Search results for ""Safe Haven Books""

The town of Croydon is often invoked as a byword for the banal. But its hidden history reveals it consistently to have been at the centre of things, and leading the way: continental air travel, brutalist architecture, punk rock, black musicians from nineteenth to twenty-first century. Now, Will Noble tells Croydon's surprising, remarkable story.

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The reason for the huge commercial success of Sinclair McKay's The Secret Life of Bletchley Park was simple: for the first time it told the stories of the ordinary people (mostly women), who worked there, and what it was like. Sworn to secrecy, they never divulged their remarkable wartime service for decades. But what did they go on to achieve after the war? And what about those who did become household names, but whose Bletchley Park years remain unknown? Now Sinclair McKay tells the stories of a hundred such people, and the often equally extraordinary lives they went on to. Here are dozens of unsung heroes, who certainly made their mark after the war as well as during its finest hour: people like Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, or novelist Angus Wilson; or Jane Fawcett, a trained ballerina who went on to co-found the Victorian Society and save St Pancras Station; or James Bernard, a protege of Benjamin Britten who wrote all the music for the Dracula films; or Joan Clarke, Alan Turing's girlfriend, who became a senior codebreaker herself at GCHQ.

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Sarah Merriman is just like any other urbane young woman in her twenties... She has a job in a Central London hotel, a boyfriend, commutes to work on the Tube, eats out, goes to films and theatre... This is all the more remarkable (though not to her) because Sarah was born with Down's Syndrome. Her parents having no prior inkling, it came as a huge shock to them that they now had a daughter with a disability. In 1999 her father Andy wrote a frank and moving book, A Minor Adjustment, about the challenge of her early years. The national publicity it gained saw it become a treasured resource for other families on a similar journey. Now he follows up with the inspirational story of how his daughter, whose favourite expression is `I love my life', has grown up, featured on Michel Roux's compelling Kitchen Impossible series, and is making a life of her own at a time when pre-natal testing is threatening the very existence of people with Down's syndrome. Sarah has contributed throughout.

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Anthology of best writing about beer by international range of contributors, from classic authors like Dickens to today's best beer writers like Pete Brown. Edited by leading beer writer and blogger who compiled the bestselling 1000 Beers to Try Before You Die. Small-format hardback ideal as Christmas gift.

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The Yorkshire coastline is the second most visited tourist destination in England - and here is a walking guide to its entire length? From Redcar all the way south to Bridlington, and then on along Spurn Point on the Humber, is magnificent clifftop and seaside walking. The route takes in scenic holiday hotspots like Whitby, Scarborough, Filey and Robin Hood's Bay, magnificent seabird cliffs at Bempton and Flamborough, not to mention steam railways, Winifred Holtby's South Riding and the home of Dracula. Now Andrew Vine, an experienced walker and distinguished Yorkshire journalist, has written the definitive walking guide, full of colour photos, and the whole route covered with OS large-scale maps. It is an essential purchase for the serious walker and the afternoon stroller alike.

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Paul Wood's brilliant and acclaimed London's Street Trees sold out three printings in its first edition, is a fixture in London's bookshops and museum and gallery gift shops, and was republished in Spring 2020 in a new, revised and expanded edition. One of its most popular features is the handful of 'tree walks' at the back, while the author is still leading his own guided 'street tree walks' every weekend somewhere in the capital. So now here is a whole book of tree walks around the capital - some for an hour or two, others for an afternoon, and several to while away a whole day. They take you to Ealing and Highgate, to see nineteenth-century London Planes lining the Embankment, newly-planted Persian Silk Trees in Brockley, and a whole Dawn Redwood forest at Canary Wharf - while pointing out the architecture and social and natural history along the way. You'll find trees taking you to the haunts of Seventies rock stars, in search of a long-buried circus elephant, and to some London's highest ground with the most stunning views over the capital.

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The third edition, completely revised, of the only guide to all the species of tree on London's streets, and further expanded to reflect the continually increasing diversity of London's streets, and the emergence of urban trees as a national issue since the destruction of street trees in Sheffield and Plymouth.

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The last Routemaster to ply a proper London bus route retired to the garage back in 2005. But over 15 years later, this indestructible bus still pops up everywhere! It's just that nowadays merely in London Routemasters are wedding buses, Ghost Buses, afternoon tea buses, mobile yoghurt stalls on the South Bank... And elsewhere, all over the world, they have found new homes and been put to the most unlikely but serendipitous uses. So now, Harry Rosehill catalogues all the possible uses of a Routemaster bus, from a tea room in Essex to promoting a circus in Russia to an office in Bermuda, from offering bra-fitting facilities to a history of the potato, not to mention making history during the Iraq War as a Human Shield in Baghdad. Along the way he explains how Routemasters were built to last so long, why they've become so cherished, and footbrake valves are so hard to come by. Funny, surprising and touching, Routemasters of the Universe is an alternative history of a true London icon, and a celebration of ingenuity, determination and the sheer variety of human life.

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Everyone's image of the ideal cricket ground will be a village field, fringed by trees, the outfield dappled with clovers and buttercups, swallows flitting above... And what of all the other wildlife associated with this most natural of sports? At the Oval these days, Test Match Special's commentators remark on the resident foxes as often as the traditional pigeons. At Teddington Town CC in London's Bushy Park matches are frequently interrupted by incursions of deer; at Lyndhurst in the New Forest by wild ponies. At Kirkby Lonsdale CC in Cumbria the local fungus group found 20 species of waxcap on the outfield. For some reason hoopoes, spectacular orange and black-crested birds from southern Europe, favour cricket grounds on their rare migrations to the UK. This unique, funny, delightful cricket book from left field explores the relationship between cricket grounds and the natural world, from wildlife records to the Edwardian cricket writings of Edmund Blunden, and in many remarkable photos.

