Search results for ""Author Tom Quinn""

All the fun of Portico's bestselling Strangest series, now in quiz form! Test your London knowledge with this fascinating book, packed with fun and challenging quiz questions based around the weirdest events from the illustrious history of this wonderful city. Quiz categories include: Ancient traditions London eccentrics Getting about Ghosts and ghouls Corridors of power Monumental monuments Quirky buildings Just plain weird Whether you're testing your friends, practising for pub quizzes or just reading it in an armchair, this book will take your London knowledge to a whole new level. Word count: 30,000 words.

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A quirky collection of stories from London's stranger side, featuring a tiny prison cell in Trafalgar Square, a train disguised as a ship, and a church that's completely the wrong way round. London’s Strangest Tales takes a walk on London’s weirder side with an absorbing collection of curious tales from one of the world’s greatest cities. This fascinating book is packed with amazing things you didn’t know about Britain’s capital, like the fact that it’s still forbidden to run, carry an umbrella or whistle in the Burlington Arcade, and the fat lamppost at the corner of Trafalgar Square that is secretly a tiny prison cell. And did you know that the entrance to Buckingham Palace you see from the Mall is actually the back door and not the front? The stories within these pages are bizarre, fascinating, hilarious and, most importantly, true. Revised, redesigned and updated for a new generation of London-lovers, this book is a brilliant alternative guide to the city, whether you’re a visitor, a daily commuter or one of its 8 million inhabitants. Word count: 45,000

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More extraordinary but true stories from London’s history. In this fascinating follow-up to his bestselling London’s Strangest Tales, Tom Quinn makes a further foray into the weirder side of the capital, bringing us a splendiforous collection of bizarre-but-true stories that explore a thousand years of London’s history. Discover the ghosts that stalk West End theatres, the mysterious mummy who lives in a City church cupboard, and secret tunnels under the Thames. Find out why there’s a TARDIS at Earl’s Court, why frogs once rained from the skies, and why the mulberry tree in the gardens at Buckingham Palace isn’t quite what it was supposed to be. A dip-in-and-outable treasure trove of London lore, London’s Truly Strangest Tales is both an ideal gift for dyed-in-the-wool Londoners who want to find out more about the great city they live in, and the perfect souvenir for people just passing through. Word count: 58,000

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For as long as the British monarchy has existed, royal children have been brought up in ways that seem bizarre and eccentric to the rest of us. From medieval wet nurses to today's Norland nannies and elite boarding schools, princes and princesses have endured parental abandonment for centuries as their parents farmed out childrearing duties to paid staff. And as this marvellous romp of a book demonstrates, dysfunctional childhood experiences produce emotionally damaged adults, as evidenced by Edward VIII - who was horribly mistreated by his nanny - and his marriage to his substitute mother figure, Mrs Simpson; by alcoholic party girl Princess Margaret; and by rebellious Harry and his desperate desire to adopt Meghan Markle's world view, to the detriment of his relationship with his brother. Interweaving exclusive testimonies from palace staff with historical sources, Tom Quinn also uncovers outrageous tales of royal children misbehaving, often hilariously - from Edward VII smashing up his schoolroom to the Queen mischievously pranking unsuspecting visitors with dog biscuits to Prince William pinching a teacher's bottom. Amusing and shocking in equal measure, Gilded Youth examines how the royal family has clung to outmoded traditions that centre on emotional coldness and detachment, and how, when it comes to children, the British royal family is still living in the Dark Ages.

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An exploration of traditional British craftsmanship, accompanying the prime time BBC TV series presented by Monty Don. It celebrates various aspects of rural crafts including woodcraft, thatching, weaving, stone masonry, metalwork and glass making. It showcases some of Britain's leading master craftsmen.

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Inspiring collection of three centuries of angling stories and art Gems from the great angling writers, including Chris Yates, G. E. M. Skues, Izaak Walton, Dame Julia Berners, Arthur Ransome, Nick Lyons, Dave Hughes, Ed Engle, and Paul Schullery A perfect gift for the discerning fly fisher Salmon fishing, trout fishing, flies, perfect days, and the fish that got away"

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For more than 300 years, Kensington Palace has played host to a colourful cast of kings, queens and assorted aristocratic hangers-on. A stone’s throw from the bustling streets of central London, this grand building has served as the stage for some of the most dramatic and bizarre events in the history of the royal family. It was here that the young Queen Victoria was held a virtual prisoner for eighteen years; and it was here that George II installed both his wife and his mistress, giving the latter rooms so damp that there were said to be mushrooms growing on the walls. More recently, the palace has witnessed an extraordinary series of scandals, from Princess Diana’s bombshell TV interview with a journalist smuggled into the palace disguised as a salesman, to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s shock departure – first for Frogmore Cottage, and then for America – amid rumours of a rift with William and Kate. With exclusive interviews with palace staff past and present, fascinating historical details and a fully updated postscript considering what life after Kensington holds for Harry and Meghan, Kensington Palace: An Intimate Memoir from Queen Mary to Meghan Markle offers a rare behind-the-scenes insight into one of Britain’s most iconic residences.

