Search results for ""Brewin Books""

During 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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Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) was a globally important industrialist who introduced innovative minting practices at this Soho Mint. This book describes the processes involved, from mining the copper to the delivery of products to the customer. There was a shortage of small change towards the end of the 18th century, and Boulton strove to solve this problem, eventually obtaining customers all over Britain, including the British Government. He also made coins for the East India Company, and for Europe, Africa, the West Indies and America. Included is Boulton's role in the copper industry, and how he obtained his raw materials; his expertise in steel making for dies, and the technology of his new steam-powered mint. The design, production, marketing and distribution of the finished product is also covered. The book is illustrated with over 200 colour images, including an extensive section on the coins, tokens and medals produced at the Soho Mint.

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This second book by Maggie Payne is a collection of fond reminiscences and anecdotes about her life growing up and living in the small town of Alcester in Warwickshire from the 1950s onward. The book describes what it is about Alcester with its people and traditions that makes it so unique, with plenty of scrapes that Maggie gets herself into along the way! A well-known figure in the town, Maggie is a former Alcester Mayoress and Chairman of Alcester in Bloom and these lighthearted memoirs are intended to put a smile on the face of the reader as they take a walk down memory lane with her.

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A mischievous ghost lurks in the Palace Theatre, Redditch; the Technical Manager has seen it three times. The Bull's Head at Inkberrow is haunted by a young seamstress. A female spirit has been seen four times in room 307 at the Falcon Hotel, Stratford. A courting couple went to Henley for the day and were advised by the ghost of an elderly lady to finish their relationship. These and over a hundred ghost stories, both ancient and modern, are packed into this book including many eye-witness accounts and spinechilling anecdotes.

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When Alex's bowling hits a rough patch, his sister tells him he needs to be more aggressive. Alex doesn't think much of this advice and embarks on his own journey to discover what kind of preparation will work best for him. Can Alex sort out his bowling in time for the important match against the dreaded Smasher Jones and his team next week? This story touches on the themes of mindfulness, resilience and the sometimes underrated art of just being yourself. At Chance to Shine, our aim is to improve the lives of young people through participation in cricket. In schools, we take our work in the classroom as seriously as our work in the playground. For this reason, we are delighted that Alex's cricketing journey continues in this new reading book. You will find some familiar characters and meet a few interesting new ones. My favourite is Smasher Jones! Laura Cordingley, Chief Executive, Chance to Shine.

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This first and ground-breaking biography of Arthur Jefferson, the father of Stan Laurel (the mastermind behind the legendary comedy partnership of Laurel and Hardy), reveals that he was a major influence on his son, a fine comic actor himself, a successful playwright, and an excellent example of the provincial theatrical lessees who provided Victorians and Edwardians with their main source of entertainment. It describes the ups and downs of his life, family and career and how, in middle age, he had to confront the challenge to the world of intimate, local, live theatre from the emerging global, silent and then sound cinema industry. Ironically, it was the success of films like those of Laurel and Hardy which all but destroyed the provincial theatrical world that Arthur loved.

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In Down to Earth, Nancy Cooper gives us a glimpse into the real life of a seventeen year old young woman who is recruited into the Women’s Land Army in 1943. It is a big change from her life at Old Hill in the Black Country, and a welcome escape from the secretarial training that she was desperate to avoid. She soon found herself living alone, far from home and working on several farms. She managed to milk 30 cows, working alone, as she did her part in providing the country with enough food in the shortages both during and after WWII. At one farm she cared for a yard full of pigs, who cunningly tried to outwit her attempts to share their food out. Dealing with unfairly jealous wives, strange billeting arrangements with a nocturnal visitor and rats everywhere were also ways in which Nancy’s resourcefulness was tested. There is now a memorial to honour the work of the Women’s Land Army at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire. If you go to see it you will notice that the rats have got in on this as well!

