: Salt Beef 3: Oatmeal Recipe: Havercakes 4: Christmas Pudding 5: Strawberries Part Four: Children and Families 1: Introduction 2: Sugar 3: Gruel 4: Yorkshire Pudding 5: Scotch Barley Broth and Rhubarb Tart Recipe: Barley Broth or Scotch Broth Part Five: Sharing 1: Introduction 2: Beef and Beer (No Fish) 3: Wine and Ale 4: Pumpkin Pie Recipe: Pumpkin Pie 5: Meat Pie and Woolton Pie Part Six: Crises 1: Introduction 2: Tea 3: Bread and Butter 4: Potatoes and Cornmeal Recipe: Cornbread 5: Mustard and Pickles

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Book Synopsis'An enlightening, enjoyable and frequently very funny journey into what makes Yorkshire stand out from the crowd ... a fascinating insight into our wonderful region and the people that make it what it is.' The Yorkshire PostWritten from the perspective of an exiled Yorkshireman this bestselling, award-winning author returns to his native county to discover and reveal its soul.We all know the tropes - Geoffrey Boycott incarnate, ferret-leggers and folk singers gambolling about Ilkley Moor without appropriate headgear - but why is Yorkshire God's Own County? Exiled Yorkshireman Rick Broadbent sets out to find out whether Yorkshireness is something that can be summed up and whether it even matters in a shrinking world. Along the way he meets rock stars, ramblers and rhubarb growers as he searches for answers and a decent cup of tea. Now Then is a biographical mosaic of a place that has been victimised and stereotyped since the days of William the Conqueror. Incorporating social history, memoir and author interviews, Now Then is not a hagiography. Broadbent visits the scenes of industrial neglect and forgotten tragedy, as well as examining the truth about well-known Yorkshire figures and institutions. Featuring Kes, the Sheffield Outrages and the most controversial poem ever written, as well as a heroic dog, a lost albatross and a stuffed crocodile, Now Then is an affectionate but unsparing look at a county, its inhabitants and their flinty vowels. This is a funny, wise and searching account of a place that claims to have given the world its first football club and England its last witch-burning. It does include cobbles, trumpets and stiff-necked, wilful obstinacy, but it is also about ordinary Yorkshire and its extraordinary lives.Trade ReviewFrom Yorkshire? Who do you think you are? Cut through the cliches and seek the truth with Now Then. Not from Yorkshire? Commiserations, but you can still enjoy some vicarious greatness by reading Rick's book. -- Tom Palmer, author of AFTER THE WAR and winner of the Ruth Rendell AwardA humorously honest, unsparing, celebratory biographical mosaic, not a hagiography. [...] Social history, memoir and reportage, high hills and flat vowels are woven into the mosaic of Yorkshire now and Yorkshire then, ordinary Yorkshire and its extraordinary lives. * The Press *If you wish to know what social, cultural and historical erosions shaped the land we live on - a behind-the-scenes view of 'God's Own Country' - then look no further than Now Then. * Dalesman *Quite unputdownable. In Now Then, Rick Broadbent has encapsulated the spirit of the folk and the mood of the places so perfectly. I was hooked from page one. Prodigiously researched with wit woven into the narrative, it recreates the raw atmosphere of the place that made me. Anyone born in the county should read it. It will help them understand just what they were born into. -- Alan TitchmarshAs a Lancastrian, I should try and tell you that this is a terrible book. But it is not. A passionate but clear-eyed evocation of the 'Texas' of England that avoids 'God's Own Country' blather but is broad and rich enough to include Ted Hughes and Jarvis Cocker as well as Orgreave and Hillsborough. Excellent. -- Stuart MaconieAn enlightening, enjoyable and frequently very funny journey into what makes Yorkshire stand out from the crowd ... a fascinating insight into our wonderful region and the people that make it what it is. * Yorkshire Post *Table of ContentsI: Prologue: Digging Up the Past 1: Outsiders 2: Workers 3: Writers 4: Miners 5: Minstrels 6: Artists 7: Yorkists 8: Stereotykes 9: Champions 10: Ramblers 11: Chefs 12: Pioneers 13: Legends 14: Seasiders 15: Now 16: Then Ii: Bibliography Iii: Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisLurking beneath Bath's genteel spa town facade is a tangle of hidden quirky lives and unusual events. Take Lola Montez, siren, harpy, courtesan, Royal mistress and Spanish dancer, born in County Sligo as Eliza Rosanna Gilbert. Her flamboyant lifestyle and turbulent private life had their roots in her time at a demure finishing school in Bath. Then there's the eerie tale of 'Lady Betty Cobbe's ghost', a bizarre Regency fable surrounding a spirit, a mysterious black ribbon, and accurate premonitions of death. A host of other strange people, such as Dr James Graham, who practised electrotherapy and advocated earth baths, and William Oliver the Viper Catcher, make up Bath's colourful cast of characters. Delving into Bath's peculiar history, Michael Raffael has gathered together a rich collection of stories about these weird individuals and their duels, telescopes, cakes, fizzy drinks, Bath Buns, Sally Lunns and plasticene. The result is a highly readable, eclectic compendium of curiosities that will appeal to Bath residents and visitors alike.

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Book SynopsisThe Victorians gave us many of the Christmas traditions we enjoy today, from putting up Christmas trees to pulling crackers. This handy, pocket-sized colouring book embodies these customs in 45 unique illustrations. Colour in Victorian fireplaces adorned with stockings, St Nicholas with his sack full of presents, and scenes from the nativity. Why not de-stress and take a break over the Christmas period?

