” Bagels & Bacon” is a rites of passage story that will appeal to both young & old. It attempts to shed a largely humorous, but sometimes serious light, on the relations between an ethnic minority & the wider community. Its attitude to Judaism, in particular, & religions in general, is irreverent. The work is also a nostalgic record of growing up in the East End during the postwar period, & attempts to convey a liking of London & more importantly a love of history to the reader. Within the Jewish community it might arouse interest, even controversy, but in wider terms it tries to portray the East End before the dawn of multiculturalism & political correctness. The author, a baby boomer (now turned pensioner) tells with genuine affection & warmth his family story peopled by a host of hilarious characters. ...

Topographic survey of Catalonia at 1:50, 000 from the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, with vivid presentation of the terrain & an overprint for long-distance GR hiking trails. The series provides an excellent alternative to the much smaller sheets in the civilian or military surveys produced for the whole of Spain. The Catalan 50K series has not only a much larger area per sheet (each map covers one comarca, an administrative division of a province) than the maps from the national surveys, but also has more colourful, elegant & clear cartography with contours at 20m intervals, hill shading & fine graphics to portray the relief, vegetation types & landmarks. Most maps also have more tourist-related information, with an overprint highlighting long-distance GR trails & the Via Verde routes. Mountain refuges are marked & a range symbols indicate various places of interest including historical monuments, sport & recreational facilities, etc. Four different types of interesting locations are highlighted: picturesque towns or villages, individual isolated building or monuments, natural sites, & hydrographic features such as waterfalls. The maps have a 5km UTM grid, with latitude & longitude values shown for the map corners. Map legend is in Catalan only. To see other titles in this series please click on the series link. ...

Double-sided sheet with main map of Baghdad at 1:25, 000 scale, key to symbols & an index on one side & on the reverse an enlargement at 1:9, 000 of Baghdad city centre, a map of the capital's environs, a map showing No Fly Zones, a diagram of the ranges of Scud-B & Al-Hussein missiles with oil fields & US airbases, a map showing alleged locations of active & unactive nuclear infrastructures, chemical & nuclear weapons. ...

Detailed, indexed street plan of Baghdad, updated in 2007 to show security zones & restricted access areas, with an enlargement of the city centre, a map of the airport zone, & a road map of the wider environs of the city. The main map at 1:25, 000 shows the central part of the city & the surrounding suburbs, including the Sadr City. Main streets have names, otherwise just the names of districts are shown. Boundaries of the special access Green Zone are clearly marked. A wide range of symbols, graphics & colours indicate various places of interest, including hotels, public buildings, monuments, religious establishments, etc. Main shopping streets & areas are highlighted. On the reverse, the central part of the city along the Tigris is shown in greater detail at 1:9, 000. The plans have an index listing street, neighbourhoods, public buildings, embassies, hotels, shops, etc. The restricted Green Zone around the city’s international airport is shown at 1:25, 000. A general map of the central part of Iraq at 1:850, 000 extends north to Kirkuk & south to Karbala & Al-Hillah. Also included is a small ethno-religious map of the whole country. All place names are in Roman alphabet only. Names of public buildings & various facilities are in English. Map legend is in English & German ...

A clear street plan covering an area of about 7 x 7 miles. Main roads are named & railways are included. The old city is highlighted & a variety of the city's features are indicated, eg. places of worship, museums, parks, antiquities, monuments, hotels, markets, public offices. Lines of latitude & longitude are drawn at 1' intervals. Small inset maps show the environs of Baghdad at 1:1, 750, 000 & Iraq & neighbours at 1:6, 000, 000. The index

Includes:: streets, quarters of the city & sites of interest eg. mosques, churches, markets, notable buildings.

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The latest in Andrew Martin’s much loved ‘ Jim Stringer’ series of books, The Baghdad Railway Club is set in Baghdad 1917 as Captain Jim Stringer, invalided from the Western Front, has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a nasty case of treason. Arriving to find a city on the point of insurrection, his own cover apparently blown, Stringer finds his only contact lying dead with flies in his eyes. Baghdad swelters in a particularly torrid summer, the heat alone threatens the lives of the British soldiers who occupy the city. The recently ejected Turks are still a danger
- & many of the local Arabs are none too friendly either. For Jim, who is not particularly good in warm weather, the situation grows pricklier by the day. Aside from his investigation, he is working on the railways around the city. His boss is the charming, enigmatic Lieutenant-Colonel Shepherd, who presides over the gracious dining society called The Baghdad Railway Club
- & who may or may not be a Turkish agent. Jim`s search for the truth brings him up against murderous violence in a heat-dazed, labyrinthine city where an enemy awaits around every corner. The Baghdad Railway Club continues the ` Jim Stringer` series which began with The Necropolis Railway in 2002. The third & fourth books in the series, Murder at Deviation Junction & Death on a Branch Line, were shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award &, in 2008, Andrew Martin was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award.

