Search results for ""author m j trow""

In the closing months of the Second World War, an old hedger was found bludgeoned and hacked to death in a Warwickshire field. His name was Charles Walton and the place was the little village of Lower Quinton, under the shadow of Meon Hill. They called in the local CID; they called in Scotland Yard; they interviewed hundreds of people; they asked thousands of questions. But somebody wasn't talking. The whole village was silent, as if someone had drawn down a blind. After the case was scaled down, the rumours remained. Was Meon Hill the centre of a witches' coven? And was old Charlie Walton, with his ability to talk to birds and toads and his magic watch, a witch himself? For eighty years, the supernatural has hovered over the murder of Charles Walton, with vague, haunted memories of secret rites and black dogs. Even the dead man's grave has vanished. Rumour has been piled on innuendo, adding to the excesses of writers determined to make a supernatural mystery out of a very local tragedy, until the dead man himself has disappeared into a morass of hocus pocus. This is the first book to get past the nonsense, accessing original police files that say precisely nothing about witchcraft. Analysing the facts from the time and removing the ever-more ludicrous layers of fiction, it gets as near to solving the mystery as we are ever likely to.

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Nobody expected a corpse in the tranquil Surrey countryside near Godalming, even though there was a war on and tanks churned the soil on manoeuvres. The body belonged to 19-year-old Joan Pearl Wolfe, a sweet, convent-educated girl who, according to her own mother, had gone bad. It was 1942 and England was swarming with British, Canadian and American troops building up to what would become D-Day two years later. The Surrey police, over-stretched as all forces were during the war, called in Scotland Yard, the experts, in the form of Superintendent Ted Greeno, one of the most famous and formidable detectives of his day. One of the Surrey detectives recognized the dead girl's dress - he had seen it on its owner weeks earlier and from that the body's identity came to light. Joan was a camp follower with a string of men interested in her, but her latest beau was the M tis Canadian August Sangret. He had slipped out to live with Joan in woods near to the camp and had built shacks - wigwams - as temporary homes. Charged with her murder, he gave the longest statement ever made to the police - seventeen pages of it - and Keith Simpson, the Home Office pathologist, became the first to produce a human skull in court. The distinctive wounds inflicted by Sangret's knife convinced the jury of his guilt and he was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint in Wandsworth gaol. An open and shut case? Far from it. For all the brilliance of forensic science and the dogged work of the police, the jury should still be out on August Sangret. As the judge said in his summing up, there is no blood on this man'.

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Everybody remembers where they were the day John F. Kennedy died. The president's assassination shocked the world and raised questions that have still not been answered today. Almost as shocking is attempted assassination the bullet that missed; the bomb that did not go off; the poison that did not work. _Dodging the Bullet_ looks at the most spectacular of these, from attempts on royals like George II and Queen Victoria, where dysfunctional men with unreliable guns lurked in the shrubbery of parks to the astonishing 634 attempts to kill and/or discredit Fidel Castro. Anybody in the public eye is a potential victim for an assassin. Anybody with access to the most easily obtained weapons is a potential killer. The fascination lies in the mix of these two the random meeting of the famous and the deranged. _Dodging the Bullet_ has professional hitmen working for sinister organizations and governments. It has security services who are nothing of the sort. It has arrogant and compla

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Film studios have been making historical movies now for over a century. In that time, thousands of films have been made covering not just centuries but millennia. Did Neanderthal woman really look like Raquel Welch in her bearskin bikini? Did 6,000 rebellious slaves claim that they were Spartacus? Did Berengaria complain to her husband, Richard the Lionheart, War, war; that's all you think about, Dick Plantagenet'? Was El Cid strapped to his horse's saddle to lead his army after he was dead? These aren't questions of history; they are questions of Hollywood.Charlton Heston was a foot too tall for General Charles Gordon. John Wayne was a tad too American for Genghis Khan. Eric von Stroheim's bald head was an odd choice for the perfectly hirsute Erwin Rommel. And Warren Beatty and Fay Dunaway were far too gorgeous for bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde.Hollywood never gets it right. History and its characters are endlessly complicated, and producers, directors and screenwriters have a simple

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Intrepid 19th-century private investigators American Matthew Grand and Englishman James Batchelor return in their second mystery.July, 1868. On receiving a commission from Matthew's cousin Luther to look into the suspicious death of Lafayette Baker, Head of the US National Detective Police, private investigators Matthew Grand and his business partner James Batchelor leave London for Washington DC. They find a country still scarred by the bitter legacy of the Civil War and even in death Lafayette Baker remains one of the most hated men north or south of the Potomac.The newly-created Ku Klux Klan wanted him dead. So did the Washington brothel-keepers, bar-owners and gamblers whom Baker had closed down. What does beautiful former spy Miss Belle Boyd know that she's not telling them? And could the President himself be involved?Matthew Grand finds he has come home to a mixed reception, while Batchelor struggles as an Englishman abroad. Will either of

