Search results for ""Author Michael Harrison""

The Great War produced many innovations, in particular the spectacular development by the British and French armies of motor transport. The age-old problem of moving soldiers and their supplies was no different in 1914 than it had been some 2,400 years ago, when the great Chinese military thinker Sun Tzu informed his readers that the further an army marched into enemy territory, the more the cost of transport increased, even to the point that more supplies were consumed by the transportation of men and their horses than was delivered to the troops. Using many previously unpublished illustrations, including artists' impressions, this book tells the story of the men and women who made motor transport [MT] work for the victorious British Army on the Western Front, so that in 1918, the humble lorry did indeed help propel the British Army forward On the Road to Victory'.

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Bois de Fourcaux, a luxuriant woodland covering 75 acres, set in the area of the battlefields of the Somme, dominates the surrounding landscape today, as it did in the summer of the year 1916. Known to the British Army as 'High Wood', the invading Germans had occupied the wood as it proved to be a natural field fortification and a menace that had to be neutralized if the British were to find a way forward in their attempts to breach the trench systems of the German Army and break out into the 'Green Fields Beyond'. This insightful publication will take the battlefield visitor, and also those who are unable to visit the site, on a journey through the history of the battles for High Wood and its environs. It covers the most significant dates in the British Army's struggle to eject the invader and the Germans determination to hold that which they considered to be their new National Frontier. This is the story of the largely amateur British Army of 1916. Lessons were learned in the roaring furnace of the Somme that would transform the fighting ability of the British irrevocably: High Wood was at the epicentre of that learning process.The book contains detailed maps from the time of the High Wood battles using the excellent British Trench maps and, importantly, an explanation on the use of the numbered grid system, which enables the visitor to locate, to within 5 yards, the site of an action that took place 100 years ago. Photographs are also included to enhance the visitor experience. Join us for the journey

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He was the scion of a wealthy German textiles empire, an extravagantly successful day trader and a respected film producer. But he was also the cruellest of fraudsters. Over a period of 12 years, Felix Vossen conned his best friends and closest colleagues out of tens of millions of pounds. When he ran out of friends to defraud he stole from his family. His Midas-like ability to spot the rising stars of the stock markets disguised the fact that he was a pathological liar whose investment empire was built on a giant deceit. Empathy and trust were the tools he used to lure and then betray his victims. Mr Charming charts the double life of Vossen and captures the drama of the international manhunt as his fraud collapses and he goes on the run. Why did Vossen’s victims put their money into something that was too good to be true? But more importantly, how did his banks and the financial watchdogs allow him to get away with it for so long?

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A well-known and much loved selection of the best traditional modern English verse. It contains many famous, and often quoted poems, and also provides young people with an introduction to good poetry.

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By the end of John Cecil Stephenson’s art school training – first a scholarship to Leeds Art School then to The Royal College of Art – he was in a position to produce still lives, landscapes and portraits in a professional capacity. Like many painters of his generation, who had received similarly conventional instruction, he became a competent teacher, appointed in 1922, as Head of Art at The Northern Polytechnic. In this mould Stephenson might have remained a largely undistinguished painter – but in the early 1930s he found himself at the centre of a group of artists with avant-garde credentials, and his own art underwent a remarkable transformation. By 1934 he was exhibiting groundbreaking works such as Mask (CAT. 7), at the 7 & 5 Society, and in 1937 was a key contributor to the watershed publication and exhibition Circle, where his work was showcased alongside that of luminaries such as Kazimir Malevich, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Alberto Giacometti and Pablo Picasso. What led Stephenson to become, in the words of the celebrated art critic Herbert Read, ‘one of the earliest artists in the country to develop a completely abstract style’? Between March 1919 and November 1965, John Cecil Stephenson lived in London at No. 6 Mall Studios, off Tasker Road, Hampstead. As the father figure of what Read christened ‘a nest of gentle artists’, his next door neighbours included, during the course of the decade leading up to World War II, Barbara Hepworth, John Skeaping, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore. Such fertile ground was further enriched by visits from artists fleeing persecution – including Piet, László Moholy-Nagy and Alexander Calder – just a few of the many internationally acclaimed artists who, whilst passing through London, formed part of the art set who congregated around Read’s house at No. 3 Mall Studios.

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