Sub-titled 'A Story of Education, Evacuation and Endurance in the Second World War', the book marks the first time that the extraordinary tales of drama and trauma experienced by many English schools has been collected into a single book. It has been made possible by the Association of Representatives of Old Pupils' Societies (AROPS). Founded in 1971, this group of old boys' and old girls' organisations had at the time of publication more than 260 members. It decided to conduct a survey to discover what actually happened during the years 1939-45 and tracked the movements of schools and the stories that emerged covered a truly amazing diversity of experiences. Here are schools in the heart of the country who are virtually untouched by the global conflict, schools in towns and cities where staff suffered the knowledge that, after the previous night's air raids, they would not be seeing some of their pupils again, and there are stories of hard work, commitment, bravery and doggedness and often humour. The extreme disruption and privations on these young lives is difficult to imagine today. With over 200 contributions, the list of schools begins with Adcote School in Shrewsbury, and includes Batley Grammar, City of London School for Girls, Croydon High School, Lancing College, Pocklington School in York which hosted Hymers College from Hull, Walthamstow Hall in Sevenoaks to Wycombe Abbey School High Wycombe where for four years girls spent their lives in enforced educational exile at such schools as Malvern Girls and Cheltenham Ladies' College. Wycombe Abbey rejoiced at their reunion in May 1946. Entries differ in length. Slim 80 pages, 20 archive photos of good quality, 2005 rare Phillimore publication.

Hostile takeovers, government-sanctioned killing, extortion and the seedier side of publishing, this is a novel with an ingenious twist and turn. Sir Robert Skinner's stock is rising. After retiring from the police service he's been promoted to head an international media organisation, yet a series of unexplained deaths on his home turf in Scotland threaten to bring him crashing back down to earth. As Skinner helps the elderly in his local community, several residents seem to die of unnatural causes, but when a gruesome discovery is made in a Glasgow flat and one of Skinner's long-time friends, an aspiring politician, emerges as the prime suspect, things become very murky indeed. After unpicking clues that go nowhere, Skinner and his team are left grappling the most baffling conundrum they have ever encountered - is there a mystery at all? Scottish crime writing at its finest with bodies aplenty. 354pp in fairly large print, paperback.

The author of this hard-hitting contribution to Arthurian studies does not shrink from controversy and sets out his debating points clearly before developing his ideas with detailed research. King Arthur is commonly regarded by historians as a legendary figure deriving from the 12th century chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth featuring a heroic British ruler in the declining years of the Roman occupation of Britain. Syvänne argues that Geoffrey's history is based on a real character and lambasts conservative historians for their questionable methodology in dismissing ideas that do not correspond with preconceived solutions, arguing that the value of a source does not disappear when it is judged to be unreliable in some aspects. An example is the late 4th century Historia Augustae, nowadays generally believed to be a forgery. Syvänne argues that Geoffrey of Monmouth includes valuable pieces of evidence, for instance the military hierarchy under kings such as Vortigern and Vortimer extending through the ranks of archbishops and duces and backed up by a fleet of medium sized scouting ships and biremes with two decks of oarsmen. The author's detailed diagrams show the structure of the Saxon army, its encampments and its strategies such as the pike phalanx or the classically inspired wedge formation. Analysis of narrative sources, including Gildas, Nennius and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, allows Syvänne to revise Arthur's two battles of Badon to an earlier date. The archaeology of sites such as Silchester and Caerleon, the battles against the Picts and Scots and the influence of Norway and Jutland on the building of hill-forts are all evidence used by Syvänne. He concludes with Arthur's last battle against Mordred in 472 near Camelford, discussing the Arthurian legacy as far afield as Finland. 278pp, numerous maps and diagrams, colour reproductions.

The front cover shows Six Ways Aston in July 1949, one of hundreds of junctions you will encounter in this book where alterations have transformed the scene beyond recognition. The photograph is taken from the open front balcony of tramcar 343 in Lozells Road and the back cover shows Steelhouse Lane taken from the middle of the crossroads at Bull Street and Snow Hill. William Arthur Camwell, born 1906 in Handsworth, known as 'Cam', joined the Light Railway Transport League in 1938, later to become the Light Rail Transport Association. Apart from his interest in trams and trains, he also took an interest in motor buses, trolly buses, aircraft and canals and also served the railway cause through his membership of the Stephenson Locomotive Society. His greatest memorial is his photography of transport subjects. After securing a Rolleiflex camera in 1934 he was able to record the transport scene in a manner which few have equalled in atmosphere, clarity and scenic interest. Here we can enjoy the earliest Birmingham photographs with views of the Harborne Branch Railway, long forgotten stations, the tramway network in a vast map, contemporary advertising, termini such as Perry Barr, old public houses, services used during football matches, the Dudley Terminus, the closure of depots and tramway fleets, superb details of wooden buildings long since gone, coach trains by number and trains right through to 1973 like the Western Champion from Walsall to Birmingham New Street. 112pp, over 200 quality archive photographs in a Birmingham Transport Historical Group publication.