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The Freya Stark Collection Freya Stark first journeyed to Iraq in 1927. Seven years after the establishment of the British Mandate, the modern state was in its infancy & worlds apart from the country it has since become. During her many years in Iraq, Freya Stark was witness to the rise & fall of the British involvement in the country as well as the early years of independence. Typically
- & controversially
- she chose to live outside the close-knit western expatriate scene & immersed herself in the way of life of ordinary Iraqis
- living in the `native` quarter of the city & spending time with its tribal sheikhs & leaders. Venturing out of Baghdad, she travelled to Mosul, Nineveh, Tikrit & Najaf, where she perceptively describes the millennia-old tensions between Sunni & Shi`a, time not having dissipated their hatred. In the 1940s she returned again, this time travelling south, to the Marsh Arabs, whose way of life has now all but disappeared; north into Kurdistan & later, Kuwait, in the days before the oil boom. Painting a portrait of both the political & social preoccupations of the day as exquisitely as she does the people & landscapes of Iraq, Baghdad Sketches is a remarkable portrait of the country as it once was.


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Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural & commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic & intellectual sophistication & an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand & One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, & numerous foreign invasions which have brought terrible bloodshed. This is the history of its storytellers & its tyrants, of its philosophers & conquerors. Here, in the first new history of Baghdad in nearly 80 years, Justin Marozzi brings to life the whole tumultuous history of what was once the greatest capital on earth. ...

Bagillt in 1909 in a fascinating series of reproductions of old Ordnance Survey plans in the Alan Godfrey Editions, ideal for anyone interested in the history of their neighbourhood or family. The map is double-sided. The main map covers most of Bagillt, stretching from Dee Bank & Pentre-Bach SE to St Mary`s church. Features include Pentre Bagillt area, Pentre-Isaf area, St Mary`s church, railway with station, Bettisfield Colliery with railway sidings, Lead & Blende Dressing Sheds, Lead & Iron Works, Down Hill area, Merllyn, saltings, Panton Cop with disused tramway, etc. On the reverse is part of the adjacent sheet 6.10 extending coverage westward to include Boot, Wal-wen, New Brighton, Whelston, Twll Farm. About the Alan Godfrey Editions of the 25” OS Series: Selected towns in Great Britain & Ireland are covered by maps showing the extent of urban development in the last decades of the 19th & early 20th century. The plans have been taken from the Ordnance Survey mapping & reprinted at about 15 inches to one mile (1:4, 340). On the reverse most maps have historical notes & many also include extracts from contemporary directories. Most maps cover about one mile (1.6kms) north/south, one & a half miles (2.4kms) across; adjoining sheets can be combined to provide wider coverage.FOR MORE INFORMATION & A COMPLETE LIST OF ALL AVAILABLE TITLES PLEASE CLICK ON THE SERIES LINK. ...

Topographic survey of France at 1:25, 000 in IGN`s excellent TOP25 / Série Bleue series. All the maps are GPS compatible, with a 1km UTM grid plus latitude & longitude lines at 5’ intervals. Contours are at 5m intervals except for mountainous areas where the maps have contours at 10m intervals, vividly enhanced by hill shading & graphics for rocky terrain. Colouring with graphics indicates different types of vegetation or land use (deciduous or coniferous forests, moors, orchards, vineyards, etc). PLEASE NOTE: coverage of France at this scale is currently being revised – the format & the presentation of each title are indicated by the letters at the end of its Sheet Reference number (e.g. 0416ET, 3531ETR, 1923SB, etc.)MAPS WITH FULL TOURIST OVERPRINT & AN ENGLISH MAP LEGEND: all TOP25 maps & the SB editions of Série Bleue have an overprint highlighting waymarked walking trails including long-distance GR routes &, where appropriate, ski routes. Symbols indicate campsites, gîtes d’etape, refuges, equestrian centres & other recreational facilities or sites, tourist information centres, cultural heritage, etc. Towns & locations of particular interest are highlighted.- ET or OT = single-sided TOP25 map covering approx. 29x 21 km / 18x 13 miles.- ETR or OTR = waterproof & tear resistant TOP25 map covering the same area as the corresponding ET or OT number, but double-sided, printed on a smaller size sheet with a good overlap between the sides.- SB = Série Bleue map with full tourist overprint; these maps, first introduced in summer 2014, each cover approx. 29x 24km / 18x 15 miles.SÉRIE BLEUE maps with numbers ending in E (Est) or O (Ouest): most editions now indicate the GR routes, but do not show any other tourist information. Map legend is in French only. Each map covers approx. 14x 20km / 9x 12 miles. ...