Search results for ""Author John Shepherd""

The Villa Wolkonsky, Rome, is the incongruously named official residence of the British ambassador to Italy. Nestled within the city’s Aurelian Wall, the site’s history dates back to antiquity, its gardens dominated by the remains of a first-century imperial Roman aqueduct. In the 19th century a remarkable Russian princess, Zenaïde Wolkonsky, turned it into a country home and salon d’art with such illustrious visitors as Gogol, Turgenev and Fanny Mendelssohn. Following generations excavated Roman tombs, collected antiquities and built a new grand mansion, before selling the Villa to the German government in 1922. It remained the German embassy, being much enlarged, until the Liberation of Rome in 1944. After the war the UK bought it, first as embassy offices and residence and, since 1971, as the residence for the ambassador and other staff. In this handsomely illustrated volume, Sir John Shepherd, former ambassador, has undertaken new research to debunk long-held myths and present, for the first time, a comprehensive history of this hidden Roman treasure.

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Afraid of training with weights? Worried of putting on muscles? Think again. Strength training is for women. This book is the ultimate guide to toning up, burning fat and getting the body you want. It shows you why women should train with weights and why you should not be afraid of them. Dispelling the myth that weight training makes a woman ‘bulky and unfeminine’, the book shows that weights and resistance training methods could be the single most important element in your fitness regime. Packed with full-colour photos and descriptions of over 30 exercises, the book gives you advice on how to put together a resistance training programme as well as how to interchange exercises. Motivational, it also gives three 6-week workout programmes to achieve a stronger, fitter and firmer body. This is the ideal companion to get the best toned body you’ve always wanted. Strength training is for women.

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The primary aim is to create an accessible and practical guide to home brewing, covering all aspects of the process. The intended outcome is that somebody following the guide, would be able to brew a number of different style of beers of good quality and take pleasure from both the process and the end product. Practically, the book will also offer some introductory, but very useful, information on other issues that are relevant to the home brewer; equipment and the cost versus benefit of different types, beer styles and flavours and an understanding of key, quality ingredients. The photography will fit this approach in that images will be useful and show helpful details but also be professionally shot and be more than just functional; they will be good to look at. The style of the book will be engaging and personal, in that it is intended to guide the reader through the process as something enjoyable, rather than approach it in a purely step by step approach. It is also intended to be light-hearted and, above all, readable and so could be enjoyed by someone actually brewing beer or someone who just wants an interesting way into the topic.

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This new edited collection of essays focuses on the history of Labour’s second period in office during the 1929-1931 global financial crisis. Contributions by leading historians and younger academics bring fresh perspectives to Labour’s domestic problems, electoral and party matters, relations with the Soviet Union and ideological questions.An important range of new historical research provides a much-needed reappraisal of Ramsay MacDonald’s second Labour government, which impressed few with its conventional policies for tackling mass unemployment. Oswald Mosley, John Maynard Keynes and Ernest Bevin’s alternative economic strategies are critically studied in key essays. A more positive side of the government’s policies is also adeptly revealed on consumerism and agriculture. Significant new light is adroitly shed on the 1929 general election, the first fought on a universal franchise. The intricate politics of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the disaffiliation of the Independent Labour Party are convincingly explored. The influence of the Soviet Union on Labour’s thoughts and actions is analysed in valuable accounts of Labour’s foreign policy and Labour’s turn to socialism after 1931. An important fresh account of opposition politics breaks new ground on the reaction of Tory politicians, including Harold Macmillan, to MacDonald’s government. The volume concludes with an absorbing analysis of the myths surrounding ‘1931’ in Labour history.This timely volume makes accessible a major reassessment of existing knowledge and new scholarship that will appeal to students and teachers of British political and social history. It is essential reading for sixth form and university courses on twentieth-century history.

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Children of the 1950s have much to look back on with fondness: Muffin the Mule, Andy Pandy, and Dennis the Menace became part of the family for many, while for others the freedom of the riverbank or railway platform was a haven away from the watchful eyes of parents. The postwar welfare state offered free orange juice, milk and healthcare, and there was lots to do, whether football in the street, a double bill at the cinema, a game of Ludo or a spot of roller-skating. But there were also hardships: wartime rationing persisted into the ’50s, a trip to the dentist was a painful ordeal, and at school discipline was harsh and the Eleven-Plus exam was a formidable milestone. Janet Shepherd and John Shepherd examine what it was like to grow up part of the Baby Boomer generation, showing what life was like at home and at school and introducing a new phenomenon – the teenager.

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This monograph details the results of major excavations in Southwark, London, detailing an archaeological sequence which spans the early prehistoric to very latest Roman periods. The site lay on the Southern outskirts of Roman London and was the location of a large Romano-Celtic temple complex. A very large finds assemblage includes a marble inscription, which is the earliest text found to mention 'Londoners'.

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In 2015 construction of a new road that bypassed the modern towns of Bedale, Aiskew and Leeming Bar began. It was anticipated that an enclosure of pre-Roman date , lay on the route of the new road near Bedale, but the site of a hitherto unknown Roman villa near Aiskew was also located. Coincidentally, both the enclosure and the villa were situated alongside a routeway that ran on slightly higher ground above local floodplains; this was exactly the same route that the modern road took.The initial construction of the Bedale enclosure could be dated to the Middle Iron Age but well-preserved ditch deposits showed a number of substantial recuttings of the ditch. The final infilling deposits included Roman material dating up to the latter part of the second century. The adjacent routeway, as excavated, belonged to this later phase of activity but there was evidence for an earlier precursor.The Aiskew villa, dating mainly to the third and fourth centuries, was only partially examined; geophysics demonstrated that the complex covered a much larger area and included many other structures. The excavated rooms were very well-appointed, with good quality wall plaster. One heated room was added at a later date. Beyond the villa was perimeter ditch, the boundary of the villa complex itself, and field systems. Finds from these demonstrate a high-quality lifestyle befitting elite owners. Precisely who these elites were is open to debate but the proximity of contemporary military camps to the west and key settlements alongside Dere Street to the east place this villa in a most convenient location for access to both.

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