Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn, we are set up for a grisly excursion through London as a city of ne`er do wells, taking in beheadings & brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street crime, cutpurses & con-men, through to the Gordon Riots & Highway robbery of the 18th century & the rise of prisons, the police & the Victorian era of incarceration. As well as the crimes, Arnold also looks at the grotesque punishments meted out to those who transgressed the law throughout London`s history
- from the hangings, drawings & quarterings at Tyburn over 500 years to being boiled in oil at Smithfield. This popular historian also investigates the influence of London`s criminal classes on the literature of the 19th & 20th centuries, & ends up with our old favourites, the Krays & Soho gangs of the 50s & 60s. London`s crimes have changed over the centuries, both in method & execution. Underworld London traces these developments, from the highway robberies of the eighteenth century, made possible by the constant traffic of wealthy merchants in & out of the city, to the beatings, slashings & poisonings of the Victorian era.
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We know what happens to the body when we die, but what happens to the soul? The answer may remain a great unknown, but the question has shaped centuries of tradition, folklore & religious belief. In this vivid history of the macabre, Carl Watkins goes in search of the ancient customs, local characters & compelling tales that illuminate how people over the years have come to terms with our ultimate fate. He discovers what a small Norfolk church has to tell us about the apocalypse; why the greatest minds of the seventeenth century were embroiled in debate over the phantom Drummer of Tedworth; & how a nineteenth-century Welsh Druid completely changed the national view of cremation. The result is an enthralling journey into Britain's past, from medieval hauntings on the Yorkshire moors & eccentric memorials on the Cornish coast to seances in Victorian kitchens & gallows tales from a Bristol gaol. Impeccably researched & elegantly told, The Undiscovered Country ventures beyond the veil to bring the dead back to life. ...

Undiscovered France in the Landmark Visitor Guides series, exploring a range of places in Britain, Europe & the Caribbean, with a particular expertise in UK destinations. Each guide presents the reader with detailed, wide-ranging & accessible overview of the region or area, with a particular focus on history & culture, notable local attractions, the landscape, local events & family activities. A series of recommended walks & guided car tours exploring the region are also included in each title. The guides are arranged geographically by region & are ideal both for short & longer breaks, with practical guidance on recommended routes & tourist attractions, in addition to insightful inset boxes into local history, culture & traditions. Information on accommodation, restaurants & day-to-day information are more limited, though a compact Directory at the end of each guide provides basic listings of recommended accommodation & restaurants, as well as tourist information contacts & regional event calendars. International destinations also carry climate & country facts, basic phrases & other general travel practical guidance for travelling to the region. The British titles in the Landmark Visitor Guides series are highly recommended, covering titles that are rarely available from other publishers. ...

Even while rambling in the most rugged & remote parts of Wales, one is liable to stumble upon some mysterious link with the past
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` People are mysterious. & they do reveal mysterious connections. But sometimes one is merely anxious to alter the script. It was not the first time I had been guilty of a misapprehension` At twenty-nine, Claire Pitt is single but not inexperienced. Attracted to Martin Gibson, a former academic married to a beautiful, manipulative invalid, she & her friend Wiggy are drawn deeper into his world. When Martin is widowed, Claire sees a possible future for herself & begins to make plans. But Martin is both more & less than he appears, as Claire is about to discover.. .` All of Brookner`s novels are great. But this is one of the best` Independent on Sunday ...

Arranged thematically, the chapters reveal a vast array of incredible finds; most of the treasures & sites featured in the book were only discovered after years of committed searching & with the painstaking efforts by archaeologists, while some were chance finds. The book relates the dramas of excavation, details the items found & their significance, where they are now exhibited, & the importance of that site to our understanding of history. For example, In Cities & Dwelling Places, the story unfolds of Dolni Vestonice, in the Czech Republic: a prehistoric site where ceramics
- & therefore Man's discovery of fire
- have been dated at over 27, 000 years. A discovery such as this helps to unravel the complex characteristics of our human development.

