Search results for ""Author Stephen Wade""

'Grimsby in the Great War' is a detailed account of how the experience of war impacted on the seaside town of Grimsby from the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, to the long- awaited peace of 1918. Grimsby and Cleethorpes were among the most vulnerable and exposed British towns in August 1914 when the Great War broke out. Situated on the North Sea, and facing the German Baltic fleet, their vessels were to face the mines and the U-boat torpedoes as the war progressed. But this is merely one of the incredibly dramatic and testing developments in the wartime saga of 1914-18, which impacted on the the town of Grimsby. Written into the greater story are the achievements of the Grimsby Chums and the other regiments containing Grimsby men, and the amazing story of the Home Front experience, from the local shell factory staffed largely by women, to the War Hospital Supply Depot and the Women's Emergency Corps. Throughout this compelling book, Stephen Wade documents the town's remarkable stories of heroism, determination and resolution in the face of the immensity of the war and its seemingly endless tests and trials of Grimsby's mettle. AUTHOR: Stephen Wade was born in Leeds and was educated at the universities of Wales and Leeds where he gained a PHD and an MA. He is a professional writer specializing in military and crime history. A former teacher, university lecturer and writer in residence in prisons, he has written more than twenty books for Pen & Sword, including Notorious Prisons of the World, Air Raid Shelters of the Second World War, and Tracing Your Legal Ancestors, as well as seven titles in the 'Foul Deeds' series. Find more details about his work at www.stephen.wade.com. 16 pages illustrations

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Covering the lives and achievements of five English intelligence officers involved in wars at home and abroad between 1870 and 1918, this exceptionally researched book offers an insight into spying in the age of Victoria. Including material from little-known sources such as memoirs, old biographies and information from M15 and the police history archives, this book is a more detailed sequel to Wade's earlier work, Spies in the Empire. The book examines the social and political context of Victorian spying and the role of intelligence in the Anglo-Boer wars as well as case studies on five intriguing characters: William Melville, Sir John Ardagh, Reginald Wingate and Rudolf Slatin, and William Robertson. Responding to a dearth of books covering this topic, Wade both presents fascinating biographies of some of the most significant figures in the history of intelligence as well as a snapshot of a time in which the experts and amateurs who would eventually become M15 struggled against bias, denigration and confusion.

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London, 1890: A group of seven amateur criminologists based at the Septimus Club in Piccadilly set out to investigate a series of mysterious crimes committed in the capital. Including a professor, a Lord, an ex-jockey, an actress, a talented rogue, a Scotland Yard detective and a society lady, the sleuths become embroiled in the murder of an artist, an attempted assassination and even come up against some Russian anarchists. In these, their first six adventures, the society take on some challenging cases, relishing the thrill of the chase as enemies mount against them and old vendettas return. This collection is a treat for all fans of vintage crime fiction.

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The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children's play song "Shortenin' Bread," the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat," the blues "Another Man Done Gone," and the spiritual "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by.Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who remembered them. He reconstructs the sights and sounds of the recording sessions themselves and how the music worked in all their lives. Some of these performers developed musical reputations beyond these field recordings, but for many, these tracks represent their only appearances on record: prisoners at the Arkansas State Penitentiary jumping on "the Library's recording machine" in a rendering of "Rock Island Line"; Ora Dell Graham being called away from the schoolyard to sing the jump-rope rhyme "Pullin' the Skiff"; Luther Strong shaking off a hungover night in jail and borrowing a fiddle to rip into "Glory in the Meetinghouse."Alongside loving and expert profiles of these performers and their locales and communities, Wade also untangles the histories of these iconic songs and tunes, tracing them through slave songs and spirituals, British and homegrown ballads, fiddle contests, gospel quartets, and labor laments. By exploring how these singers and instrumentalists exerted their own creativity on inherited forms, "amplifying tradition's gifts," Wade shows how a single artist can make a difference within a democracy.Reflecting decades of research and detective work, the profiles and abundant photos in The Beautiful Music All Around Us bring to life largely unheralded individuals--domestics, farm laborers, state prisoners, schoolchildren, cowboys, housewives and mothers, loggers and miners--whose music has become part of the wider American musical soundscape. The hardcover edition also includes an accompanying CD that presents these thirteen performances, songs and sounds of America in the 1930s and '40s.

