The first examination of the seedier side of the canal routes which were, for almost two centuries, Britain's major transportation network. Even when traffic routes on canals imposed a speed limit of four miles an hour, criminals were still aboard and in what was seen as the fastest growing area of Britain's leisure industry. Books have been written retelling tales of bandits, footpads, highwaymen attacking the lone traveller, horseman, coachman, shipping line, locomotive engineer, lorry or van driver and even pilot. For almost two centuries the majority of goods travelled on Britain's famed canal network and this also attracted felons of all kinds, yet many of these tales have been largely ignored until now. From murders to muggings, parental problems to pilfering, arson, assault, smugglers, counterfeiters and even road rage canal-style, we follow the policeman on foot chasing down a thief on board the narrowboat and discover what really lies beneath the waters of the canal. Learn also about canal etiquette, the hardships, the kindness and the cruelty. Chapters cover dozens of characters from William Hancock in 1826, Ann Bridges in 1847 to Southwick's Iron Foundry, Counterfeit Coin and one character just named Annie (just like our editor!) in 1915; Annie being the name of the vessel central to the story when she struck something beneath the waterline while travelling the Forth and Clyde Canal in a prosecution described as 'an act of piracy'. Fascinating social history. 120pp in illustrated large paperback.

Designed for children but a fantastic revision course with hundreds of specially commissioned colour artworks to enjoy and maps and fact boxes, we believe adults will appreciate the clear layout of this superb resume. Beginning with the ancient lands 500,000 to 700BC and including chapters on Flint and Stone, The First Farmers, Stones of Mystery and Places of the Dead, Metal and Pottery, we then move on to the Celts and Romans 700BC to AD446 with chapters on The Masters of Iron, Druids and Mistletoe, Roads and Towns. The period AD446 to 1066 is entitled Raiders and Settlers and looks at The Age of Arthur, Saxon Swords, The Making of Wales and England, Viking Raids, Alfred and the Danes and Macbeth's Scotland. The following chapters cover Castles and Knights, Palaces and Players, World Power and The Modern Age and includes the Crusades, the Hundred Years War, the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare's Genius, the Spanish Armada, Royalty, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Factory Age, World Wars, the Cold War, Ireland North and South, Left, Right or Centre and Looking to the Future. With super timeline and fact boxes as we find out about fossilised bones and stone tools, the first mines, Hastings 1066, knights in armour, clashes of faith, treason and gunpowder, asylum seekers, a textile revolution, puffing billies, the Gold Rush, dance music to climate change. 384 magnificent pages for ages 10 and up. 22.8 x 18cm.

Sub-titled 'The Story of a Tangled Inheritance', what would you do if you found out that your ancestors were slave owners? Richard Atkinson was in his late 30s and approaching a milestone he had long dreaded, the age at which his father died, when one day he came across a box of old family letters gathering dust on top of a cupboard. This discovery set him on an all-consuming, highly emotional journey, ultimately taking him from the weather-beaten house of his Cumbrian ancestors to the abandoned ruins of their sugar estate in Jamaica. His search has led him to one forebear in particular, an earlier Richard Atkinson, a West India merchant who had shipped all the British army's supplies during the American War of Independence, and amassed staggering wealth and connections along the way. 'Rum' Atkinson died young, at the height of his powers, leaving a vast inheritance to his many nephews and nieces, as well as the society beauty who had refused his proposal of marriage. Described as 'a real page-turner, the subject matter is Georgian-era merchants, early merchant banks, the American War of Independence, slavery, trade, war with France, sugar and abolition', and defying classification, this is part political thriller and definitely a history of what could be described as a British Alexander Hamilton figure. 502pp including historical line art and colour photos and other images.