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Book Synopsis'A Baedeker of the past, absorbing and revealing in equal measure' Peter Ackroyd'Brings the age's tortuous splendours and profound murkiness vividly to life' ObserverWhen Dr Johnson published his great Dictionary in 1755, London was the biggest city in Europe. The opulence of the rich and the comfort of the 'middling' sort contrasted sharply with the back-breaking labour and pitiful wages of the poor. Executions were rated one of the best amusements, but there was bullock-hunting and cock-fighting too. Crime, from pickpockets to highwaymen, was rife, prisons were poisonous and law-enforcement rudimentary.Dr Johnson's London is the result of the author's passionate interest in the practical details of the everyday life of our ancestors: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry and shopping; clothes and cosmetics; medicine, sex, hobbies, education and etiquette. The book spans the years 1740 to 1770, starting when the gin craze was gaining ground and ending when the east coast of America was still British. While brilliantly recording the strangeness and individuality of the past, Dr Johnson's London continually reminds us of parallels with the present day.Trade ReviewAt last, a riveting history book with no wars, few dates and minimal references to the King ... Picard has an unerring eye for picking out the most vivid phrase, the most apt memory or pithiest description from the wealth of contemporary information that exists -- Ruth Cowen * Sunday Express *There are fascinating disquisitions on do-it-yourself decorating, on male and female underwear, on funerals, and on the language of fans ... Dr Johnson's London is a Baedeker of the past ... It is absorbing and revealing in equal measure -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times *In this new survey of Johnson's London, which spans the years 1740 to 1770, Liza Picard reveals what it was that proved so compelling about the monstrous metropolis ... With her keen eye for human quirks and human weakness, Picard brings the age's tortuous splendours and profound murkiness vividly to life, and does so with great verve and originality -- Henry Hitchings * Observer *Picard's exploration of life in the mid-eighteenth century succeeds in being both accessible and vivid. Her curiosity and enthusiasm are infectious, and she has an instinct for what will interest the lay reader -- Victoria Lane * Daily Telegraph *This book sweeps across the London of 1740 to 1770 like a flying magnifying glass. [Picard's] dry humour and eagle eye make her a superb guide. It opens with a sedan chair tour around George II's London and along the river. I can only say it is brilliant -- Illtyd Harrington * Camden New Journal *This wonderful book drops us right in the noisy, dirty, dung-ridden heart of mid-eighteenth-century London ... Picard's street-level approach builds up a compelling, all-encompassing picture of how Londoners, from commoners to kings, lived and died * Glasgow Herald *Read Liza Picard's book, wrap yourself in the atmosphere of the past, and you'll emerge with a gulp of relief to be living now, not then -- Miranda Seymour * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisHow did you clean your teeth in the 1660s? What make-up did you wear? What pets did you keep?Making use of every possible contemporary source, Liza Picard presents an engrossing picture of how life in London was really lived in an age of Samuel Pepys, the libertine court of Charles II and the Great Fire of London. The topics covered include houses and streets, gardens and parks, cooking, clothes and jewellery, cosmetics, hairdressing, housework, laundry and shopping, medicine and dentistry, sex education, hobbies, etiquette, law and crime, religion and popular belief. The London of 350 years ago is brought (and sometimes horrifyingly) to life.'A joy of a book ... It radiates throughout that quality so essential in a good historian: infinite curiosity' ObserverTrade ReviewImagine Samuel Pepys re-incarnated as a 20th-century woman lawyer, and looking back at 17th-century London not as a diarist but as a social analyst. Imagine P. D. James deciding to set a thriller in the time of Charles II and assembling her background materials ... There is almost no aspect of life in Restoration London that is not meticulously described in these 300-odd pages -- Jan Morris * INDEPENDENT *A potpourri of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the predictable and the astonishing * Literary Review *This is a joy of a book. Its style is both simple and evocative ... and it radiates throughout that quality so essential in a good historian: infinite curiosity -- Roy Porter * Observer *An encyclopedic overview of the London of Pepys and Wren ... Answers all those questions about the Great Fire of London you wanted to ask but never knew where to look for the answer -- Andrew Roberts * MAIL ON SUNDAY *Anyone who enjoys the minutiae of life in the past will have great fun exploring -- Juliet Townsend * SPECTATOR *A beautifully produced reference work ... [an] entertaining historical bran tub -- Rose Tremain * FINANCIAL TIMES *A densely textured accumulation of physical detail for the period, a history of the prosaic written with clarity and modesty ... An engagingly eccentric book which adds texture to existing accounts of the time -- Helen Simpson * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Picard has a delicious sense of humour, an insatiable curiosity and an acute eye for detail. And she tells you all the things you really want to know about everyday life in London between 1660 and 1670 ... A truly wonderful book * Sydney Morning Herald *How our seventeenth-century ancestors ate, slept, travelled, worshipped, loved, clothed themselves, tried to keep healthy ... A marvellous source-book for historical novelists and film-makers out for authenticity, and a near-perfect bedside book for anyone else * Sunday Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisJohn Richardson draws on the same combination of lively writing, critical astuteness, exhaustive research, and personal experience which made a bestseller out of the first volume and vividly recreates the artist's life and work during the crucial decade of 1907-17 - a period during which Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented Cubism and to that extent engendered modernism. Richardson has had unique access to untapped sources and unpublished material. By harnessing biography to art history, he has managed to crack the code of cubism more successfully than any of his predecessors. And by bringing a fresh light to bear on the artist's often too sensationalised private life, he has succeeded in coming up with a totally new view of this paradoxical man of his paradoxical work. Never before has Picasso's prodigious technique, his incisive vision and not least his sardonic humour been analysed with such clarity.Trade ReviewJohn Richardson's second volume on Picasso confirms what his first suggested: that this is a masterpiece in the making, the most illuminating biography yet written on a twentieth-century visual artist... A continuous pleasure to read -- Richard HughesMagisterial...Richardson's ambitious project dwarfs all previous biographies of Picasso... [He] has a gift for telling pen-portraits and makes vivid an entire gallery of pioneering dealers and early collectors. -- Frances Spalding * Sunday Times *Richardson covers [the] momentous ten years from 1907 to the end of the First World War with great elegance and quiet authority... What makes the two published volumes so outstanding is the sense of Picasso the man emerging - in all his complexity - alongside the superb analysis of Picasso the artist -- William Boyd * Spectator *

