Search results for ""Author Robert Bard""

In this book, author Robert Bard guides readers on a spine-tingling journey to discover the paranormal and unexplained happenings that have occurred throughout Berkshire. From haunted sites to spectral figures and supernatural phenomena, here is an eerie exploration of the royal county and a collection of its chilling tales. Each of the chapters in Paranormal Berkshire focuses on a different location linked to ghostly occurrences and among the places featured are Windsor Castle, Old Windsor, Reading Abbey, Maidenhead, Ascot, Newbury, Hungerford, Bisham, Caversham, Cookham, Datchet, Slough, Thatcham and some of the smaller villages in the county. The author visits the traditional sites of paranormal activity and, with the assistance of the Oxfordshire and Berkshire Paranormal Research Group, reveals newly discovered material. He also participates in a local ghost hunt and provides a fascinating account of his observations accompanied by his own photographs. As well as detailing the nature of his own interest in the paranormal, and his experiences at the various paranormal sites, author Robert Bard also selects his own haunted highlights from his chilling exploration through the county. Paranormal Berkshire will appeal to those with an interest in the supernatural, and to local people who want to discover their county’s haunted heritage. Are you brave enough to read on?

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In this book author Robert Bard takes readers on a spine-tingling journey around Kent to some of its most haunted locations. He discovers tales of ghostly apparitions, unexplained events and paranormal phenomena. Among the places investigated is Pluckley, which was named in the Guinness Book of Records as England's most haunted village. Its twelve spirits include a screaming man who fell to his death and a spectral highwayman who haunts a spot named Fright Corner.Other haunted sites are Rochester Castle, with its thirteenth-century White Lady; Chislehurst Caves, with sounds of children's laughter, footsteps and sightings of a woman dressed in white; and Bilsington Priory, with its hooded monks. Hever Castle, once home to Anne Boleyn, lays claim to her spirit, and Dover Castle is a popular spot for organised ghost hunts, where reported apparitions include a headless child, a woman clad in red clothes and a soldier who prowls the underground tunnels. Ghostly episodes from Canterbury and

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During its 600-year history 50,000 souls were executed on the gallows at Tyburn somewhere near where Oxford Street meets the Edgware Road. Many thousands of victims remain buried nearby in anonymous graves. Many of the condemned made their final journey from Newgate Prison, three miles distant. The condemned travelled in a cart seated on his or her coffin, stopping frequently for refreshments. Sometimes the condemned survived hanging. What was it like to be hanged? This book examines contemporary accounts. Most of those executed at Tyburn were from London’s underclass. An exception was Earl Ferrers on 5 May 1760 who wore the same white suit with silver trimmings that he had worn at his wedding. He travelled from the Tower to Tyburn in his own carriage but the crowds were so thick that the journey took nearly three hours. In addition to Tyburn, this book identifies a number of London’s lesser-known places of execution such as Shepherd’s Bush Green, Cricklewood, Hampstead Heath, and the City of London.