'The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America' is the sub-title of this original combination of cutting edge scholarship and vivid prose. Few individuals, European or Native American, had as much impact on early America as the Pamunkey leader Opechancanough. Generally he plays a brief part as a violent and tragic figure but in contrast renowned historian of early Virginia James Horn reconstructs a remarkable life story that spanned a century at a time when America was digging more deeply into its origins. This eye-opening narrative challenges well-worn tales of Pocahontas and congenial first encounters with a grim record of kidnapping, starvation and total war. In the mid-16th century, Spanish explorers in the Chesapeake Bay kidnapped an Indian youth, took him back to Spain, and subsequently Mexico. During this time abroad, the boy lived in Madrid, Seville, Havana and Mexico City, becoming a favourite of King Philip II and converting to Catholicism. Eventually after nearly a decade he returned to Virginia with a group of Jesuits to help establish a mission. Shortly after arriving however, he abandoned his fellow missionaries, rejoined his family, and soon organised a war party that killed the Spaniards. In the years that followed, Opechancanough, as the English called him, helped establish the most powerful chiefdom in the mid-Atlantic region. When English settlers founded Virginia in 1607 he fought tirelessly to drive them away, leading to a series of wars that spanned the next 40 years, the first Anglo-Indian wars in America, and came close to destroying the colony. But the English settlers proved more resilient than the Spanish missionaries had been 40 years earlier. Additional soldiers, weapons and provisions arrived from England, forcing Opechancanough to continue his offensive for decades. He survived to be nearly 100 years old and died as he lived, fighting the invaders. 296pp, maps and woodcut illustrations.

Blending biography and history this is a highly readable account of Winston Churchill's adventures as a young war correspondent from the jungles of Cuba and the mountains of the North-West Frontier to the banks of the Nile and the plains of South Africa. Enthralled by combat, cigars and whisky, young Winston showed extraordinary courage and tenacity under fire. He was the brazen foreign correspondent covering wars of empire in Cuba, India, the Sudan, and South Africa and in those far-flung corners of the world he reported from the front lines between 1895 and 1900. He mastered his celebrated command of language and formed strong opinions about war. He thought little of his own personal safety, so convinced was he of his destiny, jumping at any chance to be where bullets flew and canons roared. Based on his private letters and war reportage, the book intertwines young Winston's daring exploits in combat, adventures, and rise as a major literary talent, experiences that shaped the world leader he was to become. The huge public interest generated by his South African activities, his capture and subsequent escape provided the final boost Churchill needed to edge his way as a Conservative into the formerly Liberal parliamentary seat of Oldham. 309 exciting pages, photos.

Beginning with the medieval trial by ordeal, which entailed carrying a red-hot iron bar in your bare hand for a certain distance, through to the stretching on the rack of political prisoners and the mutilation of those found guilty of sedition, the evidence clearly shows that Britain has relied heavily upon torture, both at home and abroad, for almost the whole of its history. Branding with red-hot irons of blasphemers during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, libelling the monarch in Elizabethan England could result in having the right hand chopped off, the rack, breaking on the wheel (occasionally inflicted in Scotland but never in England), thumb screws used with a variety of names such as pilliwinks, slaves branded and whipped, gibbetting alive by hanging a man in chains to die of exposure and thirst, roasting over a slow fire prolonging death for hours, hanging drawing and quartering, the pillory being stoned to death, the ducking stool, flogging in the 1860s and medieval waterboarding used as late as the 1970s by the British Army in Northern Ireland are illustrated and described. Not a book for the fainthearted. 145pp.

Most of us learned in schooldays that Romulus was the son of a god; he was left for dead until a she-wolf rescued him; sometime later, he murdered his brother Remus and ultimately established Rome. Few people know much more about Rome's purported founding father than this because historians have in large part disregarded him and there are at least 60 different extant histories of Rome's founding. The book is presented not as history but as the myth that later Romans knew well and the kernel of truth within the Romulus legend. Born to a Vestal Virgin and left for dead as an infant near the Tiber River, his early life nearly ended as quickly as it began. A humble shepherd rescued the child and helped raise him into manhood. As Romulus grew older, he fearlessly engaged in a series of perilous adventures that ultimately culminated in Rome's founding, and he became its fabled first king. Establishing a new city had its price, and Romulus was forced to defend the nascent community. He tirelessly safeguarded Rome and proved that he was a competent leader and talented general, yet he also harboured a dark side which tainted his legacy. But despite all his misdeeds, redemption and subsequent triumphs were usually within his grasp. 'A delicious book that will satisfy any Roman/Latin language lover.' 284pp, maps.