If you were to choose the time and place in which to be born, what would be your choice? Leading economist Jean Tirole believes the answer to this question is at the centre of how Economics can create a better world. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2014, Tirole is on a mission to show how economists can make a difference to every aspect of our society. He starts with the concept of the market economy, which has been assumed to be a marker of democratic freedom since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the economic transformation of China. Privatisation, globalisation, and an emphasis on competition have taken over from the decisions of elected politicians, and what remains of public decision-making has increasingly relied on regulatory bodies. For many, this process has meant the abandonment of the concept of the Common Good and disintegration of the "social contract" whereby people have a tacit agreement to try to live together in harmony. The author argues that people react to the incentives facing them and therefore that to re-establish a commitment to the Common Good, institutions need to reconcile the private interest of individuals with the interests of society. Tirole starts by explaining the work economists do, with its key complementarity of theory and empirical investigation, looking in depth at game theory and information theory which have revolutionised our understanding of economic institutions, and placing economics within the social sciences. The two institutions of the State and the Firm need to be kept in balance. The market and the state are not alternatives but are mutually dependent, and their dependency is mediated through some highly visible institutions, such as public transport, and others that are invisible, such as long-term debts that are kept off the balance sheets. The example of France is examined in depth as a paradigm of state reform. Key economic challenges facing all states include climate change, the labour market, the future of Europe, digitisation, intellectual property and sector regulation. 563pp, diagrams.

When we think of the medieval world we picture spectacular events such as knightly jousting, or mystery plays winding through the streets on the feast of Corpus Christi. This absorbing study of public spectacles in southern Spain in the 15th century gives us a very different picture. The adjacent regions of Castile and Granada represented the Catholic and Muslim worlds: Granada was the only Muslim region left after the north African conquest of Spain six centuries earlier. Until the 15th century co-existence had been relatively peaceful, but the mid 15th century saw a hardening of attitudes and with the advent of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella the Inquisition was on the horizon. Public spectacles took place on the borders between different religions and cultures, and were a demonstration of power and territorial claims. In the knightly tournaments of 1428 and 1434 at Valladolid, King Juan II appeared in the costume of God the Father, pouring blessings on the military efforts of the knights, who might engage in pageantry one day and raid Granada the next. In the 1450s the exiled Miguel Lucas, constable of Castile, settled in the city of Jaen and mounted lavish spectacles in which Muslims were religious enemies but cultural brethren, the ambiguity reflecting the reality of society at the frontier. By 1480 Ferdinand and Isabella had stabilised Castile ready for sustained aggression towards Granada. In the Castilian city of Murcia all citizens paid tax towards the Christian military, including Muslims and Jews, who in Murcia had escaped the 1391 pogrom, and the Corpus Christi play traditionally involved all citizens mixing together, including those of religious minorities. By 1492, after the city had been used as a base for the assault on Granada, the Corpus Christi processions were a victory gala in which the role of Jews and Muslims was to be humiliated. 246pp, black and white reproductions.

The image of Annie "Get Your Gun" Oakley symbolises the capable, athletic, self-sufficient woman of the west, and the legend is based on the true story of an uneducated servant girl who beat a professional sharpshooter in a contest. With an eye to profit the professional married her and hired her out to Buffalo Bill's Circus, where she was paid an equal wage to the male stars. Oakley maintained a demure image in private and never publicly endorsed the "votes for women" movement that was sweeping the west of America well ahead of the demand for women's suffrage that arose on the east coast. The popular 19th century doctrine of "women's proper sphere", separate from that of men, was challenged in the west by a number of factors, including the independence of Native American women, the prominence of women in the abolitionist movement, and the need for women to go west and run farm-based domestic businesses for male settlers. The suffrage movement, as the author acknowledges, was not a straightforward march of progress but was a messy and fragmented phenomenon with a range of ideological views on women's roles. During the Civil War of the 1860s two important laws were passed, one allowing women to claim free land in the west alongside male homesteaders and secondly the creation of a hundred tuition-free colleges where women could get an education. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory women became the first in Euro-American history to be enfranchised, closely followed by Mormon Utah ? half a century ahead of the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920 which in theory gave all American women the vote. This book recounts the stories of countless independent women, for instance Ellen Smith who lost her husband and one of her children on the Oregon Trail, but nevertheless continued to claim her land and establish her homestead. 277pp, photos.

