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Black Country to Red China: One girl's story from war-torn England to Revolutionary China
Par Esther Cheo Ying. 1980
Born in pre-Revolutionary China and brought up in the Midlands, Esther Cheo Ying returned to China in 1949 after a…
traumatic childhood, convinced that there she would find the happiness and sense of belonging she longed for. Caught up in the turmoil of civil war and sympathetic to the Communist Revolution, she joined the Red Army and then stayed on to work in the new People's Republic. But despite her determination to make a new life in China could she truly be happy in a country which encouraged constant self-criticism and viewed her as a 'false foreign devil'? Black Country to Red China is an extraordinary account of life before the Cultural Revolution, but it is also a fascinating insight into one woman's struggle to come to terms with your own identity.The Biscuit Girls
Par Hunter Davies. 2015
Ivy, Dulcie, Barbara, Ann, Dorothy and Jean all had different reasons for applying to work at Carr’s biscuits, but once…
they had put on their overalls and walked through the factory gates they discovered a community full of life, laughter and friendship. To those who didn’t know, the biscuit factory that towered over Carlisle might look like just another slice of the industrial North, a noisy and chaotic place with workers trooping in and out at all hours. For the biscuit girls it was a place where they worked hard, but also where they gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Outside the factory walls there might be difficult husbands or demanding kids, and sometimes even heartbreak and tragedy, but they knew there would always be an escape from their troubles at Carr's. Some, like Barbara, only applied because she needed the extra cash, until things got a bit easier at home. Her supervisor cross examined her about who would be looking after the kids while she was at work, but let her have the job. Like many of the women who joined up ‘temporary’ Barbara went on to stay at Carrs for 32 years.Beginning in the 1940s, these heartwarming and vividly-remembered stories have all been told by the women themselves to Hunter Davies.The Biscuit: The History of a Very British Indulgence
Par Lizzie Collingham. 2020
Bourbons. Custard Creams. Rich Tea. Jammie Dodgers. Chocolate Digestives. Shortbread. Ginger snaps. Which is your favourite? British people eat more…
biscuits than any other nation; they are as embedded in our culture as fish and chips or the Sunday roast. We follow the humble biscuit's transformation from durable staple for sailors, explorers and colonists to sweet luxury for the middling classes to comfort food for an entire nation. Like an assorted tin of biscuits, this charming and beautifully illustrated book has something to offer for everyone, combining recipes for hardtack and macaroons, Shrewsbury biscuits and Garibaldis, with entertaining and eye-opening vignettes of social history.Bertie Ahern Autobiography: The Autobiography
Par Bertie Ahern. 2009
Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace…
in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. The man of faith who ushered in progressive, cosmopolitan secular Ireland. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. 'I know 25 per cent of Bertie Ahern', said his finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, 'and that's 24 per cent more than anyone else.'Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it. He shows the cost to his family of a life played out in the public eye and, for the first time, discloses what really happened in his final weeks in power.Here for the first time is the truth behind the man who is Bertie.Ahern has been at the cutting edge of Irish politics for over three decades. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in the Fianna Fáil landslide victory in 1977 that saw Jack Lynch returned as Taoiseach. In 1982, Charles Haughey appointed him Government Chief Whip. In volatile political times, he strongly supported Haughey during three challenges to his leadership of Fianna Fáil.In 1987, Bertie Ahern received his first cabinet portfolio as Minister for Labour. It was a time when the Irish economy was in crisis. Ireland had a higher debt per head than Ethiopia or Sudan. Unemployment stood at 16%. Ahern negotiated Ireland's first social partnership agreement, which underpinned economic recovery and put in place the foundations for a period of sustained growth. In 1991, he was appointed Minister for Finance. International commentators first began to refer to 'Ireland's Tiger economy' in this period. When Bertie Ahern left the Department of Finance in late 1994, for the first time in almost 30 years, Ireland had a budget surplus.Bertie Ahern succeeded Albert Reynolds as leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1994. Following the General Election in 1997, he became Ireland's youngest ever Taoiseach. The Ahern Era was a time of unprecedented progress in Irish society. Over the course of his tenure in office, Ireland's economy out-performed that of every other European country. For the first time ever, the number of people in employment in the State reached 2 million.Working closely