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Book SynopsisColin MacFarlane was born in the Gorbals in the 1950s, 20 years after the publication of No Mean City, the classic novel about pre-war life in what was once Glasgow's most deprived district. He lived in the same street as its fictional 'razor king', Johnnie Stark, and subsequently realised that a lot of the old characters represented in the book were still around as late as the 1960s. Men still wore bunnets and played pitch and toss; women still wore headscarves and treated the steamie as their social club. The razor gangs were running amok once again, human waste ran down the tenement stairs, and filth, violence, crime, rats, poverty and drunkenness abounded, just like they did in No Mean City. MacFarlane witnessed the last days of the old Gorbals as a major regeneration programme, begun in 1961, was implemented, and, as a street boy, he had a unique insight into a once great community in rapid decline. He witnessed drunken fights, gang battles, police corruption and even the occasional stabbing, slashing and murder. But the Gorbals had another side: one where ordinary hard-working people were trying to survive in what was arguably once the most notorious area in the world. In this engrossing new book, MacFarlane reveals what it was really like to live in the old Gorbals.Trade ReviewA fascinating portrait of the area, full of detail and colour and memories of characters now long gone * The Herald *

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Book SynopsisWhy is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from King's Cross to King's Cross on the Circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs and improvisations.Yet it transports over one billion passengers every year - and this figure is rising. It is iconic, recognised the world over, and loved and despised by Londoners in equal measure. Blending reportage, humour and personal encounters, Andrew Martin embarks on a wonderfully engaging social history of London's underground railway system (which despite its name, is in fact fifty-five per cent overground). Underground, Overground is a highly enjoyable, witty and informative history of everything you need to know about the Tube.Trade ReviewI would strongly endorse Martin's book as the stop to get on at -- Will Self * Guardian *Martin's knowledge is both encyclopaedic and full of quirky digressions, based on everyday observation ... this history has plenty of fun detailing the travails of the Underground's pioneering figures * Evening Standard *A jaunty history ... studded with little observational gems ... he can occasionally stop you in your tracks with a well-turned phrase * Sunday Times *A sparky history of the tube ... honours the Underground, and glories in its oddities * Sunday Telegraph *Seeing Martin puzzle his way through the history is half the fun, as are his lively interlocutors ... the language is beautiful -- Rose Jacobs * FT *For those who love a bit of darting about the Londinium subway whenever the chance comes, Underground, Overground will be a sweat-induced, claustrophobic treat -- Brian Donaldson * The List *Hugely entertaining ... gives us all the lore and myths ... Underground, Overground captures the same zest, zaniness and sense of marvel shown in the recent BBC Two series The Tube. -- Michael Binyon * Times *A highly engaging journey through the history and geography of the tube. -- Jonathan Sale * Independent *An excellent "passenger's history" of the network... entertaining -- Mark Mason * Spectator *If you've ever wondered who is responsible for the announcements on the Northern line, or why Bakerloo line trains don't have armrests, then this engaging and witty social history of the London underground is guaranteed to beguile. . . . Martin is a highly entertaining guide to the stygian depths of subterranean London in all its absurd, confusing glory. . . Offbeat anecdotes abound . . . a compact yet comprehensive study -- Alexander Larman * Observer *No mere tube-spotter's manual, this is an elegantly written and witty history of London itself as well as its tube system, enriched by lierary referenecs and quotations -- Katie Owen * Sunday Telegraph Seven *

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Book Synopsis'What we build always reveals things that are deeply and innately human. Because all buildings are stories, one way or another.' Kathleen Jamie, Alexander McCall Smith, Alistair Moffat, James Robertson and James Crawford travel across the country to tell the story of the nation, from abandoned islands and lonely glens to the heart of our modern cities. Whether visiting Shetland’s Mousa Broch at midsummer, following in the footsteps of pilgrims to Iona Abbey, joining the tourist bustle at Edinburgh Castle, scaling the Forth Bridge or staying in an off-the-grid eco-bothy, the authors unravel the stories of the places, people and passions that have had an enduring impact on the landscape and character of Scotland.Trade Review'The 25 essays are all admirable appreciations of buildings – or of landscapes and places from which buildings have long disappeared. They are written with knowledge and enthusiasm and the photographs are gorgeous . . . [Who Built Scotland] is very enjoyable and rich in information. You would have to be quite exceptionally knowledgeable not to learn much from it, and it certainly paints a fine picture of our strange and varied country and its history' -- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *'The quality of the writing is uniformly high . . . This is a very good book; edifying and, at times, revelatory' * The Herald *'A fascinating alternative take on the country's social, political and cultural histories . . . While the buildings are the focus of this book, the stories of the people who built them and use them are what really stay in the mind. It's easy to think of buildings as inanimate but this book demonstrates the life behind them.' - 5 star review. * Scottish Field *'the history is skilfully woven throughout the course of the book in a way that is intriguing and easy to follow . . . It really reads as an epic love story to Scotland' * The Courier *''The result is a book that is by turns inspiring and fascinating; a book that gives perspective to Scotland's many and varied architectural traditions; and a book that gives context to the Scotland we see around us today . . . There's one sense in which the title of the book is misleading in that you find rather more than 25 buildings between its covers. Some contributions cover themes or groups of buildings rather than individual structures. The effect is to broaden further the scope of the book and adds to its already considerable lasting value.' * Undiscovered Scotland *