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This is the dramatic, often erratic, and at times unbelievable story of the fortunes and misfortunes over 900 years to the present day of one of England’s premier aristocratic families, who in 1661 were given the Earldom of Essex by Charles II. This fascinating, previously untold story begins just after the Norman Conquest with a Hugh Capel in AD 1100 and ends at the present day, with Frederick Paul de Vere Capell, 11th Earl of Essex and the future heir presumptive, William Jennings Capell, a former shelf stacker, who lives in Yuba City, California. Over a period of 400 years the Capell family built a fortune, and over the next 500 years lost it due to an incredible number of mistakes bad judgment calls, and misfortunes. Lord Arthur Capel, one of England’s richest men, changed sides from Parliament to support Charles I, and after a further series of poor decisions, was executed at Palace Yard, Westminster at the age of 41 in 1649 by the same executioner, using the same axe as had executed King Charles I barely three months earlier. His son, also Arthur Capel, created 1st Earl of Essex by Charles II became involved in a plot against the king, and was mysteriously found with his throat cut whilst awaiting trial in the Tower of London. Did he commit suicide to avoid the consequences of treason and to save the estates and titles for his son? Conspiracy theories abounded. The king commented sadly that he owed the Earl’s father had died for his father, and he owed him a life and would have spared him. Arthur’s young son became the 3rd Earl and went down in history as `the most debauched young man in London.’ The long-lived 5th Earl had numerous mistresses and, as a close friend of the debauched Prince Regent, shared a well-known courtesan, Mrs Robinson with the Prince. Unhappily married, with no legitimate male heir, living at the family seat, Cassiobury in Watford, at the age of 81 he married secondly a 44-year-old actress and died shortly afterwards, accompanied to the grave by some very irreverent press comments. The three-times-married 6th Earl, whose father was a bankrupt debauched gambler, had an illegitimate son, George Ingerfield Capel, who had an illegitimate daughter who was the mistress of the `Sundance Kid.’ The 7th Earl, in 1892 struggling to keep Cassiobury and the family fortunes together married a title-hunting American heiress, Adele Beach Grant, who was not really an heiress, and who became a member of the Edwardian `fast set’. Her alcoholic husband, known as `sulky’ stepped in front of a cab outside his London club in 1916 and was killed. Adele was found mysteriously dead in the bath in 1922. Her step-son the 8th Earl had eloped with and married young, and by the 1920s the extensive family estates had to be sold. The much-married 9th Earl died heirless in Bermuda in 1966. A contest broke out over whom should now inherit the titles. Robert Edward de Vere Capel, the next Earl, born in 1920 was the son of a railway parcel porter and was a Royal Air Force flight sergeant during the Second World War. He fought a dramatic battle to prove his right to the Earldom. His son, Frederick Paul de Vere Capell, the 11th Earl of Essex, who lives modestly not far from Lancaster, is a retired assistant schoolmaster and a classical music devotee. He has no children and unless the inheritance laws change, the title will one day go to his American cousins in Yuba City, California.

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The incredible true story of what really happened in the Channel Islands during the Second World War. The Channel lslands were occupied on 30 June 1940 when four German planes landed at Guernsey Airport. They were the only part of Britain to be occupied during the Second World War. The islands had been officially demilitarised on 19 June, but the War Office in London overlooked the necessity to inform the Germans. This led to a German air attack on 28 June, which resulted in thirty-eight civilian deaths. Hitler was extremely proud of the conquest of the Channel lslands, and saw it as a stepping-stone to the full invasion of the rest of Britain. The occupying forces were instructed to behave correctly. This would show the rest of Britain that there was nothing to be feared from life under the Third Reich. This book looks at the German Occupation, the unsavoury events that occurred on the Islands, and why at the end of the war a cover-up of these events was instigated by the British Government.

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London's Lost Battlefields hides the ghosts of bloodshed and rebellion from Boudicca to the devastating but little known Zeppelin attacks of the First World War. The Peasant's Revolt of 1381 saw murder and plunder in central London, notably at The Savoy, where the present day hotel is located laid claim to thirty-two rebels who whilst drinking wine in the cellar were trapped by fire and falling masonry and over several days died there. St Albans was the site of two vicious battles during the Wars of the Roses where an eyewitness said that the market place ran with blood. One of the bloodiest battles of the Wars of the Roses took place just north of Barnet. Under a nearby field lie the bodies of between 3,000 and 4,000 forgotten soldiers of the Wars of the Roses. This book suggests the location. The Wyatt Rebellion in 1544 saw London streets again awash with blood and gallows set up all over London by Queen 'Bloody' Mary to take her revenge. 1642 saw two London English Civil Wars battles at Brentford and Turnham Green. Many fleeing Parliamentarian soldiers jumped into the Thames at Brentford and drowned. Some were buried anonymously on Hounslow Heath. Parts of central London still bear the shrapnel marks and memorials relating to Zeppelin attacks that killed 200 Londoners and injured many more. London's Lost Battlefields tells you where you will find them.

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