with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, Ahern won widespread acclaim for his perseverance and skill in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, which has provided the political framework for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland.On the international stage, he was a respected figure who enjoyed an acclaimed Presidency of the European Council in 2004. He presided over the completion of the largest ever expansion of the EU and concluded negotiations on a European constitution. He is one of only five visiting statesmen to have addressed both the United States Congress and the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.At home, Ahern enjoyed phenomenal electoral support. He was the first Taoiseach since 1944 to win three successive General Elections.Bertie Ahern resigned on 6th May, 2008. He had served for ten years, ten months and ten days as Taoiseach.Beauty is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-War Europe
Par Joachim C. Häberlen. 1968
'A rich and readable account of left-wing activism in the West and opposition to Soviet-style communism in the East' Katja…
Hoyer, The Spectator'A dream, perhaps, but one that still sounds worth fighting for, even beautiful' Stuart Jeffries, The Observer'An ambitious and masterly account of utopian protest in Europe ... Fast-paced, with an eye for telling detail and written with a light touch' Robert GildeaIn post-war Europe, protest was everywhere. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, from Paris to Prague, Milan to Wroclaw, ordinary people took to the streets, fighting for a better world. Their efforts came to a head most dramatically in 1968 and 1989, when mass movements swept Europe and rewrote its history.In the decades between, Joachim C. Häberlen argues, new movements emerged that transformed the nature of protesting. Activism moved beyond traditional demonstrations, from squatting to staging 'happenings' and camping out at nuclear power plants. People protested in the way they dressed, the music they listened to, the lovers they slept with, the clubs where they danced all night. New movements were born, notably anti-racism, women's liberation, gay liberation, and environmentalism. And protest turned inward, as activists experimented with new ways of living and feeling, from communes to group therapy, in their efforts to live a better life in the here and now.Some of these struggles succeeded, others failed. But successful or not, their history provides a glimpse into roads not taken, into futures that did not happen. The stories in Häberlen's book invite us to imagine different futures; to struggle, to fail, and to try again. In a time when we are told that there are no alternatives, they show us that there could be another way.The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece
Par Carola Hicks. 2006
The vivid scenes on the Bayeux Tapestry depict the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It…
is one of Europe's greatest treasures and its own story is full of drama and surprise. Who commissioned the tapestry? Was it Bishop Odo, William's ruthless half-brother? Or Harold's dynamic sister Edith, juggling for a place in the new court? Hicks shows us this world and the miracle of the tapestry's making: the stitches, dyes and strange details in the margins. For centuries it lay ignored in Bayeux cathedral until its 'discovery' in the eighteenth century. It became a symbol of power as well as art: townsfolk saved it during the French Revolution; Napoleon displayed it to promote his own conquest; the Nazis strove to make it their own; and its influence endures today. This marvellous book, packed with thrilling stories, shows how we remake history in every age and how a great work of art has a life of its own.Battles of Conscience: British Pacifists and the Second World War
Par Tobias Kelly. 2022
A ground-breaking new study brings us a very different picture of the Second World War, asking fundamental questions about ethical…
commitmentsAccounts of the Second World War usually involve tales of bravery in battle, or stoicism on the home front, as the British public stood together against Fascism. However, the war looks very different when seen through the eyes of the 60,000 conscientious objectors who refused to take up arms and whose stories, unlike those of the First World War, have been almost entirely forgotten.Tobias Kelly invites us to spend the war five of these individuals: Roy Ridgway, a factory clerk from Liverpool; Tom Burns, a teacher from east London; Stella St John, who trained as a vet and ended up in jail; Ronald Duncan, who set up a collective farm; and Fred Urquhart, a working-class Scottish socialist and writer. We meet many more objectors along the way -- people both determined and torn -- and travel from Finland to Syria, India to rural England, Edinburgh to Trinidad.Although conscientious objectors were often criticised and scorned, figures such as Winston Churchill and the Archbishop of Canterbury supported their right to object, at least in principle, suggesting that liberty of conscience was one of the freedoms the nation was fighting for. And their rich cultural and moral legacy -- of humanitarianism and human rights, from Amnesty International and Oxfam to the US civil rights movement -- can still be felt all around us. The personal and political struggles carefully and vividly collected in this book tell us a great deal about personal and collective freedom, conviction and faith, war and peace, and pose questions just as relevant today: Does conscience make us free? Where does it take us? And what are the costs of going there?'[An] excellent book' - DAILY TELEGRAPH'A moving tribute' - SPECTATORBattle of Trafalgar: A Ladybird Expert Book (The Ladybird Expert Series #28)