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A broken heart & a moment of drunken bravado inspires middle-aged, & typically rather cautious, journalist Mike Carter to take off on a life-changing six month motorcycle trip around Europe. Never mind that he hadn`t been on two wheels since an inglorious three-month teenage chapter involving a Lambretta, four crashes & an 18-month ban for drink-driving, a plan had begun to loosely form... And so, having completed a six day residential motorcycle course & hastily re-mortgaged his flat, Mike sets off alone, resolving to go wherever the road takes him & enjoy the adventure of heading off into the unknown. He ends up travelling almost 20, 000 miles & reaching the four extremes of Europe: the Arctic Circle in the north, the Mediterranean coast in the south, the Portuguese Atlantic to the west & the Iraqi border of Turkey in the east. But really it`s a journey inwards, as, on the way, Mike finds his post-divorce scars starting to heal & attempts to discover what he, as a man in his forties who hasn`t quite found his place in the world, should be doing. Self-deprecating, poetic & utterly engaging, his is a heroic journey taken for the rest of us too scared to leave our 9 to 5 office-bound existence. ...

Many Britons like to think they have a basic understanding of Britain`s amazing history. The Roman invasion, Alfred & the Danes, 1066, Magna Carta, Bannockburn, Agincourt, Wars of the Roses, Henry & his wives, the Reformation, etc., etc. The trouble is that concentrating on just a few over-familiar landmarks like these can give a distorted picture of the land we live in. What would our history look like if, instead of looking at all the bits everybody knows, we started telling it through some of the bits not everybody knows? We set off to find out. The result is Unexpected Britain, tracing the story of Britain from a time before Rome to a time within the lives of people still living, but going beyond the well-known to explore a world of different angles & fascinating little-known facts that bring fresh life to the story of what Britain has been & what Britain is. ...

Unexploded is the much-anticipated new novel from Alison Mac Leod. May, 1940. On Park Crescent, Geoffrey & Evelyn Beaumont & their eight-year-old son, Philip, anxiously await news of the expected enemy landing on the beaches of Brighton. It is a year of tension & change. Geoffrey becomes Superintendent of the enemy alien camp at the far reaches of town, while Philip is gripped by the rumour that Hitler will make Brighton's Royal Pavilion his English HQ. As the rumours continue to fly & the days tick on, Evelyn struggles to fall in with the war effort & the constraints of her role in life, & her thoughts become tinged with a mounting, indefinable desperation. Then she meets Otto Gottlieb, a 'degenerate' German-Jewish painter & prisoner in her husband's internment camp. As Europe crumbles, Evelyn's & Otto's mutual distrust slowly begins to change into something else, which will shatter the structures on which her life, her family & her community rest. Love collides with fear, the power of art with the forces of war, & the lives of Evelyn, Otto & Geoffrey are changed irrevocably. Praise for The Wave Theory of Angels: An ambitious novel...[ Alison Mac Leod] has an engaged delight in the stuff of life. (TLS). Ingeniously combines medieval theology with 21st-century physics.. .highly enjoyable. (The Times). Alison Mac Leod was raised in Canada & has lived in England since 1987. She is the author of two novels, The Changeling & The Wave Theory of Angels, & of a collection of stories, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester & lives in Brighton. ...

Unexploded is Alison Mac Leod`s heartrending novel of love & prejudice in wartime Brighton. It is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013. May, 1940. Wartime Brighton. On Park Crescent, Geoffrey & Evelyn Beaumont & their eight-year-old son, Philip, anxiously await news of the expected enemy landing on the beaches. It is a year of change. Geoffrey becomes Superintendent of the enemy alien camp at the far reaches of town, & Evelyn, desperate to feel useful, begins reading to some of the prisoners. One of them is Otto Gottlieb, a `degenerate` German-Jewish. As Europe crumbles, Evelyn`s & Otto`s mutual distrust slowly begins to change into something else, which will shatter the structures on which her life, her family & her community rest. ” Like a piece of finely wrought ironwork, uncommonly delicate but also astonishingly strong & tensile.. .a novel of staggering elegance & beauty”. (Independent). ” Compelling, fast-paced, powerful.. .the denouement is as heart-rending as it is unexpected”. (Financial Times).” Mac Leod`s range
- spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal
- is excitingly, imaginatively realised & unified in awareness of the dark menace of love`s uncertainty”. (Metro). Alison Mac Leod was raised in Canada & has lived in England since 1987. She is the author of three novels, The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels & Unexploded, & of a collection of stories, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. Unexploded was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2013. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Chichester University & lives in Brighton.

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