Everyone has heard of the workhouse. But what exactly was it? Who went there? & how did an institution so universally hated come to be set up? Surprisingly, no full-scale history of the workhouse has ever been written. This book fills the gap & tells the full story from its first beginnings in Elizabethan times until the final reluctant demise of 'the union' in the 1940s. The book concentrates, however, on the Victorian workhouse in the years of its tarnished glory. It describes the combination of circumstances which in the 1830s led to the opening of 600 new workhouses, against astonishingly little effective opposition, & it explains why radicals like Francis Place & humane reformers like Lord Brougham supported the New Poor Law, while a handful of Tories like Disraeli & arch-reactionaries like Colonel Sibthorpe fought against it. It records the riots, the protests, the pleadings, with which the poor challenged their virtual enslavement, & the misery of their daily life when they were finally incarcerated within the workhouse walls. What did gruel taste like? Why was workhouse uniform so uncomfortable to wear? How did it feel to pound bones all day, or grind corn, or scrub floors? How was Christmas Day in the workhouse celebrated in reality? Norman Longmate has, by exhaustive research into long-neglected sources, managed to answer all these & many more questions, in the words of those who experienced the workhouse regime. All the essential facts
- of legislation passed & numbers admitted
- are here, presented in a concise & lucid form which will make this book valuable to the serious student, but they are illustrated throughout by a wealth of anecdote, which reveals in human terms the meaning of the laws & regulations which previous historians of the Poor Law have so often merely catalogued.

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' Like all extraordinary books, The World According to Garp defies synopsis', wrote the Chicago Sun Times when Garp was first published in 1978. It is a marvellous, important, permanent novel by a serious artist of remarkable powers.

Garp is a book that captivates all who read it. Peopled with the most extraordinary characters you will ever meet, here is a novel that will make you laugh, make you weep, &, above all, make you think.

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' Like all extraordinary books, The World According to Garp defies synopsis', wrote the Chicago Sun Times when Garp was first published in 1978. It is a marvellous, important, permanent novel by a serious artist of remarkable powers.

Garp is a book that captivates all who read it. Peopled with the most extraordinary characters you will ever meet, here is a novel that will make you laugh, make you weep, &, above all, make you think.

...

In this, her first collection of short stories, Winterson reveals all the facets of her extraordinary imagination. In prose that is full of imagery & word-play, she creates physical & psychological worlds that are at once familiar & yet shockingly strange. ...

The Second World War was the largest & most appalling military conflagration in history. It killed millions of people. It destroyed much of the old Europe. It altered the world balance of political & economic power. Its consequences are incalculable & are everywhere with us still. In his now classic book, The World at War, Mark Arnold-Forster tells the story of the War in a simple, bold & highly readable way. He illuminates each of the main theatres individually, so that the complex development of the various campaigns can be easily followed. Making use of original documents as well as first-hand interviews, he has produced a history which is both authoritative & intensely vivid. Originally written to accompany the Thames Television series of the same name, The World at War has since been fully revised & now, for the first time,

Includes:: a substantial introduction by Richard Overy, which brings to bear the most recent scholarship & ensures that the book remains one of the best possible accounts of this cataclysmic period.

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The World at War is the definitive television work on the Second World War. It set out to tell the story of the war through ...

The world really does come to visit George when his grandpa arrives, with a globe, to look after him & his sister for the day. Grandpa explains how everything from the cereal they eat for breakfast & the chocolate bars they love, to the rubber in their bicycle tyres & wood in their toys, come from plants all over the world. The lively, simple text follows George ...

In The World is a Ball, critic & author John Doyle travels the world in pursuit of his first love
- football. In dispatches
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In The World is a Ball, critic & author John Doyle travels the world in pursuit of his first love
- football. In dispatches
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A Blandings Omnibus

In this wonderfully fat omnibus, which seems to span the

Dimensions of the Empress



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