Par Sam Willis. 2019
Part of the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES'Packs plenty of heft into its slender page count' HISTORY REVEALED- Why was the…
Battle of Trafalgar such an important British victory in the Napoleonic Wars? - How did the British fleet show their strength against the French and Spanish? - How did Nelson excel in his final battle?FOLLOW the daring strategy and brilliant leadership of Horatio Nelson in Britain's stunning triumph against Napoleon's forces. From the might of Britain's war machine to the death of the world's most impressive naval commander, discover why Trafalgar remains the most famous naval battle in history.BRITAIN'S GLORIOUS VICTORY, AND NELSON'S FINAL BATTLEWritten by historian, archaeologist, and broadcaster Sam Willis, The Battle of Trafalgar is a gripping and accessible introduction to the battle that established Britain as a formidable seapower for many years to come.The Battle for Normandy, 1944: (WW2 #9) (The Ladybird Expert Series #15)
Par James Holland. 2023
BOOK 9 OF THE LADYBIRD EXPERT HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, FROM AWARD-WINNING HISTORIAN JAMES HOLLANDFeaturing stunning illustrations from…
Keith Burns, bringing the story to life in vivid detailWhy did the Allies attack on D-Day?How did the Allies pick Normandy as a target?What was Operation Overload, the second front against the Nazis?JUNE 6 1944D-Day was a deciding conflict in World War II. But the invasion was not a straightforward attack.From feeding Nazi spies false information on the attack, to developing new technology like the Mulberry harbours, D-Day changed the course of the War for good.THE LARGEST SEABORNE INVASION IN HISTORYWritten by historian, author and broadcaster James Holland, The Battle for Normandy is an essential introduction to the naval invasion that began the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis.__________Discover the full Ladybird Expert WW2 series:BlitzkriegThe Battle of BritainBattle of the AtlanticThe Desert WarThe Eastern FrontThe Pacific WarThe Bomber WarThe War in ItalyThe Battle for NormandyThe War in BurmaVictory in EuropeVictory Against JapanBarbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel
Par Pam Hirsch. 1998
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was the most unconventional and influential leader of the Victorian women's movement. Enormously talented, energetic and…
original, she was a feminist, law-reformer, painter, journalist, the close friend of George Eliot and a cousin of Florence Nightingale. As a painter, Barbara is now recognised as a vital figure among Pre-Raphaelite women artists. As a feminist she led four great campaigns: for married women's legal status, for the right to work, the right to vote and to education. Making brilliant use of unpublished journals and letters, Pam Hirsch has written a biography that is as lively and powerful as its subject, recreating the woman in all her moods, and placing her firmly in the context of women's struggle for equality.Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women
Par Elaine Farrell, Leanne McCormick. 2023
The Number 1 Bestseller'A captivating account of lives previously ignored' Sunday Independent'An important, impeccably researched though eminently readable book that…
charts new territory' Irish Examiner* * *Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Among the wave of emigrants from Ireland to North America were many, many young women who travelled on their own, hoping for a better life. Some lived lives of quiet industry and piety. Others quickly found themselves in trouble - bad trouble, and on an astonishing scale.Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, creators of the celebrated 'Bad Bridget' podcast, have unearthed a world in which Irish women actually outnumbered Irish men in prison, in which you could get locked up for 'stubbornness', and in which a serial killer called Lizzie Halliday was described by the New York Times as 'the worst woman on earth'. They reveal the social forces that bred this mayhem and dysfunction, through stories that are brilliantly strange, sometimes funny, and often moving. From sex workers and thieves to kidnappers and killers, these Bridgets are young women who have gone from the frying pan of their impoverished homeland to the fire of vast North American cities.Bad Bridget is a masterpiece of social history and true crime, showing us a fascinating and previously unexplored world.* * * 'I just loved it!' Ryan Tubridy'Fascinating' Irish Times'Rich in detail and thorough in research' New StatesmanBack in Blighty: The British at Home in World War One
Par Gerard DeGroot. 2014