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Once there was a Roman settlement on what is now Filey Brig. In Holderness, a prosperous town called Ravenser saw kings and princes on its soil, and its progress threatened the good people of Grimsby. But the Romans and the Ravenser folk are long gone, as are their streets and buildings sunk beneath the hungry waves of what was once the German Ocean. _Lost to the Sea: The Yorkshire Coast & Holderness_ tells the story of the small towns and villages that were swallowed up by the North Sea. Old maps show an alarming number of such places that no longer exist. Over the centuries, since prehistoric times, people who settled along this stretch have faced the constant and unstoppable hunger of the waves, as the Yorkshire coastline has gradually been eaten away. County directories of a century ago lament the loss of communities once included in their listings; cliffs once seeming so strong have steadily crumbled into the water. In the midst of this, people have tried to live and prosper through work and play, always aware that their great enemy, the relentless sea, is facing them. As the East Coast has lost land, the mud flats around parts of Spurn, at the mouth of the Humber, have grown. Stephen Wade s book tells the history of that vast land of Holderness as well, which the poet Philip Larkin called the end of land .

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There has always been fascination with crime, deviance and punishment; from the days of the highwayman to the Luddites and in the foul deeds of Peter Sutcliffe. Add to that, the continuing allure of the unsolved case, which has long provided material for true crime and fiction writers. In Stephen Wade’s casebook, Murder in Mind he looks at his favourite investigations in his home county of Yorkshire, rich with villainous acts, painstaking investigations and outright injustices. Read about Leeds’ most notorious female killer Louie Calvert and why he believes her conviction and hanging could have been a travesty; famous hangmen, Chartist rebels, and the many cases open to fresh investigation such as those of Bill o’ Jacks, Mr Blum and Emily Pye. Murder in Mind brings together Stephen’s journeys into the criminal underworld, including his work as a writer in prisons and his research in the murder archives as he attempts to uncover and understand why such heinous acts are committed. The basis for this book was created in the `Yorkshire Ripper’ years, when the impact of that series of murders sparked the crime writer in him and his tutor, Stanley Ellis, worked on the notoriously misleading `Ripper Tapes.’ Since then Stephen has written over 70 non-fiction titles - many of them on the history of crime and the law - but this is something different, a mixture of memoir, reflection and the realisation that murder often happens down the street.

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Jewish American writing is an exciting and controversial genre within post-war literature. In this book Stephen Wade offers a student guide to major writers, their key works and to influential background factors including the postmodern, the masternarrative and metafiction. The themes, issues and philosophies of writers including Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Isaac Bashevis Singer are inter-related and wider literary and historical topics are alluded to and explained. Covering women's writing, novels, poetry and drama, the author offers a readable guide to the achievements of a key group of writers in twentieth-century American literature. Key Features * A student guide to major writers in post-war American literature * A chapter on each of the 5 main writers * Covers theoretical aspects -- the postmodern, the masternarrative and metafiction -- in an easily accessible way * Offers background material to situate the work of the writers

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The murder cases in this book are a mixture of classic narratives of jealousy, elimination and passion, now retold from new perspectives and with more research. The author also includes some little-known mysteries: three unsolved homicides from across the county, including the killing of the 'Barton recluse' and the enigmatic death of a young farmer in Gedney in which the dead man's dog appeared in court. In this chronicle of violent deaths and courtroom struggles the reader will find a new slant on some of the principal cases, with plenty of social and legal history added to enrich the stories. Lincolnshire Murders is a powerful and fascinating reappraisal of some of the most brutal and gruesome killings in the county's history.

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The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains. Including the children''s play song 'Shortenin'' Bread,' the fiddle tune 'Bonaparte''s Retreat,' the blues 'Another Man Done Gone,' and the spiritual 'Ain''t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down,' these performances were recorded in kitchens and churches, on porches and in prisons, in hotel rooms and school auditoriums. Documented during the golden age of the Library of Congress recordings, they capture not only the words and tunes of traditional songs but also the sounds of life in which the performances were embedded: children laugh, neighbors comment, trucks pass by.Musician and researcher Stephen Wade sought out the performers on these recordings, their families, fellow musicians, and others who

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The history of the British prison system only had systematic records from the middle of the nineteenth century. Before that, material on prisoners in local gaols and houses of correction was patchy and minimal. In more recent times, many prison records have been destroyed. In Tracing Your Prisoner Ancestors, crime historian Stephen Wade attempts to provide information and guidance to family and social history researchers in this difficult area of criminal records. His book covers the span of time from medieval to modern, and includes some Scottish and Irish sources. The sources explained range broadly from central calendars of prisoners, court records and gaol returns, through to memoirs and periodicals. The chapters also include case studies and short biographies of some individuals who experienced our prisons and left some records.