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Book SynopsisThis is the story of a national obsession.Ever since the Ratcliffe Highway Murders caused a nation-wide panic in Regency England, the British have taken an almost ghoulish pleasure in 'a good murder'. This fascination helped create a whole new world of entertainment, inspiring novels, plays and films, puppet shows, paintings and true-crime journalism - as well as an army of fictional detectives who still enthrall us today. A Very British Murder is Lucy Worsley's captivating account of this curious national obsession. It is a tale of dark deeds and guilty pleasures, a riveting investigation into the British soul by one of our finest historians.Trade ReviewAn excellent overview of how the consumption of crime became a dominant part of our cultural landscape * The Sunday Times *Worsley captures this bloody love affair very well * The Independent *Worsley retells the stories of famous murderers and legendary criminals in delightfully readable language, with the occasional sharp, illuminating comment * Literary Review *

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Book SynopsisDuring its eighty years under London's legendary Oxford Street everyone from Louis Armstrong to rock icons the Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols and Chuck Berry have played the historic 100 Club. In Ace of Clubs, with foreword by Jools Holland, we read its story in the words of the people who came to the club to play, work, dance or just listen to the music. Handsomely illustrated in colour, this is the first comprehensive story of one of the world's longest-running clubs, its seventy-year jazz history and its transformation into the greatest grass-roots music venue in the UK. Now granted special status it is ranked alongside Abbey Road Studios, Jane Austen's home and Shakespeare's birthplace. The 100 Club's story is an inspiring and frequently hilarious must-read for music fans everywhere.

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Book SynopsisA garden at the foot of Europe and a crossroads between Spain, Africa and the New World, Andaluca has been a cultural customs house on the border of the Mediterranean and Atlantic civilisations for more than ten thousand years. This book traces its origins from the earliest hominid settlers in the Granada mountains 1.8 million years ago, through successive Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Muslim cultures, and the past five hundred years of modern Castilian rule, up to and including the present day of post-modern novelists in Crdoba and Sevilla, guerrilla urban archaeologists in Torremolinos and Marbella, and underground lo-fi bands in Granada and Mlaga.Trade Review'A cultured and riveting read, with a simmering sense of adventure.' --Irish Times

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Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1948, and edited by the artist John Piper, An English Farmhouse is Geoffrey Grigson's careful survey of the old English farmhouse, and its associated buildings, whether made from sarsen, thatch, timber, tile or brick. Grigson paints a vivid and human picture of rural life in the preceding centuries and creates a delicate weave of social history.

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Book SynopsisOne of the greatest cities of the Himalaya, Kathmandu, Nepal, is a unique blend of thousand-year-old cultural practices and accelerated urban development. In this book, Thomas Bell recounts his experiences from his many years in the city--exploring in the process the rich history of Kathmandu and its many instances of self-reinvention. Closed to the outside world until 1951 and trapped in a medieval time warp, Kathmandu is, as Bell argues, a jewel of the art world, a carnival of sexual license, a hotbed of communist revolution, a paradigm of failed democracy, a case study in bungled western intervention, and an environmental catastrophe. In important ways, Kathmandu's rapid modernization can be seen as an extreme version of what is happening in other traditional societies. Bell also discusses the ramifications of the recent Nepal earthquake. A comprehensive look at a top global destination, Kathmandu is an entertaining and accessible chronicle for anyone eager to learn more about this fascinating city.Trade Review-A wonderful literary journey through the streets and history of Kathmandu.---Sir Ranulph Fiennes

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Book SynopsisThe Sandhole was Preston’s place of debauchery and shame. But Victorian morality ensured that it never appeared on any town maps, and despite regular reports in the newspapers of the time, it doesn’t even survive in folk memory. It is a part of Preston’s history that has been completely lost. Until now. Local author and historian John Garlington came to the Sandhole, metaphorically speaking, by accident, while researching his family history. After some hesitation, he decided to explore further, uncovering a world of poverty, desperation and barbarism, inhabited by those who never really had any chances in life. This carefully researched book is revealing, readable and important. Not to be missed.

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Book SynopsisA Passion for Fashion provides an amusing look at some of the clothes, underclothes, shoes and accessories worn by many of the more colourful characters in Blenheim Palace’s 300-year history, as well as a cautionary look at the role that arsenic, lead, mercury and mousetraps played in the fashions of the day. Adult and children’s fashions from the 18th and 19th centuries are examined, as well as contemporary style from renowned designers including Christina Stambolian, Stephen Jones, Christian Louboutin and most recently of all, Dolce & Gabbana. Blenheim Palace’s on-going relationship with the House of Dior, is celebrated with a look at the early catwalk shows of the 1950s, and the launch of Dior’s Cruise collection, which took place at Blenheim in May 2016. The Palace is renowned for many things, but one of its leading claims to fame is that it is the birth place of a certain Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill – twice prime minister of Great Britain and accomplished writer, artist, sometime bricklayer and arguably, in fashion terms, the inventor of the ubiquitous and ever popular ‘Onesie’! A Passion for Fashion brings 300 years of Blenheim style to life.Trade Review‘The ultimate visual treat for lovers of vintage fashion’ The Lady

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Book SynopsisFrom Elephant and Castle to Southwark, from London Bridge to Westminster, Black History Walks takes you through the historic Black sites around the City of London, and with the companion guide, you'll get more in-depth history of the story of each place and how it links to Africa.In this two-book guide, you'll get:- Comprehensive coverage of historical places in London that have a relationship with Africa;-How the most touristic attraction are actually hidden gems from Africa;- Connect with places with African roots in this metropolis; - Walking tours that can be self-walked or accompanied with the official Black History Walks tours;- A companion guide to give you more in-depth history of the African relationship with London.