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A unique collection of fishing stories from the past 200 years that prove that when it comes to fishing, things can and often do go hilariously wrong. From stories of record breakers that got away to boats that sank, rods that broke and pike and salmon that ran amoke, Great Angling Disasters is the ultimate chronicle of those less than triumphant days on the riverbank. For everyone interested in fishing with rod and line whether they are game, coarse or sea fishermen.

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London’s Strangest Tales takes a walk on London’s weirder side with an absorbing collection of curious tales from one of the world’s greatest cities. This fascinating book is packed with amazing things you didn’t know about Britain’s capital, like the fact that it’s still forbidden to run, carry an umbrella or whistle in the Burlington Arcade, and the fat lamppost at the corner of Trafalgar Square that is secretly a tiny prison cell. And did you know that the entrance to Buckingham Palace you see from the Mall is actually the back door and not the front? The stories within these pages are bizarre, fascinating, hilarious and, most importantly, true. This brand new edition, redesigned in splendid hardback for 2018, is a brilliant alternative guide to the city, whether you’re a visitor, a daily commuter or one of its 8 million inhabitants. Word count: 45,000

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During more than thirty years in a variety of houses, Bob Sharpe managed to rise from garden boy to valet and butler.As a boy he had to kill pheasant chicks, boil rabbits for the estate dogs, carry the wood up and down stairs every day for thirty fires and sleep on the floor outside his master's room. He cleaned shoes, ironed underwear and socks and once had to stand all night in the hall waiting for a late visitor to arrive.But as a butler he was the best paid servant in the house, waited on, feared and respected by the other servants.Bob Sharpe knew the real world of upstairs downstairs and the secrets of the landed gentry - even to the point of incest and attempted murder! They Also Serve shows you life below stairs as it really was and is perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and nostalgia memoirs.

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Kathleen Clifford was born in 1909. Her family lived in a tiny flat near Paddington Station and her earliest memories were of the smell of horses and the shrill whistle of steam trains. For a girl from the slums there was really only one option once school was over - a life in service. She started work in 1925 as a lowly kitchen maid in the London home of Lady Diana Spencer's family. Here she heard tales of the Earl's propensity for setting fire to himself, as well as enjoying the servants' gossip about who was sleeping with whom. The Spencers were just the first in a line of eccentric families for whom she worked during a career that lasted more than thirty years and took her from a London palace to remote medieval estates. But despite long hours, amorous butlers and mad employers, Kathleen always kept her sense of humour and knew how to have fun. On one occasion she was almost caught in bed with her boyfriend who had to jump out of the window and run down the drive in his underwear to escape the local bobby.

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For more than 300 years, Kensington Palace has played host to a colourful cast of kings, queens, wayward children, royal aunts and uncles, distant cousins and assorted aristocratic hangers-on. This remarkable building has served as the stage for some of the most dramatic and bizarre events in the royal family’s history. It was here that the young Queen Victoria was held a virtual prisoner for eighteen years; and it was here that George II installed both his wife and his mistress, giving the latter rooms so damp that there were said to be mushrooms growing on the walls. More recently, the palace has witnessed an extraordinary series of scandals, from Princess Diana’s bombshell TV interview with a journalist smuggled into the palace disguised as a salesman, to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s departure for Frogmore Cottage amid rumours of a rift with William and Kate. Through exclusive interviews with palace staff past and present and detailed historical sources, Tom Quinn takes a look beyond official accounts, delving into the frequently outrageous but often heart-warming history of the palace and its inhabitants, from its earliest beginnings to the present day. With a postscript reflecting on Harry and Meghan’s shock decision to leave the country, Kensington Palace: An Intimate Memoir from Queen Mary to Meghan Markle offers a rare behind-the-scenes insight into one of Britain’s most iconic residences.