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Leeds at War 1939-1945 is a comprehensive account of the citys experience of the war, covering in expert detail life on the Home Front set against the background of the wider theatres of war. The narrative of that global conflict is given with a focus on the trials and ordeals that faced the people of Leeds as they cheered their men and women fighters off to war, were bombed and saw their children evacuated to rural areas. Rare insights into the life of war-torn Leeds are included, along with untold stories from the footnotes of that history, from the air-raid shelters to the internment issues. The book incorporates the unique human record of that struggle from memoirs and memories, so that the reader sees the war bottom up from the ordinary people, although the military experiences of Leeds' citizens are not ignored. More controversial topics are also touched upon, such as anti-Semitism, labour troubles and crime, to give a full and fascinating picture of a great city facing profound trials of endurance, courage, and that true Yorkshire grit that has been the hallmark of the citys rise to prominence in Britain.

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Curious Tales from Lincolnshire is filled with hilarious and surprising examples of folklore, eccentrics, historical and literary events, and popular culture from days gone by, all taken from Lincolnshire’s tumultuous history. Here the reader will meet forgers, poets, aristocrats, politicians and some less likely residents of the county, including Spring-Heeled Jack – whose spectral figure reportedly jumped over Newport Arch – and the appearance of an angel in Gainsborough. There has always been much more to Lincolnshire than farm lands and sea-side towns: this is the county that brought us Lord Tennyson (whose brother was treated at an experimental asylum in the area), John Wesley and, in contrast, William Marwood, the notorious hangman; here too were found the Dam Busters, the first tanks and the fishing fleets of Grimsby. All may be found within the pages of this book, bound to delight residents and visitors alike.

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This intriguing book gathers together the stories of 120 criminals hanged at both Lincoln Castle Prison and HMP Lincoln on Greetwell Road between 1203 and 1961. The condemned featured here range from coiners and forgers, to thieves, highwamen and poisoners. Among those executed at Lincoln were Richard Insole, hanged in 1887 for murdering his wife; child killer Frederick Nodder, hanged in 1937; and Herbert Leonard Mills, who failed to commit the perfect murder and was hanged in 1951 by Albert Pierrepoint. Fully illustrated with photographs, drawings, news cuttings and documents, Hanged at Lincoln will appeal to everyone interested in the shadier side of Lincoln's history.

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Features stories of criminals hanged at York from the middle of the eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century. The condemned featured in this work range from coiners and forgers to murderers, thieves and highwaymen, the most infamous being Dick Turpin, who was hanged on York's Knavesmire in 1739 for horse-stealing.

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_Lost to the Sea: Norfolk & Suffolk_ relates the stories of how the human communities along the coast of these counties maintained their struggle with the sea. From very early Neolithic times, when global changes created the Continental Shelf and raised the cliffs along Britain's eastern shorelines, through Roman and medieval times, the first villages and towns were gradually established, only to be faced with the problem of the sea's incursions onto agricultural land. In the 1950s, Rowland Parker's classic study of Dunwich, a key town of Suffolk engulfed, set the scene for a long-standing interest in how the sea's challenge has been met. There have been successes and failures, and Stephen Wade tells the story of the seaside holiday towns and fishing communities that have had to struggle for survival. In this book, the reader will find stories of the people involved in this titanic effort through the centuries. The narrative moves down the coast from Hunstanton to Southwold, tracing the losses and the gains, not only in measurements of land, but in the tough human experience of that environmental history.

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The detective is a familiar figure in British history. This work looks at famous cases such as the Ripper murders and the beginnings of the Special Branch and Detective Branch of Scotland Yard. This history covers various aspects of crime history, including the career of Jim 'the Penman' Saward, a notorious forger, and more.

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In 1941, Beryl Baxter, a dressmaker from Grimsby, signed up to do her bit in the Battle of Britain. She was to serve as a plotter as aircraftswoman in the WAAF and, upon discharge in 1949 she began life as a welfare worker for the Women's Voluntary Service. Her postings included the Korean War, Japan, Hong Kong and Iraq. Throughout these years of service she fulfilled the roles of mother, sister and girlfriend to thousands of servicemen, both conscripts and regulars. Presenting a dramatic narrative from several theatres of war, this book recalls Beryl's life, based on a large archive of letters and documents that she preserved, allowing the reader to go on these journeys to war alongside a brave and enterprising independent woman.

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