World War One had a devastating, cataclysmic impact on the world and the British people. As its reverberations were so…
long-lasting and significant, it is easy to assume that the social consequences were as profound. In this highly readable and moving survey of life back at home during the First World War, Gerard DeGroot challenges this assumption, finding pre-war social structures were surprisingly resilient. Despite economic and technological changes, the British peoplemanaged to cling onto their usual ways of life as much as possible in this new world. Back in Blighty has been fully revised to take into account new scholarship and historical perspectives, and is full of fascinating glimpses into everyday life during the war. The lives of ordinary people are illuminated and given historical significance in this powerful portrait of the British people and their culture.The Auden Generation
Par Samuel Hynes. 1976
This is a study of a literary generation writing in a period of expanding fears and ever more urgent political…
and social crises. The pace of the time itself, the sense of time passing and an end approaching gave a special quality to the Thirties. The public world pressed insistently on the private world. For those who came of literary age - Auden, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Spender, Graham Greene, Isherwood and Orwell among them - writing became a form of action. In the process a generation discovered itself and found its own expression.The Ascent Of Man
Par Jacob Bronowski. 2011
Dr Jacob Bronowksi's The Ascent of Man traces the development of human society through our understanding of science.First published in…
1973 to accompany the groundbreaking BBC television series, it is considered one of the first works of 'popular science', illuminating the historical and social context of scientific development for a generation of readers. In his highly accessible style, Dr Bronowski discusses human invention from the flint tool to geometry, agriculture to genetics, and from alchemy to the theory of relativity, showing how they all are expressions of our ability to understand and control nature.In this new paperback edition, The Ascent of Man inspires, influences and informs as profoundly as ever.The Art of Memory
Par Frances A Yates. 1966
This unique and brilliant book is a history of human knowledge. Before the invention of printing, a trained memory was…
of vital importance. Based on a technique of impressing 'places' and 'images' on the mind, the ancient Greeks created an elaborate memory system which in turn was inherited by the Romans and passed into the European tradition, to be revived, in occult form, during the Renaissance. Frances Yates sheds light on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the form of the Shakespearian theatre and the history of ancient architecture; The Art of Memory is an invaluable contribution to aesthetics and psychology, and to the history of philosophy, of science and of literature.The Art of Innovation: From Enlightenment to Dark Matter, as featured on Radio 4
Par Ian Blatchford, Tilly Blyth. 2019
Based on the landmark Radio 4 series, this beautifully illustrated modern history of the connections between science and art offers…
a new perspective on what that relationship has contributed to the world around us. __________ Throughout history, artists and scientists have been driven by curiosity and the desire to experiment. Both have wanted to make sense of the world around them, often to change it, sometimes working closely together, certainly taking inspiration from each other's disciplines. The relationship between the two has traditionally been perceived as one of love and hate, fascination and revulsion, symbiotic but antagonistic. But art is crucial to helping us understand our science legacy and science is well served by applying an artistic lens. How exactly has the ingenuity of science and technology been incorporated into artistic expression? And how has creative practice, in turn, stimulated innovation and technological change?The Art of Innovation is a history of the past 250 years viewed through the disciplines of art and science. Through fascinating stories that explore the sometimes unexpected relationships between famous artworks and significant scientific and technological objects - from Constable's cloudscapes and the chemist who first measured changes in air pressure, to the introduction of photography and the representation of natural history in print - it offers a new way of seeing, studying and interpreting the extraordinary world around us.Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency (Pelican Books)
Par Barnabas Calder. 2021
A groundbreaking history of architecture told through the relationship between buildings and energyThe story of architecture is the story of…