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The Worcester and Birmingham Canal, some thirty miles long, was created from 1791, when it was authorised by Act of Parliament, to 1815 when it was completed 24 years later. Although intended as a broad canal for barges and having five broad tunnels, it was eventually completed with narrow locks due to financial difficulties. From Gas Street Basin at the Birmingham end it passes through the suburbs of Edgbaston, Selly Oak and Kings Norton, then through the long West Hill Tunnel and via Hopwood and Alvechurch through countryside to Tardebigge, all this section being on the Birmingham Level. Then it descends in stages via fifty-six narrow locks and two barge locks to the River Severn at Diglis via Stoke Prior, Hanbury Wharf, Dunhampstead, Oddingley, Tibberton, Blackpole and the eastern suburbs of Worcester City. The earlier chapters of this book trace in detail the successive stages reached in making the canal and the reservoirs needed to safeguard the water supplies of millowners, the financial and other problems faced, and the saga of the Tardebigge Boat Lifi. Later chapters cover the history of the canal following its completion, its use for both commercial and pleasure purposes, its administration and management, its upkeep and maintenance, its involvement with railways, and the various industries and amenities which were established beside it, Three of the final chapters feature past and present places and items of interest located along the canal from Birmingham to Worcester. Of special interest throughout is the impact the canal had upon the lives of countless people, those involved in its construction, those who lived and worked on the boats, those who were employed by the Canal Company as engineers, lock-keepers and maintenance men, people who worked in canalside factories, shops, public house, boatyards, and on wharves, and those concerned for the welfare of canal boat families and their animals.

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The fifties was the decade that saw Birmingham getting back to its feet, shaking off the dust and demolition of the war years and slowly getting on with the business of "Life as normal". For that reason we've deliberately weighted the book in favour of the later years in order to show a brighter city. Digging deep, we've discovered quite a few rare items and, bearing in mind your comments, once again included dozens and dozens of those much-loved street scenes. Lots of firms jostle for position with their advertisements and we do hope that many of our 300+ images ring bells with you. It seems a miracle to me that so much photographic evidence of Birmingham's past still remains!

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Reality Shows. They may be all the rage on television at present but let's face it - the real reality is here! The minute you open the book you see life as it really was. The streets, and there are dozens of them, leaping out at you as true-to-life as ever. Much loved stars still topping the bill. Cars, that we now know have ceased to be manufactured, travelling along our highways. Factories, that haven't existed for years, were in the 60's proudly standing as if their lives and ours depended on them - and indeed they did. Here's a show bursting at the seams with more than 350 images and you can't get greater reality than that. Enjoy a decade which began - wait for it - over half-a-century ago.

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Brenda Bullock, brought up on a council housing estate in Sheldon, holds up a mirror to Birmingham in the 1940s and 1950s: she tells of the games played then in the streets: hopscotch, queenie, marbles, skipping, roller skating. She takes us back to school life during and after the war, to what it was like to be sick before the advent of the NHS and antibiotics; the struggle to make ends meet and find enough food to put on the table; the pawn shop, hiding from the rentman - all the experiences shared by so many children of the '40s and '50s, all illustrated by line drawings of the old Birmingham landmarks by architect, Matthew Bullock.

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With full access to the Bournville archives, Dr. Chinn has traced the history of this distinguished family and its long established business.

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The Girl from Guildford Street describes a working class childhood, growing up in Lozells, Birmingham, 1957-1968. The author and her sister and cousins were the last generation to grow up in the back to backs: Birmingham council houses, two up, one down; no bathroom, inside toilet, central heating or hot running water; centred around a back yard with outside toilets, sheds and a brew'us or wash house. The author looks at family life in the back to backs, and how whole families lived on one street. The author's parents both worked in local factories at a time when manufacturing was booming in Birmingham. This is not a misery memoir - it is the story of a happy childhood in one of Birmingham's poorest areas. It also looks at the Sixties - the fashions, the politics, the music, the hairstyles, the World Cup - as a golden age.

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Fort Dunlop, in the Erdington district of Birmingham, was the original tyre factory and main office of Dunlop Rubber which for many years was the jewel in the crown of the Dunlop empire. 'The Fort', as it was affectionately known locally, was built in 1916 and by 1954 the entire factory area employed 10,000 workers. At one time it was one of the largest factories in the world and employed a significant proportion of the local population, often whole families worked there. Gradually foreign imports led to Fort Dunlop's demise, large scale tyre production ceased and the factory finally closed in 2014 with production moved to Germany and France. This book, compiled by a former employee, is a look back at the history of Fort Dunlop through the recollections and memories of many other members of its workforce. What emerges is a very family orientated company which played a huge part in the lives of many people who worked there or lived nearby. The building itself still remains as an iconic landmark and reminder of 'The Fort' in its heyday.