The shipwrecks featured in the book represent trade, passenger transportation, slavery, war, and exploration. A few are well known and most are not - they are the stories of British people and each chapter relies heavily on written evidence. Chapters include the Merchantman St Cross and 22 other Great Yarmouth ships 1297, the Pilgrim ship Cogman 1446, the English royal warship Regent 1512, the Eastindiaman Trades Increase 1614, three pirate ships called Resolution 1684, the 74-gun warship Berwick 1805, the slave ship Eliza of Liverpool 1806, the Arctic exploration ship HMS Fury 1825. The human stories of eight shipwrecks serve as waypoints on the voyage, as the book explores how and why Britain became a global sea power. Each chapter has people at its heart - sailors, seafaring families, passengers, merchants, pirates, explorers, and many others. The narrative encompasses an extraordinary range of people, ships and events, such as a bloody maritime civil war in the 13th century, a 17th century American youngster who stepped from one ship to another - and into a life of piracy, a British warship that fought at Trafalgar (on the French side), and the floating hell of a Liverpool slave-ship, sunk in the year before the slave trade was abolished. The book is full of surprising details and scenes, including England's rudest and crudest street name, what it was like to be a passenger in a medieval ship (take a guess), how a fragment of the English theatre reached the Far East during Shakespeare's lifetime, who forgave who after a deadly pirate duel, why there were fancy dress parties in the Arctic, and where you could get the best herring. 23 illus, maps and many diagrams. 204 pages.

Sub-titled 'The Revolutionary Life of Jean-François Champollion,' rightly regarded as the founder of Egyptology. Ancient Egypt fascinated the ancient Greeks and Romans including Alexander the Great. It still fascinates us more than any other ancient civilisation, but no Greek or Roman could read the elaborate Egyptian hieroglyphs. For almost two millennia the hieroglyphic script became a 'lost language', until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's soldiers in Egypt in 1799. Despite the efforts of some of Europe's most intelligent scholars, including the English polymath Thomas Young, to crack the hieroglyphic code, it was an impoverished, arrogant and brilliant child of the French Revolution Jean-François Champollion who made the vital breakthrough. This finely illustrated biography charts his dramatic life and achievements and how, against the odds, Champollion led an expedition to Egypt with royal backing, lived in the tomb of the Valley of the Kings, and made the voices of the Pharaohs and their subjects speak. His obsession eventually drove him to an early death at the age of only 41. Chapters also cover the Curator at the Louvre and In Search of Ramesses and the First Professor of Egyptology. A memorable and beautifully written historical detective story, first time translated into English and here in fine heavyweight Oxford University Press hardback. Very well illustrated throughout, 272pp.

Sub-titled 'The Special Relationship Between Russia's Last Tsarina and Queen Victoria'. When Queen Victoria's second daughter Princess Alice married the Prince Louis of Hesse and Rhine in 1862, even her own mother described the ceremony as 'more of a funeral than a wedding' thanks to the fact that it took place shortly after the death of Alice's beloved father Prince Albert. Sadly, the young princess' misfortunes didn't end there and when she also died prematurely, her four motherless daughters were taken under the wing of their formidable grandmother, Victoria. Alexandra was just six years old when her mother died of diphtheria in 1878. Alix, the youngest of Alice's daughters and allegedly one of the most beautiful princesses in Europe, was a special favourite of the elderly queen, who hoped that she would marry her cousin Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, and one day reign beside him as Queen. However, the spirited and stubborn Alix had other ideas. Alexandra had already fallen in love with the Tsarevitch Nicholas of Russia - a match that horrified her grandmother. Melanie Clegg takes a fresh and intimate look at the close relationship that existed between the last Empress of Russia who became Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna and her grandmother Queen Victoria. Although Victoria was disappointed by Alexandra's decision to marry Nicholas, the two continued to correspond until the end of her life in 1901. Interspersed with snippets from diaries and letters. 16 pages of illus. 216 pages.