1899 China. The Mandarins are becoming troublesome again & there are rumors that attacks will soon begin on British trade missions & legations. Captain David Blackwoodof the Royal Marines received a VC in the bloody battle for Benin Africa but is now being packed off to this apparent backwater. But there are plenty of troubles in store for Blackwood in the shape of an errant nephew & a beautiful German Countess who insists he personally escort her up river on a small steamer into the heart of the country. China is a sleeping tiger that will soon awake when the Boxer Rebellion erupts into bloody war in 1900. True to their motto the Royal marines are the first to land
- & the last to leave. This is the second novel in the Blackwood saga spanning 150 years in the history of a great seafaring family & the tradition in which they served.
...

The recorded history of the diving industry has been fundamentally corrupted over the past 150 years. The result is a complete misunderstanding of how it all began. Who invented the diving helmet? Refer to any encyclopaedia or history book & the answer you will find will almost certainly be wrong. The First Treasure Divers reveals the true & fascinating story. It blows away the myths & deliberate misinformation that have crept into the historical record. Thanks to the painstaking research the author has carried out over the past 25 years the falsehoods are peeled away to unveil the true definitive account. It follows the lives of two brothers as they struggle to turn their newly-invented diving helmet to advantage & how they wrestle with apathetic & even hostile authorities for recognition of their invention. It thunders through sunken treasure adventures to the heroism & horrors of the Crimean War. The impact of the invention of the diving helmet is immense. In the 180 years since the Deane brothers carried out the first ever commercial helmet dive off the Isle of Wight on the south coast of England the diving business has expanded to a global industry with an annual turnover in excess of $3 000 000 000. From another point of view the life-support technology developed in the diving industry provided the knowledge for keeping the pioneering high altitude pilots alive which in turn evolved into the life-support systems of the astronauts who walked on the moon. ...

His first wife was everything youre not. But was she everything she seemed? Lily a young woman left alone in the world on the death of her grandparents finds purpose when she befriends Harry Summers a grieving widower whose wife Sarah recently took her own life in Barcelona. The pair fall in love & Lily finally finds the security she has never had. But Lilys life takes a darker turn when she realises there may be more to Sarahs death than meets the eye. Anxious to find the truth before she marries her beloved Harry Lily sets off to Barcelona in search of answers. What she discovers is more shocking than she could ever have imagined... ...

Teach your baby first words with touch & feel textures Stroke tickle & touch the textures together with your baby & help them discover some first words. Let their little hands roam & feel how bumpy the strawberry is but how soft & shiny the flowers feel. Theyll learn as you play. Twinkly bumpy scaly silky sandy sticky & shiny textures in a chunky package: perfect for encouraging tiny fingers to explore & tiny minds to develop. ...

This book is bursting with quizzes games & rhymes to help 3-4 year olds practise & develop first word recognition in a playful & stimulating way. * Quizzes games & rhymes to make step-by-step learning playful & stimulating * Parents' tips to enable you to steer your child successfully through the new & challenging concepts * Further activities provide a wealth of cheerful inexpensive ideas for incorporating learning skills into everyday life. ...

In 1914 the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand sparked off the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen. This is the story of the First World War & the people who lived & died fighting in it. Told for children ready to tackle longer & more complex subjects this title is part of the Usborne Reading Programme developed with reading experts from the University of Roehampton. ...

The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unparalleled ferocity far beyond its European epicentre it broke the century of relative peace & prosperity which we associate with the Victorian era. It unleashed both the demons of the twenieth century
- pestilence military destruction & mass death
- & the ideas which continue to shape our world today
- modernism in the arts new approaches to psychology & medicine & radical ideas about economics & society. An event of this scale & complexity needs a great historian to portray it & in his new book John Keegan fulfils a life-long ambition to write the definitive book on the war. It was of course foremost a fascinating new interpretations of the military events. But the war also acted as a formidable engine for social change throughout the world & this too is brilliantly conveyed in Keegans fascinating & magisterial work.


...

This is a great addition to this exciting sticker book series for boys. It is packed with historically accurate uniforms & scenes from the Great War from brave young privates in the trenches & German commanders in their steel-pointed helmets to fighters in the Arab revolt in their long flowing desert robes. It comes with over 150 stickers to choose from including uniforms weapons carrier pigeons & even an army dog in a gas mask. ...

This is a great addition to this exciting sticker book series for boys. It is packed with historically accurate uniforms & scenes from the Great War from brave young privates in the trenches & German commanders in their steel-pointed helmets to fighters in the Arab revolt in their long flowing desert robes. It comes with over 150 stickers to choose from including uniforms weapons carrier pigeons & even an army dog in a gas mask. ...

Raging for over four years across the tortured landscapes of Europe Africa & the Middle East the First World War changed the face of warfare forever. Characterised by slow costly advances & fierce attrition the great battles of the Somme Verdun & Ypres incurred human loss on a scale never previously imagined. This book with a foreword by Professor Hew Strachan covers the fighting on all fronts from Flanders to Tannenberg & from Italy to Palestine. A series of moving extracts from personal letters diaries & journals bring to life the experiences of soldiers & civilians caught up in the war. ...