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Richard III is England's most controversial king. Forever associated with the murder of his nephews, the Princes in the Tower, he divides the nation. As spectacular as his death at Bosworth in August 1485 - the last king of England to die in battle - the astonishing discovery of his bones under a Leicester car park five centuries later renewed interest in him and re-opened old debates. Is he the world's most wicked uncle; or is he (in the words of the man who most smeared him) 'a prince more sinned against than sinning'? Richard was not born in the North; neither did he die there, but this detailed look at his life, tracing his steps over the thirty-three years that he lived, focuses on the area that he loved and made his own. As Lord of the North, he had castles at Middleham and Sheriff Hutton, Penrith and Sandal. He fought the Scots along the northern border and on their own territory. His son was born at Middleham and was invested as Prince of Wales at York Minster, where Richard planned to set up a college of 100 priests. His white boar device can be found in obscure corners of churches and castles; his laws, framed in the single parliament of his short reign, gave rights to the people who served him and loved him north of the Trent. And when he felt threatened or outnumbered by his enemies during the turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses, it was to the men of the North that he turned for support and advice. They became his knights of the body; members of the Council of the North which outlived Richard by a 150 years. They died with him at Bosworth. Although we cannot divorce Richard from the violent politics of the day or from events that happened far to the South, it was in the North that Richard's heart lay. The North was his home. It was the place he loved.

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The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is one of the milestones of history. Everyone, it is said, remembers where they were when they heard the news. Because the official investigation, the Warren Commission, set up by Kennedy's successor in the White House, Lyndon Johnson, was such a whitewashing travesty of justice, the world has felt itself free to speculate ever more wildly about what really happened in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, in November 1963. The killer, said the Warren Commission, was the peculiar loner, Lee Harvey Oswald, and he acted alone. Evidence, science and common sense have long ago proved that this was not possible. So it was the Russians. It was the Cubans. It was the Mafia. It was Lyndon Johnson. It was the Secret Service. It was the FBI. It was the CIA. It was that murky conspiratorial bunch, the Military-Industrial Complex. This book evaluates all the above and comes to another conclusion entirely. The reason that we are still arguing about who was responsib

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The disappearance of two boys during the summer of 1483 has never been satisfactorily explained. They were Edward, Prince of Wales, nearly thirteen at the time, and his brother, Richard of York, nearly ten. With their father, Edward IV, dying suddenly at forty, both boys had been catapulted into the spotlight of fifteenth-century politics, which was at once bloody and unpredictable. Thanks to the work of the hack historians' who wrote for Henry VII, the first Tudor, generations grew up believing that the boys were murdered and that the guilty party was their wicked uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Richard crowned himself King of England in July 1483, at which time the boys were effectively prisoners in the Tower of London. After that, there was no further sign of them. Over the past 500 years, three men in particular have been accused of the boys' murders - Richard of Gloucester; Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond; and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. The evidence against them would not stand up in a court of law today, but the court of history is much less demanding and most fingers remain pointed squarely at Richard of Gloucester. This book takes a different approach, the first to follow this particular line of enquiry. It is written as a police procedural, weighing up the historical evidence without being shackled to a particular camp'. The supposition has always been made that the boys were murdered for political reasons. But what if that is incorrect? What if they died for other reasons entirely? What if their killer had nothing to gain politically from their deaths at all? And, even more fascinatingly, what if the princes in the Tower were not the only victims?

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Before Britain had a prime minister – and before they invented America – the dictator Oliver Cromwell urged the artist Lely to paint him ‘warts and all’. This book deals with some of the ‘all’, but is mostly about the warts, the moral blemishes that have dogged the leaders of two of the greatest countries on earth for 300 years. Scandalously, there are still no qualifications necessary for the job of prime minister or president, two of the most important positions in the world. And that lack of ability shows itself in spades throughout these pages. Robert Walpole knew that ‘every man has his price’ and bought people accordingly. Viscount Goderich broke down in tears, begging the king to fire him. George Washington, the revered saint of American creation, blew with the wind and owned slaves. Abraham Lincoln was prepared to send African Americans back to Africa to save the Union. William Gladstone popped out from Downing street to ‘save’ prostitutes. David Lloyd George gave people titles for money. Warren Harding had a string of mistresses, as did John Kennedy. And all this happened before Donald Trump! Thank God the fourth estate was there, the free press watching every move of politicians. Who was watching them, of course, is another story. If you thought – and prayed – that the occupants of No. 10 and the White House were honourable, competent people, you’re in for a bit of a shock.

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Dismembered corpses are discovered scattered along the banks of the river Thames, a calculating clinical multiple murderer is on the loose, and the London police have no inkling of the killers identity and, more than a century later, they still don't. In this, M.J. Trows latest re-investigation of a bizarre and brutal serial killing, he delves deep into the appalling facts of the case, into the futile police investigations, and into the dark history of late Victorian London. The incredible criminal career of the Thames torso murderer has gripped readers and historians ever since he committed his crimes in the 1870's and 1880's. The case poses as many questions as the even more notorious killings of Jack the Ripper. How, over a period of fifteen years, did the Thames murderer get away with a succession of monstrous and sensational misdeeds? And what sort of perverted character was he, why did he take such risks, why did he kill again and again?