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Book SynopsisOn one level, a story about moving, in old age, from a village to a nearby town, in this case the city of Ely. But also a moving exploration of belonging' and of moving on, of the layers of past generations of the local people who have shaped the new place, and the changes over the years wrought by nature and the shifting Fenland landscape.

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Book SynopsisTo paraphrase L.P. Hartley, “The past is a different country.” Stan L Abbott sets out to explore the visible clues to our mysterious past from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages: stone circles. Cumbria boasts more of these monuments than any other English county. Here, our tallest mountains are ringed by almost fifty circles and henges, most of them sited in the foothills or on outlying plateaux. Were these the earliest such monuments in Britain, placing Cumbria at the heart of Neolithic society? And what traces of that society remain today in the roads we travel, the food we eat, the words we speak, our work and play? By observing and comparing many sites in Cumbria and beyond, and researching many sources, a greater understanding emerges. Were some circles built for ritualistic purposes, or perhaps astronomical? Were they burial sites? Or were they just places for people to meet? Illustrated with linocut illustrations by artist Denise Burden, Ring of Stone Circles follows the search for the hidden stories these monuments guard – and might reveal if we get to know them.Trade Review'An energetic and informed historical adventure shining a light on Neolithic Cumbria.' -- Emily Atherton, Editor, Cumberland and Westmorland Herald

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Book SynopsisTowards the end of 1974, a stranger arrived in the small town of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. He could often be found sitting at the bar in the Napier Tavern, drinking lager and smoking Gauloises while flicking through the pages of the Kent Evening Post. "Charles" was the name he offered to his new acquaintances. But this unexpected immigrant was actually Uwe Johnson, originally from the Baltic province of Mecklenburg in the GDR, and already famous as the leading author of a divided Germany. What caused him to abandon West Berlin and spend the last nine years of his life in Sheerness, where he eventually completed his great New York novel Anniversaries in a house overlooking the outer reaches of the Thames Estuary? And what did he mean by detecting a “moral utopia” in a town that others, including his concerned friends, saw only as a busted slum on an island abandoned to “deindustrialisation” and a stranded Liberty ship full of unexploded bombs? Patrick Wright, who himself abandoned north Kent for Canada a few months before Johnson arrived, returns to the “island that is all the world” to uncover the story of the East German author’s English decade, and to understand why his closely observed Kentish writings continue to speak with such clairvoyance in the age of Brexit. Guided in his encounters and researches by clues left by Johnson in his own “island stories”, the book is set in the 1970s, when North Sea oil and joining the European Economic Community seemed the last hope for bankrupt Britain. It opens out to provide an alternative version of modern British history: a history for the present, told through the rich and haunted landscapes of an often spurned downriver mudbank, with a brilliant German answer to Robinson Crusoe as its primary witness.Trade Review"A monumental sifting and arranging of local particulars, stitched against the savage farce of a great European novelist’s elective exile... Patrick Wright has picked over the landfill of a very specific Estuary culture to devastating effect.""A double 'biography' of the great but always tempestuous German writer Uwe Johnson and his ultimate home, the gritty and disreputable Isle of Sheppey. 'Biography' is in quotes because Wright is a saboteur of genres and his books encompass multiple worlds. I stand in awe of what he has accomplished here.""A masterful modernist history, and Patrick Wright’s most important book, bringing Europe to England by showing it has always been here, at a moment when too many want to believe something else.""An extraordinary, haunting book... a phenomenal achievement.""An astonishing chronicle of the great German author Uwe Johnson, who moved to Sheerness, Kent, in the 70s.”“To repeat: this tidal book, reaching into everything and then withdrawing to show what is left behind, is a triumph."“A huge achievement: a comprehensive portrait of a place and a person, and the best book about Brexit that’s yet been written.""A model portrait of person and place, a kind of cultural and literary geography that never fails to fascinate.""A glorious rabbit hole of a book ... a longue durée portrait, from the 17th century to Thatcher, of a single location on the edges of British national life."“Wright plays both the anatomist and the elegist for the blighted modernity of seemingly forsaken spots such as Sheppey … a fragmentary panorama of traumatic, half-remembered history, personal and national.”“Thorough, discerning, compassionate.”"The most involving and originally-conceived social history of modern England to have appeared in decades." "A hymn to estuarial peculiarity and a lament for an awkward man determined never to find his place." "I was entirely captivated by this microscopic, discursive study of Uwe Johnson... a great book about the relationship between Britain and the rest of Europe, and not a page too long."

