In recent years campaigns have been galvanised to 'save the High Street'. It seems everyone has a view about how we can revamp our down-at-heel towns & cities. But are they missing the point? Veteran retailer Bill Grimsey argues that it is already too late. The High Street that we have grown to know & love is as good as dead already. The indisputable truth is British towns & cities are losing their identity & dying off. Independent stores that were once vital to the fabric of towns are disappearing at a rate of 50 shops a week. Some towns now have as many as 24 per cent of their shops shuttered. The time has now come to work out what happened learn lessons from our mistakes & find a new way forward to make new & innovative use of our shattered town centres. Have our shopping preferences created the High Street we now deserve?"" ...

When Philip Serrell
- now well known for his television appearances
- gave up teaching to become a professional auctioneer he

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In November 2001 as the world still reeled from the attack on the Twin Towers German historian Sonke Neitzel discovered an extraordinary cache of documents from the Second World War. The documents were the transcripts of German prisoners of war talking among themselves in prisoner of war camps & secretly recorded by the allies. In these apparently private conversations the soldiers talked freely & openly about their hopes & fears their concerns & their day-to-day lives. With a banality & ease which to the modern reader can appear shocking they also talked about the horrors of war -- about rape death & killing. Sonke Neitzel shared the material with renowned & bestselling psychologist Harald Wezler & they set about trying to make sense of the vast piles of documents the hours of transcripts. The result is SOLDATEN a landmark book which will change the way we look at soldiers & war & is as relevant to our modern conflicts in Iraq & Afghanistan as it was to the soldiers of the German Army in 1945. Published to huge acclaim & controversy in Germany it was a number one bestseller there & reignited the debate about the banality of evil under the Nazi regime. ...

The authors discovered 150 000 pages of transcriptions of secretly recorded conversations among German prisoners of war of which Approx. one third were made in P.O.W. camps in Britain another cache was made by bugging prisoners in the Mediterranean theatre of the war (North Africa Malta Italy) & the remainder comes from the bugging of prisoners of war in the USA. These transcriptions are thus unmediated uncensored & unselfconsciously candid & that is what gives this book its historical significance & extraordinary impact. What emerges from these transcriptions & within these pages is a shocking & profoundly illuminating portrait of the typical German soldier of the time: their thoughts their feelings & their ideologies. SOLDATEN is a book that explodes many of the myths that we hold on to about Germany & its people during the War. ...

General Sir Mike Jackson's illustrious career in the British Army has spanned almost 45 years & all that time he has shown loyalty courage & commitment to the British army whilst also being an undeniable media attraction. A man of substance where foreign policy is concerned he has served in theatres from the Artic to the jungle but is perhaps best known for his role in charge of the British troops to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo for assembling the British ground component of the coalition that toppled the Taliban for equipping & organising the army we dispatched to defeat in Iraq & for re-organising the British army with aplomb. His drive enthusiasm & dominating personality were always popular with his soldiers & drove him right to the top of his profession. He may have been a general but he never stopped caring about the men & women in his charge despite the politics. Soldier: The Autobiography" exhibits all the qualities for which Jackson is admired; his professionalism his honesty his directness his exuberance & his sense of humour. Most of all it gives a vivid sense of what modern soldiering entails." ...

No publicity no media. We move in silently do our job & melt away into the background. If you have the stamina the willpower & the guts well welcome you with open arms & you one of us. & if you havent then its been very nice knowing you. Eighteen years in the SAS saw Pete Winner codenamed Soldier I survive the savage battle of Mirbat parachute into the icy depths of the South Atlantic at the height of the Falklands War & storm the Iranian Embassy during the most famous hostage crisis in the modern world. For the first time Pete also details his close-protection work around the world from the lawless streets of Moscow to escorting aid convoys into war-torn Bosnia. He also unveils the problems of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder faced by many Special Forces veterans & how he battled his own demons to continue his roller-coaster career. This is his story written with a breathtaking take-no-prisoners attitude that brings each death-defying episode vividly to life. ...

Stanley's dad hasn't been the same since his wife died & his eldest son went off to fight in the war. Now Stanley is either invisible to his dad or the object of one of his rages & his only friend is his dad's prizewinning greyhound Rocket. But one day Rocket escapes & the result is a litter of non-thoroughbred puppies that Da says will all have to be drowned even Stanley's favourite puppy Solider. Stanley is so angry with his father that he runs away & enlists in the army to train as a messenger dog handler & despite being far too young he's soon heading to France with a great Dane called Bones by his side. As the fighting escalates & Stanley experiences the horrors of war he comes to realise that the loyalty of his dog is the one thing he can rely on. But his father hasn't given up on him & extraordinary circumstances will bring them together once more.. . ...

The ill-fated Brave Two Zero mission of the Gulf War has become one of the most notorious episodes in military history. Several accounts of the story have already appeared in books films & articles but in this book the author now seeks to set the record straight & honour the memory of his three comrades who were killed. ...

A sequel to The Hopscotch Summer Molly Fox has grown up in the back streets of Birmingham at the mercy of her cruel grandfather & her drunken mother. Though she has grown into a tall beautiful woman Molly is haunted by terrible family secrets. When she is found lying drunk in a gutter Molly reaches a turning point. She decides to escape by joining the army as an ATS girl. At first her new start seems fated to be a disaster but the army gives her the encouragement she hungers for & soon her life is flourishing. But war brings tragedy as well as triumph & when Molly receives news from home it becomes clear that she cant escape her past so easily... ...

It is 1704 & Europe is at war. ' Take this sword as your own & wear it with more honour than the man from whom you took it'. With Lord Churchill's words ringing in his ears the courageous young Captain Daniel Rawson embarks on a dangerous mission to lead his men into battle against the French enemy. He must succeed at all costs
- the future of England is at stake. The author of the bestselling Railway Detective" series triumps with this stunning first book in the " Captain Rawson" series."
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