Search results for ""Author Iain Gordon""
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Night Hunter's Prey: The Lives and Deaths of an RAF Gunner and a Luftwaffe Pilot
This is the story of two airmen - an RAF Rear Gunner and a Luftwaffe Pilot. Alexander Ollar was raised in the Highlands of Scotland. He became an exceptional sporting shot and volunteered as an RAF Air Gunner in 1939. Helmut Lent enrolled for pilot training in the Luftwaffe as soon as he was old enough. Both were men of integrity and honour. Alec completed his first tour of 34 operations with 115 Squadron and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal by the King. After a year as an instructor, Alec was commissioned and returned to 115 Squadron as Gunnery Leader. He took part in the first 1,000 bomber raid and was described by his Squadron Commander as the best rear gunner he had ever flown with. At the same time Helmut was building up an impressive score of victories as a night fighter pilot and a national hero who was decorated by the Fuhrer. In July 1942, just as both men reach the apex of their careers, they meet for the first time in the night skies over Hamburg. As this fascinating book reveals, only one will survive.
£28.79
Fonthill Media Ltd Auld Greekie: Edinburgh as The Athens of the North
In the years between about 1810 and 1840, Edinburgh—long and affectionately known as ‘Auld Reekie’—came to think of itself and be widely regarded as something else: the city became ‘Modern Athens’, an epithet later turned to ‘the Athens of the North’. The phrase is very well-known. It is also much used by those who have little understanding of the often confused and contradictory messages hidden within the apparent convenience of a trite or hackneyed term that conceals a myriad of nuanced meanings. This book examines the circumstances underlying a remarkable change in perception of a place and an age. It looks in detail at the ‘when’, the ‘by whom’, the ‘why’, the ‘how’, and the ‘with what consequences’ of this most interesting, if extremely complex, transformation of one city into an image—physical or spiritual, or both—of another. A very broad range of evidence is drawn upon, the story having not only topographical, artistic, and architectural dimensions but also social, cerebral, and philosophical ones. Edinburgh may well have been considered ‘Athenian’. But, in essence, it remained what it had always been. Maybe, however, for a brief period it was really a sort of hybrid: ‘Auld Greekie’.
£27.00
Bucknell University Press Scots in London in the Eighteenth Century
Scots in London in the Eighteenth Century is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that explores, through the experiences of individuals and groups ranging from James Boswell and his circle at one end of the social spectrum to highland folk musicians at the other, the reasons why Scottish men, women, and children made the long journey south to London and their reactions to the great metropolis once there. Through the varied approaches of historians and art historians, and literary critics and musicologists, this book addresses a series of interconnected themes including the dynamics that gave rise to periodic "Scotophobia" and also generated a distinct form of Scottish social capital and eventual integration; patronage, as a type of social relationship particular to the age and to the capital city; cultural production, both high and popular; and the making of Scottish identity in London, along with the impact of London-forged Anglo-Scottish identity on Scotland and evolving notions of "Britishness." Contributing to this volume are Iain Gordon Brown, Sandro Jung, Viccy Coltman, James J. Caudle, Nigel Aston, Patricia R. Andrew, Anita Guerrini, Mary Anne Alburger, Stana Nenadic, Katharine Glover, and Jane Rendall.
£116.13