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Book SynopsisRural England is a mythic space, a complex canvas on which people from many different backgrounds project all kinds of fantasies, prejudices, desires and fears. This book seeks to challenge many of these ideas, showing how the artificial divide between rural and urban works to conceal the underlying relationship between these two fundamental poles of human settlement. This investigation of rurality is oriented from a fixed point in north-west Hampshire, marked by a signpost that points in four directions to two towns, four villages and two hamlets. Through stories, interviews and reportage gathered over two decades, the book demolishes tired notions of rural England that cast it as a separate realm of existence, whether marooned in a perpetual time-warp, or reduced to a refuge for the retired, wealthy urbanites, extreme nature-lovers, and, more recently, anyone tired of waiting out the pandemic in towns and cities. It poses two simple questions: what does the word rural mean today? What will it mean tomorrow? The author is an ambivalent native, held captive to the land by an umbilical cord but always on the verge of fleeing home to the city. Both argument and narrative are propelled by the urgent need to reconsider the concept of ‘countryside’ in the context of the climate emergency and the patent collapse of ecosystems due to intensive farming which has poisoned the land. She writes from a feminist, postcolonial standpoint that is alert to the slow violence of historical processes taking place over many centuries; enslavement, colonialism, industrialisation, globalisation. Trade Review"This incisive work beautifully excavates the troubled, ultimately colonial, inheritance that haunts the making of modern British rural life.""A profoundly affecting and fierce case for re-finding the commons that once traversed and transcended the ownership mantras that have ousted and poisoned so much of the living world. Ware brings the world to bear on a hamlet, the smallest form of human settlement, and the hamlet, a piece of ground, to bear on the world and the planet.""A riveting environmental, historical and personal account, Return of a Native transforms our understanding of the local as Vron Ware reveals the complex connections of the land, its food and animal production and human and nonhuman inhabitants to global networks of agriculture, commerce and politics.""A thorough, enthralling and spirited reconstruction of what it took to be modern, Return of a Native is a gold mine. In this masterful exercise in retrospective geography, Vron Ware invites her reader to learn anew how touching the solid clay beneath our feet can yield such vibrant life, at least for the time being.""In traversing the English countryside, comes an account which thinks beyond local histories and provincial politics. Ware gives us a moving and often funny personal story which offers a fresh look at urgent questions relating to environmentalism, colonial legacies, class, culture and nationalism."“Return of a Native bears the compelling message that if you want to understand the world around you, look to the ground beneath your feet. Vron Ware excavates stories that shed new light on our own age, and should prompt us to rethink the way we relate to the land, to our histories and to one another.”"Like a twenty-first-century William Blake, Ware's view of England's 'green and pleasant land' is haunted by dark shadows and damage from its ruined soil, haunted colonial past, and national self-mutilations of Brexit. A brilliant, beautiful & chilling portrait of England's fateful present.""Ware's subtle and fascinating research steers us round rural twist after rural turn towards what we can only hope will be a more equitable future.""In the wake of the pandemic and as the borders between the rural and urban grow ever more porous, this illuminating anatomy of the English countryside is a timely read.""A sly, luminous, brutal, and funny excavation of rural place through time, Return of a Native brings to mind not only Hardy but also Saramago. The churn of consciousness haunts every page. Ware raises from the ground an English village’s interdependence with otherwises and elsewheres of imperial modernity."

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Book Synopsis'I Feel Fine' is a beautifully produced official book, a must-buy for every Reds fan wanting to revel in the colour, culture and pride of Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool FC.

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Book SynopsisI Could Be So Good For You tackles head-on the pernicious and implicitly racist fiction that London, most especially north London, has no "real" working class in comparison to a more "authentic" working class in a place called "the North". In doing so it offers a history and a portrait of north London's working class from the 1950s to the 21st century, based on a wide and original range of sources including personal memoirs, autobiographies, collected oral histories and new interviews conducted by the author. The result is an important social history and a rich panorama of working-class life — its struggles, work, celebrations, events, triumphs, tragedies and the occasional nice little earner. For good or ill, from the start of post-war affluence in the 1950s to the economic crash of 2008, north London's working class had a life experience like almost no other part of the British working class, one not just of poverty, racism and exploitation, but also of bold new housing schemes in the heart of the city, of great opportunity and diversity and enjoyment. Its about time to tell that story.Trade Review"Fantastic - a much-needed history of a class claimed regularly not to exist, and a compendious, endlessly quotable book of facts, anecdotes and tales of the 'working class bohemia' that existed, and crucially still exists, and changes and grows and thrives, in the lands south of Watford, east of Staines, north of the Thames and west of the Lea'""This is a Dickens for a postwar North London... an intimate letter to the North London working class, written out of a tough love, completely shorn of sentimentality. This is an important book. I know of no other quite like it. I wish I had written it.""It's great to see that ordinary London working class voices, not normally heard, are well represented in this cracking social history.""A vivid and compelling account of North London society from the 1950s to the present... This is grass-roots local history at its best."

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Book SynopsisAcid Detroit tells the story of Motor City through its revolutionary music past and present, in order to find the seeds of radical transformation among its ruins. Acid Detroit is an exhilarating, technicolour view of Detroit's musical and social history from the 1960s to the present day. Redefining the counterculture as a time of Acid Communism, Acid Detroit diverges from most books on the Sixties, which centre on California, to show that Detroit was an unequalled hotbed of radical activism, urban unrest and sonic innovation. Considering Detroit's unique mix of people and cultures and enduring sonic legacies, it covers everything from incendiary garage rock, to European-influenced techno and experimental hip-hop crews, intertwining the artist's lives and works with the city's rise and decline, from its establishment as an industrial powerhouse to the high point of Motor City, into its decline and tentative rebirth. A mind-expanding tour through time and space that explores the lost possibilities, histories and hidden potentials of the city, Acid Detroit reveals a history of resilience and transformation hidden in the shadows of the abandoned factories and warehouses of the Motor City.Trade Review"Extending Mark Fisher's concept of Acid Communism into vibrant new territory, Acid Detroit takes a clear passion for a city and its culture and reveals the radical political potentials that are to be found not only in its past but, perhaps even more importantly, in its present and proximate future." "This gave me so much knowledge of the history of music in Detroit, and made me so proud to be a part of our city's history and culture." "Through the toxic runoff of snowed-in flyover country and psychedelic outsiderism, Molloy untangles the creative minds that go fast and furiously into new musical territories while honoring the decades of untouchable classics that came before. Acid Detroit is a music lover's insider look into the sublime joy of seeing time catch up to itself." Joe's in-depth and emotionally charged writing, specifically about John Brannon's career, really pulls in and enraptures the reader. You can tell by the attention to detail how much research and heart has been put into this book on Detroit music.

