The Monocled Mutineer

The Monocled Mutineer
Author: Alan Bleasdale
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1986
Genre: Etaples Mutiny, Etaples, France, 1917
ISBN:

The Missing of the Somme

The Missing of the Somme
Author: Geoff Dyer
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2011-08-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307743233

The Missing of the Somme is part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance—and completely, unabashedly, unlike any other book about the First World War. Through visits to battlefields and memorials, Geoff Dyer examines the way that photographs and film, poetry and prose determined—sometimes in advance of the events described—the way we would think about and remember the war. With his characteristic originality and insight, Dyer untangles and reconstructs the network of myth and memory that illuminates our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.

Murderous Tommies

Murderous Tommies
Author: Julian Putkowski
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2012-09-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783378522

Much has been written about the soldiers executed during WW1 for military offenses, all of whom were conditionally pardoned in 2006. However, until now very little attention has been paid to the cases of men who were tried under the Army Act and executed for murder. The British Army has always been reticent about publicizing courts martial and eighty years elapsed before the government was compelled to prematurely declassify the written proceedings of First World War capital courts martial. Even then, public attention tended to concentrate on cases involving soldiers who had been shot at dawn for offenses other than homicide, and virtually nobody was inclined to seek a posthumous pardon or judicial review for the murderous Tommies. This meant neither the victims nor the convicted mens families were able to discover details about the murder cases. Though readily identifiable online via much-visited war cemetery websites, until now there has been no readily accessible, historically reliable and balanced narrative about the activities and courts-martial of all the murderous Tommies of the Western Front. This book provides for a full account of the cases involving the fourteen soldiers and one officer whose homicidal misdeeds were committed in France and Flanders while hostilities were in progress.Drawing on contemporary records, this carefully researched work chronicles the circumstances in which each of these men either slaughtered one of their comrades or an unarmed civilian. It examines the murderers motives and presents a balanced analysis of each case, including a detailed assessment of the extent to which each condemned man was granted a fair hearing by officers who sat in uneasy judgment as well as those involved in confirming the death sentences.

Toast on Toast

Toast on Toast
Author: Steven Toast
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2015-10-22
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1782117504

Toast on Toast is the must-have book for all budding actors - and non-actors too. In this part memoir, part 'how to act' manual, Steven Toast draws on his vast and varied experiences, providing the reader with an invaluable insight into his journey from school plays to RADA, and from 'It's a Right Royal Knockout' to the Colony Club. Along the way, he reveals the secrets of his success. He discloses how to brush up on and expand your technical and vocal skills, how to nail a professional voiceover, and how to deal with difficult work experience staff in a recording studio. He also reveals the dangers of typecasting, describes the often ruthless struggle for 'top billing', and shares many awesome nuggets of advice. The end result is a book that will inspire and educate anyone who wants to tread the floorboards. It will also inform (and entertain) anybody who simply wants to discover what a jobbing actor's life is actually like.

Britain’s Most Prolific Burglar

Britain’s Most Prolific Burglar
Author: Martyn R Beardsley
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2024-04-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1399054856

Harry Edward Vickers, aka Flannelfoot, was possibly Britain’s most successful ever burglar. Not financially - he stole cash and low-value items (even, bizarrely, false teeth!). The success was in his hundreds of burglaries spread over many years without being caught. The lives of career criminals are invariably dotted with prison sentences, but thanks to his caution and cunning, Flannelfoot operated night after night, year after year with an impunity which embarrassed the police. In the twenties and thirties, Londers were deserting the overcrowded capital for the burgeoning suburbs of ‘Metroland’. Flannelfoot was equally attracted to these areas, and one of his hallmarks was to steal a bicycle at the scene of his last break-in of the night and cycle to the nearest tube station. Burglars and burglaries are never glamorous, but one reason why the Flannelfoot saga engendered fascination more than fear is that he was never confrontational, never violent, and in fact so stealthy that few ever saw him. His one-man crime epidemic led to Scotland Yard assembling a team more used to solving murders than the plundering of gas meters. After a lengthy and painstaking investigation, a carefully planned night-time surveillance operation involving several teams of officers led to the sensational capture of Flannelfoot. Flannelfoot routinely features in crime anthologies and was the subject of a feature film, but this is the first full biography of the man who became a legend in his own lifetime.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain
Author: Felix Morrow
Publisher: Wellred Books
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2021-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN:

Felix Morrow's book, written in the white heat of the struggle, remains a Marxist classic on the Spanish Civil war. It is one of the clearest accounts produced of the movement of the Spanish masses, describing the events in Catalonia and the role of all those involved. This book contains the text of Revolution and counter-revolution together with the earlier Civil war in Spain and Ted Grant's 1973 article which provides an overview of the Spanish revolution. This book provides an excellent companion to the writings of Leon Trotsky on this question and deserves to be studied by all class-conscious activists.

Pinkoes and Traitors

Pinkoes and Traitors
Author: Jean Seaton
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847659160

This compelling account of a turbulent period in the history of the BBC opens at a time of national decline under the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, and ends during Margaret Thatcher's iconoclastic Conservative premiership. The intervening years saw mass unemployment, trade union strikes and war in Northern Ireland and the Falklands - as well as legendary BBC programmes such as Live Aid, Fawlty Towers and Dad's Army, The Singing Detective and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and David Attenborough's Life on Earth. Comprehensively revised and expanded for this new edition, Jean Seaton's perceptive study presents an absorbing analysis of an institution that both reflects Britain and has helped to define it.

The A303

The A303
Author: Tom Fort
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2012-05-10
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0857203274

'A nostalgic experience, informative, humorous, charming, but pervaded by the bitter-sweet scent of regret' Daily Mail The A303 is more than a road. It is a story. One of the essential routes of English motoring and the road of choice to the West Country for thousands of holidaymakers, the A303 recalls a time when the journey was an adventure and not simply about getting there. Tom Fort gives voice to the stories this road has to tell, from the bluestones of Stonehenge to Roman roads and drovers paths, to turnpike tollhouses, mad vicars, wicked Earls and solstice seekers, the history, geography and culture of this road tells a story of an English way of life. 'Fort has an eye for the quirky, the absurd, the pompous and a style that, like the road, is always on the move' Sunday Telegraph 'A lovely book...At last someone has celebrated the romance of the British road' Guardian

Shot at Dawn

Shot at Dawn
Author: Julian Putkowski
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780850526134

Shot at Dawn chronicles the tragic fate of more than 300 soldiers on the Western Front between 1918-18. The authors scoured the Imperial War Museum, public records and war diaries to piece together the jigsaw. A graphic account of man's inhumanity to man is the result of their labours.