humanity. The buildings we live in, from the humblest pre-historic huts to today's skyscrapers, reveal our priorities and ambitions, our family structures and power structures. And to an extent that hasn't been explored until now, architecture has been shaped in every era by our access to energy, from fire to farming to fossil fuels.In this ground-breaking history of world architecture, Barnabas Calder takes us on a dazzling tour of some of the most astonishing buildings of the past fifteen thousand years, from Uruk, via Ancient Rome and Victorian Liverpool, to China's booming megacities. He reveals how every building - from the Parthenon to the Great Mosque of Damascus to a typical Georgian house - was influenced by the energy available to its architects, and why this matters.Today architecture consumes so much energy that 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from the construction and running of buildings. If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change then now, more than ever, we need beautiful but also intelligent buildings, and to retrofit - not demolish - those that remain. Both a celebration of human ingenuity and a passionate call for greater sustainability, this is a history of architecture for our times.The Anxious Triumph: A Global History of Capitalism, 1860-1914
Par Donald Sassoon. 2019
'A magnum opus, an accessible and genuinely global history ... This is a book for today and tomorrow' Financial Times…
Capitalist enterprise has existed in some form since ancient times, but the globalization and dominance of capitalism as a system began in the 1860s when, in different forms and supported by different political forces, states all over the world developed their modern political frameworks: the unifications of Italy and Germany, the establishment of a republic in France, the elimination of slavery in the American south, the Meiji Restoration in Japan, the emancipation of the serfs in Tsarist Russia. This book magnificently explores how, after the upheavals of industrialisation, a truly global capitalism followed. For the first time in the history of humanity, there was a social system able to provide a high level of consumption for the majority of those who lived within its bounds. Today, capitalism dominates the world.With wide-ranging scholarship, Donald Sassoon analyses the impact of capitalism on the histories of many different states, and how it creates winners and losers by constantly innovating. This chronic instability, he writes, 'is the foundation of its advance, not a fault in the system or an incidental by-product'. And it is this instability, this constant churn, which produces the anxious triumph of his title. To control or alleviate such anxieties it was necessary to create a national community, if necessary with colonial adventures, to develop a welfare state, to intervene in the market economy, and to protect it from foreign competition. Capitalists needed a state to discipline them, to nurture them, and to sacrifice a few to save the rest: a state overseeing the war of all against all.Vigorous, argumentative, surprising and constantly stimulating, The Anxious Triumph gives a fresh perspective on all these questions and on its era. It is a masterpiece by one of Britain's most engaging and wide-ranging historians.Anny: A Life of Anny Thackeray Ritchie
Par Henrietta Garnett. 2004
Anne Thackeray Ritchie, daughter of the author of Vanity Fair and step-aunt of Virginia Woolf, was also a fine writer.…
Based on new and original research, this enchanting and evocative memoir paints the world of Anny's intricate web of relations and friends: children's parties with the Dickens family, holidays with Julia Margaret Cameron and the Tennysons, intimate scenes with Browning in Rome and Ruskin on Lake Coniston.In addition we read about Anny's own inner life: her near-obsession with her father: William Makepeace Thackeray, her escape into writing, her startling marriage to her second cousin and her godson, and the story of her sister Minny's passionate marriage to Leslie Stephen. We also learn of Stephen's second wife, Julia Jackson, mother of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. Meticulously researched, this intimate story draws not only on a wealth of letters, journals, hitherto unpublished sketches and photographs, but also on family legends passed down to the author through four generations. Illuminating, comic and touching, Anny reads like a novel, presenting a unique portrait of the rich literary world that formed the bridge between the Victorians and Bloomsbury.Ancient Worlds: The Search for the Origins of Western Civilization
Par Richard Miles. 2010
Across the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Nile Delta, awe-inspiring, monstrous ruins are scattered across the landscape - vast…
palaces, temples, fortresses, shattered statues of ancient gods, carvings praising the eternal power of long-forgotten dynasties. These ruins - the remainder of thousands of years of human civilization - are both inspirational in their grandeur, and terrible in that their once teeming centres of population were all ultimately destroyed and abandoned.In this major book, Richard Miles recreates these extraordinary cities, ranging from the Euphrates to the Roman Empire, to understand the roots of human civilization. His challenge is to make us understand that the cities which define culture, religion and economic success and which are humanity's greatest invention, have always had a cruel edge to them, building systems that have provided both amazing opportunities and back-breaking hardship.This exhilarating book is both a pleasure to read and a challenge to us all to think about our past - and about the present.