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Book Synopsis"The garden that once was still haunts my dreams and no season will ever be the same again ... " When Ceri and her brothers move to Fern Cottage in the small North Wiltshire village of Little Somerford, they discover a place unchanged by modern life. The kitchen garden is a riot of fruit trees and vegetables, and the old farming family next door still works the land with horses. This is a community full of character, and slowly the life and beauty of Little Somerford steals into Ceri's heart ... A beautiful memoir full of the people and magic of Little Somerford in the 1950s and 60s

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Book SynopsisThis book interrogates white responses to black-led movements for racial justice. It is a philosophical self-reflection on the ways in which ‘white’ reactions to Black Lives Matter stand in the way of the movement’s important work. It probes reactions which often prevent white people from according to black activists the full range of human emotion and expression, including joy, anger, mourning, and political action. Johanna C. Luttrell encourages different conceptions of empathy and impartiality specific to social movements for racial justice, and addresses objections to identity politics.Table of ContentsChapter 1: Getting my People 1.1 Whiteness and Self-Reflection 1.2 “We” White People: On the Possibility of Collective Identity 1.3 The Hate that we see Might be our Own: Distinguishing Black Anger from White Hate Chapter 2: Empathy and Racial Justice: Redefining Impartiality in Response to Social Movements 2.1 White Empathy and Black Lives Matter 2.2 Perspectives Against ‘Just Empathy’ 2.3 Managing Empathy Through Colorblindness 2.4 Empathy and Racial Justice: A Different Idea of Impartiality Chapter 3: How White People Refuse to Understand Black Mourning 3.1 White Responses to Black-led Political Mourning 3.2 Conservative Responses to Black Mourning: Militarization, Gas-lighting, Tone-policing 3.3 Liberal Responses to Black Mourning: Voyeurism and Appropriation 3.4 Recognizing Agency, Giving up the Idealized Victim 3.5 Mourning’s Potential: Undoing the Political Order in Antigone and the Book of Jeremiah Chapter 4: Respecting Black Lives Matter as Arendtian Political Action 4.1 How Political Action is Different from Scientific Inquiry 4.2 Political Action as Unprecedented 4.3 Political Action as Revelatory 4.4 Political Action as Knowledge-Creating 4.5 Arendt’s Failure to Respect Black-Led Social Movements as Political Action Chapter 5: Conclusion 5.1 Interrogating Allyship 5.2 Answering Objections to Identity Politics 5.3 White Feminism and Allyship 5.4 A Positive Prescription for Empathy?

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Book SynopsisThis book promotes a historically and culturally sensitive understanding of trauma during and after World War II. Focusing especially on Eastern and Central Europe, its contributors take a fresh look at the experiences of violence and loss in 1939–45 and their long-term effects in different cultures and societies. The chapters analyze traumatic experiences among soldiers and civilians alike and expand the study of traumatic violence beyond psychiatric discourses and treatments. While acknowledging the problems of applying a present-day medical concept to the past, this book makes a case for a cultural, social and historical study of trauma. Moving the focus of historical trauma studies from World War I to World War II and from Western Europe to the east, it breaks new ground and helps to explain the troublesome politics of memory and trauma in post-1945 Europe all the way to the present day. This book is an outcome of a workshop project ‘Historical Trauma Studies,’ funded by the Joint Committee for the Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) in 2018–20.Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.Table of ContentsPart I Comparative Approaches1 The Limits of Trauma: Experience and Narrative in Europe c. 1945 2 Beyond the Western Front Part II Case Studies 3 Testing the Silence: Trauma and Military Psychiatry in Soviet Russia and Ukraine During and After World War II 4 Experiencing Trauma Before Trauma: Posttraumatic Memories, Nightmares and Flashbacks Among Finnish Soldiers 5 Entangled Bystanders: Multidimensional Trauma of Ethnic Cleansing and Mass Violence in Eastern Galicia 6 Traumatized Children in Hungary After World War II 7 “We will cry a little, but then we will forget”: Narratives of Loss and Victory in Postwar Yugoslavia 8 Guilt, Responsibility and Trauma: Restoring the Moral Self-Image in Postwar Slovakia 9 “Perpetrator Trauma” in Memoirs of Veterans of the Polish Home Army 10 Environmental Trauma in the Narratives of Postwar Reconstruction: The Loss of Place and Identity in Northern Finland After World War II 11 Suicide Rates as a “Social Thermometer”: Reading the Traumatized History of Lithuania Part III Coda 12 Towards a History of Trauma in Central and Eastern Europe After World War II: A Coda

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Book SynopsisBerlin has survived two world wars, was divided by a wall during the Cold War, and after the fall of the wall was reunited. The city emerged as a center of European power and culture. From 1860 to the present day, this book is the most comprehensive photographic study of this extraordinary city, dense with spirit as much as with history. Some 560 pages gather aerial views, street scenes, portraits, and more to trace Berlin history from the Imperial Era as capital of Prussia through the Roaring Twenties to devastating images of war to heartwarming postwar photos of a city picking up the pieces—the Reichstag in ruins and later wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Among the photographs are works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton, René Burri, Robert Capa, Thomas Struth, and Wolfgang Tillmans in addition to well-known Berlin photo-chroniclers such as Friedrich Seidenstücker, Erich Salomon, Willy Römer, and Heinrich Zille (an index of photographers’ biographies is also included). The images are accompanied by quotes from Berliners and Berlin connoisseurs such as Vladimir Nabokov, Alfred Döblin, Herwarth Walden, Marlene Dietrich, Billy Wilder, John F. Kennedy, Willy Brandt, Helmut Newton, Sir Simon Rattle, and David Bowie. More than a tribute to the city and its civic, social, and photographic history, this book pays homage to Berlin’s inhabitants: full of hope and strength, in their faces is reflected Berlin’s undying soul.Trade Review“This volume of photographs takes the reader on a journey through 150 years of German history, with all its turbulences … garnished with brilliant essays and quotations and a superb layout that does not detract from the photographs.” * Der Spiegel *“An illustrated history of Berlin. The magnificence of the German capital and its turbulent story is told through images from many international photographers… If you are interested in the history of Berlin and world-class photography, this book will be a great addition to the book-shelf.” * Amateur Photographer *