Sejanus was feared, loathed, despised and loved, but he was above all a consummate and immensely gifted politician. He became a master of all through his control of imperial gifts and honours due to the increasing reluctance of Tiberius to fulfil his role as Emperor. Tiberius had become increasingly frustrated by the futility of encouraging the Senate to take responsibility for the governance of the Empire. In Ancient Rome, power lay in the ability to distribute resources, wealth, offices and honours, and Sejanus filled the space once occupied by his master. He is presented in our overwhelmingly hostile sources as a sinister figure, consumed by ambition who used proxies to eliminate his rivals. L Aelius Sejanus was born around 20BC into a world of intense political, social and economic change while the fabric of the old traditional Roman order and Republican aristocracy was decimated by years of civil war. The infamous Praetorian Prefect Sejanus is now synonymous with over-reaching ambition, murder, conspiracy and betrayal. The traditional storyline is that he craved the imperial throne for himself and isolated the naïve Emperor in his island pleasure palace on Capri while using his control over the Praetorian Guard, coupled with his immense power and influence in Rome to purge the capital of potential opponents. His victims supposedly included the emperor's son Drusus, poisoned by his own wife who had been seduced by Sejanus. The Emperor, warned of Sejanus' ambition, struck first, and the Prefect was arrested in the Senate, strangled, and his corpse cast down the Gemonian Stairs. A fresh reappraisal, 312pp, colour photos and timeline.

The cobalt blue pendant-vaulted ceiling with golden lettering and decoration at Hampton Court Palace has been restored and is exactly what Henry VIII would have seen. Angels Costumes has eight miles of hanging rails and is an 'unparalleled dressing up box' housing more than a million costumes and accessories, military uniforms, medals, insignia and outfits for actors. The Daily Express building in Fleet Street has a stunning Art Deco lobby. Television Centre White City has a statue of the sun god Helios outside its curved exterior. The Royal Hospital Chelsea, Old Royal Naval College, the Honourable Artillery Company, Old Bailey, 10 Downing Street, Big Ben, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the disused Aldwych Underground Station, BT Tower, the Thames Barrier, Battersea Power Station, Mansion House, the Bank of England, Repton Boxing Club, Lord's Cricket Ground, St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral, New West End Synagogue, King Henry VIII's Wine Cellar to Tower Bridge, we embark on a thrilling tour of the hidden interiors of some of London's most iconic buildings. Celebrated photographer Peter Dazeley takes us deep into the boiler room of the city's infrastructure, into the changing rooms of our greatest temples of sport, into the heart of the Establishment, and behind the scenes at the most opulent buildings, livery companies and halls in the Square Mile. Some buildings are derelict, many still working and all of these extraordinary buildings are accompanied by the story of how each of these places was created, how they are used, and what they reveal about the currents of power flowing through the city. These are doors which may be otherwise closed to us in a magnificent volume, revised and updated in 2017 to include the royal palaces of Hampton Court, the Tower of London and Inigo Jones's Banqueting Hall at the Palace of Whitehall, the Royal Courts of Justice Supreme Court and Bow Street Magistrates' Court. Blazing in colour, a superb heavyweight 272 page publication, 24.8 x 31cm.
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There has been a widespread tendency to disregard anti-Judaism, whether expressed in a casual remark or implemented through pogrom or extermination campaign, as somehow exceptional, an unfortunate indicator of personal prejudice, or the shocking outcome of an extremist ideology married to power. But in his magisterial history, David Nirenberg explores anti-Judaism from antiquity to the present, from the Ancient Egyptians who resented their Jewish neighbours, to the ideas of Voltaire and Marx, thereby revealing it to be a mode of thought deeply embedded in the Western tradition. With intolerance and racism on the rise against the West, Nirenberg's central argument is as urgent and as timely as it has ever been. Dark as its subject may be, the book is full of delights. Chapters cover The Road to Emmaus, The Road to Damascus, Making Sense of the World in Jewish Terms, Jewish Enmity in Islam, Jews and Power in Medieval Europe, The Spanish Inquisition, Acting Jewish in Shakespeare's England, 'Israel' at the Foundations of Christian Politics 1545-1677, and Philosophical Struggles from Kant to Heine. Special import. 610pp in sturdy paperback.