Imagine if you lost your parents
- not just in place but in time. Jake Djones mum & dad have gone missing & they could be anywhere
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Howard Kirk product of the Swinging Sixties radical university lecturer & one half of a very modern marriage is throwing a party. The night will have all sorts of repercussions: for Henry Beamish Howards desperate & easily neglected friend & for Howards wife Barbara promiscuous 70s liberal & exhausted victim of motherhood. The History Man is Malcolm Bradburys masterpiece & the definitive campus novel of the 1970s. It brilliantly satirizes a world of academic power struggles & abuse at the highest level as the Machiavellian Howard effortlessly seduces his way around campus. ...

Accompanying the BBC TV series of the same name Neil Olivers popular account of Britains prehistoric & Roman past strikes a personal note interweaving Olivers own voyage of discovery with a chronological survey. Featuring snippets of interviews with the archaeologists involved the book describes visits to Britains most important prehistoric sites & the results of the latest research building up a picture of the daily lives of Britains inhabitants over a vast period. ...

Accompanying the BBC TV series of the same name Neil Olivers popular account of Britains prehistoric & Roman past strikes a personal note interweaving Olivers own voyage of discovery with a chronological survey. Featuring snippets of interviews with the archaeologists involved the book describes visits to Britains most important prehistoric sites & the results of the latest research building up a picture of the daily lives of Britains inhabitants over a vast period. ...

The extraordinary history of Ancient Egyptian civilization
- from its earliest origins to the creation of its greatest monument
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Birmingham was a village worth only one pound in the Domesday Survey yet it rose to become the second city of the British Empire with a population that passed a million. Its growth began when Peter de Birmingham obtained a market charter in 1154 for his little settlement by an insignificant river with all roads leading to its all-important market-place the great triangular Bull Ring with the parish church of St Martins in the middle. In the succeeding centuries Birmingham has been a product of market forces as a market of agriculture trade & metal work. By the 18th century Birmingham overtook Coventry as the biggest town in Warwickshire & by 1800 it was the toy shop of Europe having cornered the markets for gun-making jewellery buttons & buckles with a bewildering variety of specialist craftsmen & traders. The factory system had already begun & men like James Watt Matthew Boulton Joseph Priestley & William Murdock made Birmingham the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution selling their wares in vast quantities to the entire world. The middle of the 19th century saw Birmingham pioneering political reform education & municipal government. In this first single-volume history of the city for half a century Dr Upton looks at why Birmingham grew & what it has become. It has always been a place in which to experiment from the steam engine to the factory in a garden; from the Bull Ring to Spaghetti Junction. To some the story of Birmingham is one of great industries: Boulton & Watt Dunlop Cadburys G.K.N. Lloyds Bank & Austin Rover. But there are many lesser known tales: of the Bull Ring Riots the Onion Fair the first floodlit football matches & the tripe sellers. It is a story of communities too. The Quakers settles in the 17th century the Irish & Italians in the 19th & more recently people from the Caribbean the Indian subcontinent China & Vietnam have all made Birmingham their home. As Birmingham makes it marks on the map of Europe again one thing is certain...the story of the city that brought us Joseph & Neville Chamberlain Thomas the Tank Engine Fu Manchu & Mendelssohns Elijah can hardly be dull. Chris Uptons lively account ensures that Birminghams fascinating story loses nothing in telling. ...

History clings tight but it also kicks loose writes Simon Schama at the outset of this the first book in his three-volume journey into Britains past. Disruption as much as persistence is its proper subject. So although the great theme of British history seen from the twentieth century is endurance its counter-point seen from the twenty-first must be alteration. Change
- sometimes gentle & subtle sometimes shocking & violent
- is the dynamic of Schamas unapologetically personal & grippingly written history especially the changes that wash over custom & habit transforming our loyalties. At the heart of this history lie questions of compelling importance for Britains future as well as its past: what makes or breaks a nation? To whom do we give our allegiance & why? & where do the boundaries of our community lie
- in our hearth & home our village or city tribe or faith? What is Britain
- one country or many? Has British history unfolded at the edge of the world or right at the heart of it? Schama delivers these themes in a form that is at once traditional & excitingly fresh. The great & the wicked are here
- Becket & Thomas Cromwell Robert the Bruce & Anne Boleyn
- but so are countless more ordinary lives: an Irish monk waiting for the plague to kill him in his cell at Kilkenny; & a small boy running through the streets of London to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth I. They are all caught on the rich & teeming canvas on which Schama paints his brilliant portrait of the life of the British people: for in the end history especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations should be as all her most accomplished narrators have promised not just instruction but pleasure.





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This is the definitive visual guide to 5 000 years of British history. The History of Britain & Ireland" traces the key events that have shaped the British Isles. From the Elizabethan age of Shakespeare to the Iraq & Afghan wars of the 21st century this beautifully illustrated book offers a definitive visual chronicle of the most colourful & defining episodes in British history. Packed with visually arresting illustrations & clear concise text you can now explore the long & fascinating story of the British Isles. It

Includes:: profiles of key people in history such as Geoffrey Chaucer Alfred the Great Charles Dickens Queen Elizabeth I & Winston Churchill. " The History of Britain & Ireland" is ideal as a family reference for the home as well as a key history companion for schools."

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In this fascinating & informative new book Professor David Wilson tells the stories of Britains serial killers from Jack the Ripper to the extraordinary Suffolk Murders case. David Wilson has worked as a Prison Governor & as a profiler & has been described as the UKs leading expert on serial killers. His work has led him to meet several of the UKs deadliest killers & build up fascinating insights into what makes a serial killer
- & who they are most likely to target. A vivid narrative history & a timely call for prison & social reform Professor Wilsons new book is a powerful & gripping investigation of Britains serial murderers.
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John O' Farrell author of The Man Who Forgot His Wife An Utterly Impartial History of Britain & Things Can Only Get Better turns his comedic genius to the problem of capitalism encapsulated in a Tube train full of passengers stuck underground
- part of a series of twelve books tied to the twelve lines of the London Underground as Tfl celebrates 150 years of the Tube with Penguin. It is also available in a boxset. Authors include the masterly John Lanchester the children of Kids Company comic John O' Farrell & social geographer Danny Dorling. Ranging from the polemical to the fantastical the personal to the societal they offer something for every taste. All experience the city as a cultural phenomenon & notice its nature & its people. Read individually they're delightful small reads pulled together they offer a particular portrait of a global city". (Evening Standard). " Exquisitely diverse". (The Times). " Eclectic & broad-minded.. .beautifully designed". (Tom Cox Observer). "A fascinating collection with a wide range of styles & themes. The design qualities are excellent as you might expect from Penguin with a consistent look & feel while allowing distinctive covers for each book. This is a very pleasing set of books". (A Common Reader blog). " The contrasts & transitions between books are as stirring as the books themselves.. .A multidimensional literary jigsaw". (Londonist). "A series of short sharp city-based vignettes
- some personal some political & some pictorial.. .each inimitable author finds that our city is complicated but ultimately connected full of wit & just the right amount of grit". (Fabric Magazine). "A collection of beautiful books". (Grazia). [ Praise for John O' Farrell]: " Comic genius". (Mirror). "A consistently humorous writer". (Mail on Sunday). John O' Farrell is the bestselling author of four novels including The Man Who Forgot His Wife. He has also written comic non-fiction such as An Utterly Impartial History of Britain the political memoir Things Can Only Get Better & three collections of his popular Guardian column."

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