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Book SynopsisA talented visual storyteller, Barbara Earl Thomas has drawn from history, literature, folklore, mythology, and biblical stories over her forty-year career to reflect the social fabric of our times. Thomas’s figural and narrative imagery has a deeply philosophical and emotional force, and light and dark have been especially potent concepts in her work. This book of new works meditates on the visual experience of the body within a physical and metaphorical world of light and shadow. Based on real people, the portraits "elevate to the magnificent" her family, friends, and neighbors, as well as cultural icons of the African American literary landscape. Thomas's illumination of the human figure through her light-filled artworks and portraiture encourages the viewer to reflect on how we communicate ourselves to the world and how we perceive those among us. Exhibition dates: Chrysler Museum of Art: February 24–August 20, 2023; Wichita Art Museum: October 7, 2023–January 14, 2024; Arthur Ross Gallery, the University of Pennsylvania: February 17–May 21, 2024

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Book Synopsis ''A pretty awesome present for the feminist in your life'' - Caroline Criado Perez, OBE, author of Do It Like a WomanAt the last count, the Blue Plaque Guide honours 903 Londoners, and a walking tour of these sites brings to life the London of a bygone era. But only 111 of these blue plaques commemorate women.Over the centuries, London has been home to thousands of truly remarkable women who have made significant and lasting impacts on every aspect of modern life: from politics and social reform, to the Arts, medicine, science, technology and sport. Many of those women went largely unnoticed, even during their own lifetimes, going about their lives quietly but with courage, conviction, skill and compassion. Others were fearless, strident trail-blazers. Many lived in an era when their achievements were given a male name, clouding the capabilities of women in any field outside of the home or field. A Woman Lived Here shines a spotlight on some of these forgotten women to redress the balance. The stories on these pages commemorate some of the most remarkable of London''s women, who set out to make their world a little richer, and in doing so, left an indelible mark on ours.

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Book SynopsisSlavery and the trade that fuelled it underpinned Britain's economic position throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unsurprisingly, when the abolition of the slave trade was first mooted opinion was widely divided. The majority of the British public were either apathetic about the plight of black Africans in the American colonies or firmly against any change. Much of the establishment, including the Anglican Church, robustly supported the Afro-Caribbean slavery. The Great Abolition Sham is the first book to explore the real personalities and issues behind the popular rhetoric which surrounds the abolitionist movement. Documentary evidence confirms the shocking duplicity of the British government, which protected the slave trade after its formal abolition in 1807, and exposes the levels of hypocrisy that made a mockery of the Emancipation Act of 1834.

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Book SynopsisAlan Strachan is a theatre director. In London's West End he has directed over thirty productions, and has also worked in regional theatre as well as in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Dublin and New York often with leading actors and on plays ranging from Shakespeare, Shaw and Tennessee Williams to Alan Ayckbourn and Tom Stoppard. He is the author of Secret Dreams: A Biography of Michael Redgrave and Putting It On: The West End Theatre of Michael Codron.Trade ReviewWhat makes this account of a familiar story outstanding is that Strachan wins the reader’s trust ... As an experienced man of the theatre, he suggests, qualifies and adds interesting views of his own. * The Spectator *[Vivien Leigh’s] life, lived to the full at every second, will never be better told than it is in these pages. * The Sunday Times *A gripping new biography. * The Daily Mail *Strachan’s meticulously researched, elegantly written volume is an eye-opener. Strachan’s attention to detail is striking ... a valuable, authoritative record that supports [Leigh's] status as a great stage and screen actress. * Daily Herald, Chicago *This is a well-written biography of a much-loved star. Strachan achieves that rare thing of exposing his subject whilst maintaining their integrity. Leigh, who was fiercely private, would have been proud of this book. * The Lady *Alan Strachan does a fine job in reasserting [Vivien Leigh’s] status, not merely re-examining her stage work, but also becoming the first biographer to give due attention to the underrated films she made. * Country Life *Reading this book is like meeting Vivien Leigh in her glory and her despair. One of the most revealing showbiz biographies ever. -- Sir Ian McKellenThis is an enthralling book. It enthrals you by its meticulous research, its lucid language and its depiction of a Legend and a World that do not exist anymore. Alas. -- Michael CodronA wonderful tribute to a great actress and a fascinating insight into her troubled life and the machinations of the West End theatre during the middle of the twentieth century. Unputdownable. -- Dame Penelope Keith DBE, DLImpeccable research into this fascinating actress make Dark Star a page turner. The reader is as desperate to see past her ravishing beauty to the tender, tortured woman beneath as is the author. -- Maureen LipmanThree cheers for this. Alan Strachan’s long overdue perceptive insight into one of the most fascinating, complex, troubled and talented actors of her time. -- Alan AyckbournTable of ContentsList of Plates Acknowledgements Prologue 1. A Child of the Raj 2. Hours Nearer Death 3. Young Wife and Mother 4. Enter Olivier 5. Altered States 6. Printing a Legend 7. Star-Crossed 8. Wartime Dramas 9. From Sabina to Anna 10. Down Under 11. The Kindness of Strangers 12. Two on the Nile 13. Crack-Up 14. Avonside 15. At Court 16. Ending A Legend 17. Worlds Elsewhere 18. Last Acts Epilogue Appendix Facts/“False Facts” Notes on Sources Select Bibliography Index

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