The British Isles have a long rich & celebrated seafaring history stretching from the earliest times through the victories of Drake & Nelson the voyages of discovery of Cabot & Cook & the defence of the realm by vessels of all types in the present century. Much of this history is recorded in literature & in museums but reaches its most tangible form in the large number of historical ships that have been preserved & are continually restored as monuments to a proud past. This lavish new volume explores twenty of the most celebrated & accessible ships & offers a comprehensive history of each vessels design construction active service & subsequent restoration & preservation. Presented in order of a ships launch date each entry is written by the acknowledged expert on a particular vessel gives full

Specification details & is sumptuously illustrated with contemporary photographs historical illustrations & a full set of scale plans. In addition to the featured entries an appendix presents all of the necessary contact details & opening times where applicable. The appendix also lists (and provides details for) other vessels of historical importance including a small number of working replicas such as the Matthew & the recently commissioned eighteenth-century frigate The Grand Turk featured in the current Hornblower television series. Principal vessels include: Mary Rose HMS Victory HMS Trincomalee SS Great Britain Cutty Sark RRS Discovery HMS Warrior HMS Belfast HMY Britannia HMS Alliance HMS Cavalier Gypsy Moth IV HMS Plymouth.

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At the start of the 1960s there were approaching 100 municipal operators in the UK; these ranged from Belfast in Northern Ireland to Aberdeen in the north of Scotland & from Exeter & Plymouth in the southwest to Maidstone in the southeast. By the mid-1970s as a result of the creation of the PTEs (which saw the demise of municipal operators in the countrys major conurbations) & the demise of a small number that were taken over by local NBC operators
- most notably Luton & Exeter
- the number of municipally owned operators had declined to just over 40. Following privatisation & deregulation the number of council-owned operators has declined to less than a dozen
- ranging from the 600-strong Lothian Buses to barely 60 operated in Widnes by Halton Transport. Although the rate of decline has diminished in recent years the municipally-owned companies in Plymouth Bournemouth Chester Blackburn & Eastbourne have all been sold in recent years. This is a narrative history of the 40+ municipal operators that survived the creation of the final PTEs in 1974/75. The book will include c 30 000 words of text allied toC 150 predominantly colour illustrations.


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Beautifully elegiac...a memento mori of British civic pride lost to the shopping centres & ring roads of the 1960s... This masterful book should be placed in every council planning committee in the country Tristram Hunt BBC History Magazine The destruction of Britains city centres by the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe & postwar planners is legendary. Mediaeval churches Tudor alleyways Georgian terraces & Victorian theatres vanished for ever to be replaced by concrete office-blocks & characterless shopping malls. Now for the first time Gavin Stamp shows us exactly what we have lost. Reproduced in this haunting volume are hundreds of finest top quality photographs of cities from Plymouth to Dundee all of streets & buildings that are gone for ever. In the accompanying text Stamp traces their creation & destruction remembering the massive campaign to save the Euston Arch wantonly demolished in 1962 & mourning the loss of lovely mediaeval Coventry which was already doomed by the city planners even before German air-raids intervened. Alternately fascinating enraging & heartbreaking this is an extraordinary evocation of Britains architectural past & a much-needed reminder of the importance of preserving our heritage. One of Britains best-known architectural historians Gavin Stamp is author of numerous books including Lutyens Houses. He is an energetic campaigner against demolition of important buildings & writes for numerous publications including Country Life Apollo & Private Eye. ...

Featuring 60 superb color plates this is an easy-to-use photographic identification guide to the 51 orchid species native to ...

The story of Britains prime ministers is also the story of Britains key moments in history. From the first PM Sir Robert Walpole to William Pitt the Younger the charismatic Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington to the reforming Victorians Sir Robert Peel Disraeli Gladstone & in the twentieth century Lloyd George Baldwin the gret Sir Winston Churchill through to Markaret Thatcher Tony Blair & to the present day this illustrated guide is an insightful look at the development of Britain & parliament. ...

This detailed guide to the reptiles & amphibians of Britain Ireland & the Channel Islands has been produced with the collaboration of the Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Trust with the aim of inspiring an increased level of interest in these exciting & fascinating animals. It is designed to help anyone who finds a lizard snake turtle tortoise terrapin frog toad or newt to identify it with complete confidence. It features stunning photography; an easy-to-use approach to identification; superbly illustrated introductory sections on the biology & conservation taxonomy lifecycle & behavior of each species group; profiles of the 16 native reptiles & amphibians that breed in Britain Ireland & the Channel Islands & the 5 marine turtles that visit Britains seas; profiles of 7 established nonnative species & a summary of 8 more with a history of release/escape; & distribution maps based on the latest available information Hints & tips on where when & how to watch reptiles & amphibians. ...

Britains Secret War" tells the astonishing story of how Britains spies boffins & special operations teams helped to win the Second World War. The work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers in breaking the German Enigma cipher is estimated to have cut the length of the war by around two years saving countless lives while the Double Cross system in which German secret agents were "turned" by the British to feed their Nazi agent-runners with false information ensured the success of the D-Day landings. " The Secret War" not only reveals new details about these remarkable operations but also tells the real story of how MI6 turned the disaster of lost networks across Europe into triumph. The stories range from extraordinary courage to the bizarre with even astrologers & a stage magician brought in to help get intelligence & allied aircrew out of Nazi-occupied Europe. Intelligence historian Michael Smith describes the work of all the participants in the Secret War revealing a host of new heroes & heroines along the way." ...

Murder is rare. Rarer still are those killers who get away with it
- but they are out there walking our streets. Included in this
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This title was selected for Guardian" books of the year. The familiar image of the British in the Second World War is that of the plucky underdog taking on German might. David Edgertons bold compelling new history shows the conflict in a new light with Britain as a very wealthy country formidable in arms ruthless in pursuit of its interests & sitting at the heart of a global production system. The British indeed Churchillian vision of war & modernity was challenged by repeated defeat by less well equipped enemies. Yet the end result was a vindication of this vision. Like the United States a powerful Britain won a cheap victory while others paid a great price. " Britains War Machine" by putting resources machines & experts at the heart of a global rather than merely imperial story demolishes some of the most cherished myths about wartime Britain & gives us a very different & often unsettling picture of a great power in action." ...

The coastline of Victorian & Edwardian Britain provided beauty entertainment & the venue for most peoples holidays. But it was also a thriving centre of industry
- shipbuilding & fishing plus the numerous trades associated with dockyards coastal transport & the leisure industry. This book travels around Britains coast
- clockwise from London
- looking at the industries that could be found at many of the cities & towns en route. Illustrated with an amazing collection of coloured postcards & other early photographs the working coast of Britain is brought to life in all its bustling detail.


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