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A fascinating collection of bizarre but true stories from nearly 200 years of railway history. Right from the very start, when George Stephenson’s famous Rocket knocked over and killed a government minister at the opening of the Liverpool to Manchester line in 1830, the world’s railways have given rise to plenty of intriguing stories. In this fascinating book, revised and updated with a new selection of tales, railway buff Tom Quinn explores the more bizarre side of train travel, featuring weird weather conditions, audacious robberies, hair-raising accidents, vanishing passengers, an infestation of maggots and a mysterious missing mummy. From the dawn of rail travel, when speeds of 15mph were considered dangerous to health and people mistook engines for fire-breathing demons, through the Victorian heyday of royal trains and seaside specials to today’s more prosaic leaves on the line, this whistlestop tour through railways’ long and storied history is the perfect gift for armchair travellers, history fans and trainspotters. Word count: 60,000

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George Orwell once said that the British love a really good murder. He might have added that the only thing the British love more than a good murder is a really good scandal, and best of all are the sexual and political scandals that take place behind the gilded doors of Britain's royal palaces. From Edward II's intimate relationship with Piers Gaveston to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's dramatic exit from the royal family, the royal residences have seen it all. This glorious romp of a book contains new information on well-known and not-so-well-known scandals, including those that have only recently been revealed through the release of previously secret official papers. Exploring surviving palaces such as Kensington as well as long -vanished residences including Whitehall, Scandals of the Royal Palaces is the first in-depth look at the bad behaviour of not just the royals themselves but also palace officials, courtiers, household servants and hangers-on. Delving into the bitter hatreds that generations of King Georges nursed for their eldest sons, Queen Victoria's opium -fuelled rages and Edward VII's near-miss perjury conviction, royal expert Tom Quinn reveals that scandal and the royal family have always been bedfellows. And if the behaviour of today's royals is anything to go by, the glittering palaces will continue to house intriguing, embarrassing and outrageous scandals for centuries to come.

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'Shiveringly good suspense!' Lisa GardnerTHE FIFTH BOOK IN A GRIPPING SERIES FROM 30 MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHOR.One by one he'll stalk them, then he'll squeeze the trigger, savouring the way each lifeless body crumples to the reddening snow. One down already. And then there were five...Sheriff Dan Grayson lies near death and the police department of Grizzly Falls, Montana, is in shock. Then a prominent judge's body is found.Detectives Regan Pescoli and Selena Alvarez head up the search for the killer, but they don't realize how personal and dangerous the case is going to be. Headstrong and eager for justice, Pescoli tracks the scant clues straight to a monster who has had her and Alvarez in his sights all along . . .'She is one of the best' Harlan CobenTHE NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES, DESERVES TO DIE, IS AVAILABLE NOW

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Born in 1910, Rose Plummer grew up in an East End slum; she knew at first hand a soot-blackened world, lit by candles and oil lamps, where you slept in your clothes - if you hadn't already been sewn into them for the winter - and fought an unending battle with hunger and bed bugs. At its best, life was lived on the bustling, noisy streets where fish sellers jostled with hurdy-gurdy men, organ grinders and street fighters, where children dodged between the wheels of horse-drawn carts and where money could still be made by mudlarks and the rag and bone man. At the age of fifteen, Rose left the noise and squalor of Hoxton and started work as a live-in maid at a house in the West End. Despite the poverty of her childhood, nothing could have prepared her for the long hours, the backbreaking work and the harshness of this new world; a world in which servants were treated as if they were less than human. It was a world in which Rose found herself working from six in the morning till nine at night in a house where the only unheated bedroom was the one she slept in. Here and in later, grander, houses Rose had to endure the strict hierarchy of the servants' world where the maid was expected to put up with sex pests, deranged employers, verbal and even physical abuse. But however difficult life became, Rose found something to laugh about, and her remarkable spirit and gift for friendship shines through in her memories of a now-vanished world. This is upstairs downstairs as it really was.

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Barking Mad taps into the British passion for dogs by bringing together a unique collection of extraordinary, touching and sometimes bizarre but true stories covering sporting dogs (and hounds) military mascots, eccentric companions, war heroes and Royal dogs. Many of the best and most intriguing stories, which date back to the early nineteenth century, have been discovered in long-forgotten books and magazines, but all reflect our enduring passion for man’s best friend. Stories include everything from the Labrador that saved its master from drowning to the hound that spent years travelling unaccompanied across Britain by train, and the pooch that carried a penny to the local bakery every day to buy its own cakes. Beautifully illustrated by Nicola L. Robinson this book is a wonderful anthology for all who love man’s best friend.

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