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July, 1868. On receiving a commission to look into the suspicious death of Lafayette Baker, Head of the US National Detective Police, private investigators Matthew Grand and James Batchelor leave London for Washington DC, where they find a country still scarred by the Civil War, and unearth a surprising number of suspects who wanted Baker dead.

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'In dreary, doubtful waiting hours Before the brazen frenzy starts, The horses show him nobler powers;- O patient eyes, courageous hearts.' Into Battle, Julian Grenfell, 1915 In the days of horsed cavalry, a soldier's mount was a living, breathing companion. It galloped into the jaws of death at the sound of the bugle and the nudge of spurs. It carried its rider over arid deserts, across swollen rivers, up near-sheer mountains. Whole societies functioned because of the warhorse - the Huns, the Mongols, and the tribes of the North American plains. Horses were worshipped as gods - the centaurs of ancient Greece, Tziminchak of the Aztecs, while the Roman emperor Caligula intended to make his horse a consul! Most of us have only ever seen warhorses at the movies - the Scots Greys at Waterloo, the Light Brigade at Balaclava, Taras Bulba's Cossacks on the Steppes and Custer's cavalry at the Little Big Horn. This book celebrates the colour and nostalgia of a fighting past, from eohippus the first horse to Sefton, the last warhorse injured in the line of duty. Not forgetting the stark reality of thousands of animals sacrificed for men's greed and ambition, those killed on campaign, the maimed cab-horses and fodder for the knacker's yard.

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Astonishingly, The Hagley Wood Murder is the first book solely on the subject (other than a selection of privately printed/self published offerings) ever written on this murder, which too place eighty years ago. In April 1943, four teenaged boys discovered a corpse stuffed into the bole of a wych elm in a wood in the industrial Midlands. The body was merely bones and had been in the tree for up to two years. The pathologist determined that she was female, probably in her thirties, had given birth and was just under five feet tall. The cause of death was probably suffocation. Six months after the discovery, mysterious messages began to appear on walls in the area, variants of Who Put Bella Down the Wych Elm - Hagley Wood'. And the name Bella has stuck ever since. Local newspapers, then the national press, took up the story and ran with it, but not until 1968 was there a book on the case - Donald McCormick's Murder by Witchcraft - and that, like others that followed, tied Bella in with another supposedly occult murder, that of Charles Walton on Meon Hill in 1945. Any unsolved murder brings out the oddballs - the police files, only recently released, are full of them - and the nonsense still continues. The online versions are woeful - inaccuracy piled on supposition, laced with fiction. It did not help that a professional occultist, Dr Margaret Murray, expressed her belief, as early as 1953, that witchcraft was involved in Bella's murder. And ill-informed nonsense has been cobbled together to prove' that Dr Murray was right. McCormick's own involvement was in espionage and his book, slavishly copied by later privately printed efforts, have followed this tack too. It was wartime, so the anonymous woman in the wych elm had to be a spy, parachuted in by the Abwehr, the Nazi secret service. The Hagley Wood Murder is the first book to unravel the fiction of McCormick and others. It names Bella and her probable murderer. And if the conclusion is less over-the-top than the fabrications referred to above, it is still an intriguing tale of the world's oldest profession and the world's oldest crime!

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In 1945, John Randall was the first Allied officer to enter Bergen-Belsen – the concentration camp that would reveal the horrors of the Holocaust to the world. Randall was one of that league of extraordinary gentlemen handpicked for suicidally dangerous missions behind enemy lines in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany throughout the Second World War. He was a man of his class and of his times. He hated the Germans, liked the French and was unimpressed by the Americans and the Arabs. He was an outrageous flirt, as might be expected of a man who served in Phantom alongside film stars David Niven and Hugh Williams. He played rugby with Paddy Mayne, the larger-than-life colonel of the SAS and winner of four DSOs. He pushed Randolph Churchill, son of the Prime Minister, out of an aeroplane. He wined and dined in nightclubs as part of the generation that lived for each day because they might not see another.This extraordinary true story, partly based on previously unpublished diaries, presents a different slant on that mighty war through the eyes of a restless young man eager for action and adventure.

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Did you know English people were around before the country of England was invented? It’s true: just over 1,000 years ago, English people lived in several smaller countries all over the island of Britain. A Saxon king called Alfred is famous for starting to bring these countries together – but who finished the job? Another Saxon king? A monk? Or was it... a Viking? In this fantastically illustrated book, storyteller Chip Colquhoun explores fact and folklore to see what they tell us about the birth of a country. After enjoying these tales of deadly battles, singing kings and miraculous queens, can you work out Who Made England?

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