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Jim Simpson of Big Bear Records has been involved in the music business for nearly 60 years, as musician, bandleader, promoter, record producer, festival director, manager, journalist and photographer. In his candid, constantly surprising, frequently amusing and occasionally shocking account you will encounter the joys and difficulties of managing Black Sabbath or of running a jazz festival in sun-kissed, crime-ridden Marbella. At home in Birmingham meet some of the characters who have enlivened 35 years of the Jazz Festival and read Jim's take on the scandals that closed the city’s premier jazz club. Revisit the exciting Brum Beat scene, take to the road with some 40 of the best (in some cases, most eccentric) American bluesmen of the 1970s, encounter the Blues Brothers Band in surprising places and enjoy Jim's tributes to some of the great names in British jazz, such as Humphrey Lyttelton and Kenny Baker, with whom he worked closely.

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The UK's energy problems are now centre stage. Growing up with Gas puts them in perspective with a history of the gas industry from its revolutionary origins at the beginning of the 19th century, manufacturing coal gas, to the present, as a now handful of international companies gear up to move it from carbon-emitting natural gas to the clean gas hydrogen. En route, the fragmented industry was rationalised by nationalisation then returned to the vagaries of (now global) market forces by privatisation. Because the industry consisted of small companies for most of its 200 years, this national history is combined with a detailed case study. Focused on North Tyneside, it illustrates how local companies evolved and how their directors, shareholders, employees, and customers responded to national changes and local circumstances, including often fraught relationships with local Councils, competition from the electricity industry, and the huge impact of two world wars.

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A U-boat disappears in the North Atlantic in October 1942 and mysteriously re-surfaces in 1988. Gradually, the Kapitan and crew come to realise they have been propelled through time when radio silence is broken.The story explores the strengths, weaknesses and delicacies of the human condition as the men struggle to come to terms with the situation.U-116 returns to West Germany to a hero's welcome but the ordeal for most of the submariners is only just beginning as they set about tracing their erstwhile families in a divided country.

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George and Leila find life very different when Middlesbrough goes into Covid-19 lockdown. They miss their friends, football training, and going to watch Boro. They even miss going to school! Then Mrs Jenkins falls ill and her naughty sausage dog Parmo comes to stay with the children, keeping everyone on their toes. Parmo discovers a mysterious tennis ball and George is determined to find some answers. Will Parmo turn out to be the unlikely hero in the neighbourhood?

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Not Great Hopes is a personal account of episodes from the author’s childhood and a vivid evocation of life during the 1950s and 1960s. The chapters range from everyday life in the Birmingham suburb of Northfield, to school life, sport, television, holidays, a first experience of foreign travel, extended family and the account of a bitter family breakdown. They include details of a childhood that is in many ways dramatically different from the childhood of today, though many themes will resonate across the generations. The book also gives an account of the author’s relationship with and impression of a city, Birmingham, in a period of tumultuous demographic and architectural change. It ranges in emotional tone from the light and humorous to the poignant and tragic. Older readers will find much to recognise; younger readers, much to surprise them.

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The definition of slang according to the Oxford Dictionary is'a type of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal are more common in speech than in writing and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people'. Thus, the choice of a phrase, or the use of 'jargon', a saying, or abbreviation, can accurately reflect our links to a specific place, employment or situations that impact upon us in our everyday lives. In the UK alone it is estimated that there are at least fifty-six regional interpretations of how we use English to convey our feelings and to communicate with one another. This little book contains some 2,000 such phrases, sayings and abbreviations drawn together, in the main,from the experiences of one family. It manifestly displays what a diverse world we now live in as families transcend different cultures and countries. It is not an academic study, rather it is designed to promote memories, to enable reflection on previous life experiences and, above all else, to simply have some fun whilst reading it. Preserving our past whilst understanding the present helps us to create history for the future as new generations go on to create their own versions of 'slang' applicable to that period. 'Ta-Ra-A-Bit'.

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There have been many books about Birmingham's history but this one is different. It is based on the archaeological evidence from the first major excavations to be carried out in Birmingham city centre. The book is written in a lively, accessible style and contains over 100 illustrations, most in colour. It provides new evidence of Birmingham's origins and its growth as a market town and industrial centre in the medieval period. The book also offers a new perspective on the transformation of Birmingham into 'the first manufacturing town in the world' in the 18th and 19th centuries. A large part of the book is devoted to the excavation of St. Martin's Churchyard, which uncovered 857 burials - in simple graves and elaborate tombs - of the people who made the Industrial Revolution. The burials are explored in fascinating detail, together with analysis of the health of the population based on scientific study of the skeletons. New research reveals intimate details of the lives of the men and women of the town of a thousand trades. If you are interested in the history of Birmingham, this book is essential reading.

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Have Drums Will Travel.

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