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This July sees the publication of The Great Romantic, a new biography by Duncan Hamilton of the greatest cricket writer of all time, indeed the man who invented modern cricket writing as we know it: Neville Cardus. Cardus was for many years cricket correspondent of the (then Manchester) Guardian, but wrote for a host of other publications including Wisden. Before him, cricket writing meant rather drybones match reports full of statistics and jargon. Cardus wrote about the event: the sylvan ground, the emotion of watching a great batsman like Victor Trumper in full flow. For everyone who wants to sample his finest writings, Safe Haven now publishes a new volume of Cardus's best cricket writings. Here is Cardus on Don Bradman, Victor Trumper, Denis Compton and Richie Benaud, at Roses matches and the arcadian cricket festival at Dover beneath Shakespeare Cliff, seeing the Australians defeated at Eastbourne - and of course at the home of cricket, Lord's. A handsome small hardback with retro cover illustration, here is a book for every lover of fine writing on the Summer Game.

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Once, every high street had a department store, and they marched the length of Oxford Street. Going up to town to shop at one of these grand emporia and lunch in the top-floor restaurant, or take the children to see Father Christmas, was both a huge treat and completely normal. But the demise of Debenhams, including historic Arding & Hobbs, and Army & Navy at Victoria along with many other House of Fraser stores, confirms that the traditional department store is now an endangered species. In the last five years alone, 83% have gone. Now, for the first time, Tessa Boase chronicles this fabulous world, from Derry & Toms with its roof garden to the Moderne lines of Holdrons in Peckham Rye (now Mr Khan's Discount), as well as Gamages' peerless toy department, Woollands' 21 Shop for cutting-edge Sixties fashion and Chiesmans' menagerie of snakes and lionesses. There is even a guided walking tour of the West End's lost stores.

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Half boat, half aeroplane, taking off in a thrilling tumult of spray, the flying boat was the journey of a lifetime, Imperial Airways’ legendary Empire boats flying up the Nile in nightly hops and alighting on lakes and in harbours all the way down to South Africa. But in 1939 the Empire boat Corsair came down in fog on a tiny river in the Belgian Congo and, through an epic salvage operation, gave its name to a new village in an obscure backwater of Central Africa. The Flying Boat That Fell to Earth, re-published with a new Afterword, tells the story of this amazing adventure, and seeks out, from Alaska to the Bahamas, the very last places on earth where it was still possible to catch a flying boat.

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Moquette is the carpet-like fabric covering the seats we sit on in London's Tubes, buses, trams and Overground trains - and here is a brilliantly colourful guide to all its patterns. London Transport has always wanted the best design, be it Charles Holden's superb art deco Tube stations on the Piccadilly Line, its elegant Johnston typeface or Harry Beck's Tube map. And this pursuit of excellence has extended even to the design of the fabrics it covers our bus and Tube seats with: moquette. In the Thirties top artists like Paul Nash and Enid Marx were commissioned to design patterns; nowadays every line like Crossrail or the Overground gets its own unique, colour-co-ordinated moquette pattern. Now, in conjunction with the London Transport Museum, which has the definitive London Transport moquette archive, Andrew Martin has written a delightful, surprising and covetable guide to all these patterns, from the first horse bus to the latest Tube train.

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In the mid-nineteenth century, the great age of railway building, Charles Dickens could not but be aware of their transformative impact on society. So he wrote about it - to a remarkable extent. He wrote a classic ghost story, 'The Signalman'; in Dombey and Son about what is now the West Coast Main Line being carved through north London in great ravines. He wrote satirical pieces about railway catering - even back then; about the wonder of express train travel to the Channel ports; travel pieces about exploring America by train - and about being personally involved in the notorious Staplehurst train crash in Kent. Now, in the year of Dickens' 150th anniversary, Tony Williams, a distinguished Dickens scholar, collects all these railway writings into a handsome little volume ideal for a long train journey...

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Predictably for such a beautifully green city, London is rich in bird life - and not just pigeons, gulls and parakeets. Now here is a beautiful guidebook by one of London's most experienced birders to the best places to watch birds in the capital. Over 100 species are seen in a year on Hampstead Heath alone, for example, from goldcrests to hobbies. Peregrine falcons nest in the Barbican and on Battersea Power Station. A short walk from East India Dock DLR is a secluded backwater frequented by teal and shoveller ducks. Flagship wetland reserves run by the RSPB, WWT and London Wildlife Trust at Barnes, Woodberry Down and Rainham offer everything from bitterns to avocets, marsh harriers to bar-tailed godwits. Some 60 birding locations are covered, all round the capital, from classic parks to former brownfield sites like a Battle of Britain fighter station and a water treatment plant. Birdwatching London both reveals the amazing variety of birdlife in London and offers a wonderful guide to unexpected places for a day or afternoon out among nature.

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London is a city of hills . . . Shooters Hill, Muswell Hill, Ludgate Hill - the names alone convey the topography. But there hasn't been a walking guide to the capital that makes a point of seeking out and threading together all its high ground, summits and fabulously panoramic views . . . Now, Hillwalking London provides ten routes, all around Greater London, of striking high-level walking. Here are seven hills of Croydon; the Sewardstone Hills north of Chingford; the former telegraph stations stretching across south-east London, as well as cherished ascents like Hampstead Heath and Richmond Hill. A base camp for refreshments is given for every expedition. Illustrated with colour photography and route maps throughout, it will make you see this beautiful city in a new way.

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