Everyone knows three things about the Womens Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; & more recently that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. 215 000 women in the UK belong to the WI. Their membership crosses class & has recently begun to recruit huge numbers of young women (eg Shoreditch Sisters (check))/ It was founded in 1915 not by worthy ladies in tweeds but by the feistiest women in the country including suffragettes academics & social crusaders who discovered the heady power of sisterhood changing womens lives & their world in the process. Certainly its members made jam & sang Jerusalem but they did & do much more besides. This fascinating book reveals for the first time how they are
- & always were
- a force to be reckoned with.

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The tragedy of the loss in 1941 of two Royal Navy capital ships HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse the core of Churchills deterrent Force Z stunned the world. Churchill had hoped that sending a small powerful squadron of ships to Singapore would deter a threatened Japanese invasion of Malaya & Thail&. He was to be proved tragically wrong. Denuded of aircraft cover Force Z was left disastrously exposed to air attack. Within eight days of their arrival at Singapore both ships were sunk with huge loss of life in a mass attack by 85 Japanese bombers. It was the Royal Navys greatest loss in a single engagement & the first time a modern battleship had been sunk by air power. With the naval force at the bottom of the sea & the RAF almost wiped out in Malaya on day one Singapore was left with no air or sea protection & fell two months later. This is the first book to explore in detail the wrecks of these two vessels & grippingly narrates a summary of the Japanese threat Fortress Singapore & the subsequent Japanese invasion. Today the wrecks of these two famous British warships lie on the bottom of the South China Sea 200 miles north of Singapore & 50 miles offshore. The author was invited as a civilian expert on a military expedition to dive & survey these wrecks & now for the first time the wrecks are revealed as they are today. Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned artists illustrations of the wrecks each one is looked at in detail. The story of the loss of these two ships & of the sacrifice of the men who served in them is remembered. This has been a personal quest for the author whose grandfather was serving in Singapore when Force Z arrived. His wife & the authors father & two brothers were among the last civilians evacuated from Singapore before the final siege. His grandfather was taken into internment at Changi Gaol by the Japanese & suffered there for three years until Singapore was reoccupied by the British in 1945. Had the Fall of Singapore not happened the way it did the author would not be here to write this truly remarkable book. ...

When the Capri was launched in 1969 its no-nonsense handling & roadholding & in 3-litre form its impressive performance singled it out from the bland & anonymous saloons of the late 1960s. Capris were straightforward easy to drive & simple to maintain & their popularity has been sustained largely because of this. Their simplicity of design & inherent ruggedness makes them ideal candidates for DIY restoration. The booming owners club movement & the continuing avilability of spare parts ensures that these cars will have a strong following for many years to come. ...

Before the Ford Capri arrived in 1969 GT cars had tended to be expensive temperamental impractical & rarefied. Ford decided there was no reason why a four-seater coupe couldnt look stunning & go like a rocket (with the right engine) yet be as easy & cheap to run as a Ford Escort. Little wonder that the slogan they used in 1969 to launch it The car you always promised yourself made an immediate impact. The Capri was a hit from day one & continued to be a British favourite until 1986 at which time it had been somewhat overshadowed by the emergence of the Hot Hatchback. Over its lifetime the Capri was available in a vast array of guises over three distinct Marks but all of them had at their heart affordable fun & a surprising degree of everyday practicality. Nothing has ever quite replaced it but it lives on in the fond imagination of everyone who loved it. ...

Once there was a Cortina on every British street corner but now only a handful of the four million made survive & the rest are fond memories. For 1962 the Cortina was rushed to sale as an economy car but it rocketed to the top of the sales charts & stayed there for 20 years. To mark 50 years since the introduction of Fords best-seller this exhaustively researched history tells how it grew to be a worldwide success. With first-hand accounts from key people & evocative period photography the design & development of all five generations of Cortina is explored in detail. ...

Escort RS1800 (Escort Mk II): This is a Rally Giant because it was consistently the fastest most successful & most versatile car in the second half of the 1970s. Developed from the Mk I it was a conventional front engine/rear drive machine which rallied with 2-litre engines of up to 270bhp. Rally successes were legendary
- British (RAC) Safari Acropolis Finland (1000 Lakes) Sweden Portugal Canada & many more. The cars won 17 World Rallies between 1975 & 1981. RS1800s won the World Makes Championship in 1979 & were always close to victory always competitive. Escort drivers like Bjorn Waldegard (1979) & Ari Vatanen (1981) won the World Drivers' Championships. Over the years hundreds
- & this is no exaggeration
- of RS1800s were built for motor sport & were the ideal car for almost any condition in the world because they were very powerful but simple & rugged. The RS1800 was also the layout template which was copied by other manufacturers for cars like the Talbot Sunbeam-Lotus the Vauxhall Chevette HSR & the Nissan GTs of the late 1970s/early 1980s which were really all Escort 'clones'. Ford claims & it may be right that RS1800s have won more rallies at World International & National level than any other car in the world.


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Drawing on first-hand experience of what can happen when you rely on basic paperwork & goodwill alone this book offers a unique insight into the would-be problems & pitfalls of buying a 1964-1973 Ford Mustang. Learn the strengths & weaknesses of Mustangs from an author with many years of experience performing ground-up restorations of these iconic cars. Learn what models & variants are on offer & what popular upgrades are commonly performed by owners & their effect on market values. Whether you want a show-car a daily driver or a restoration project all the key points & checks are here ranging from paperwork to market values & from trim to engine condition. This book is the essential companion when looking to buy one of Americas original Pony Cars. ...

Starting with the early experiments that led to the Model F at Dearborn in 1917 this book follows the development of the Fords on through to the Model N & the E27N to the widely successful Diesel Major & its little brother the Dexta. This accounts details Fordson production in Britain covering both Cork & Dagenham & making full mention of the personalities involved. Many of the little-known prototypes are described as well. A major section of the book is devoted to the American tractor line re-established in 1939 with the 9N built in collobaration with Harry Ferguson. The book concludes in 1964 just before the introduction of the worlwide" 6X range." ...

In 1964 Ford replaced its separate British & American tractor lines with the new 6X range a worldwide" family of tractors designed for manufacture in Basildon Antwerp & the USA. It marked the beginning of an exciting new period in the history of Ford tractors. The next 30 years saw a host of new models & features as the line expanded & evolved towards the machines of the late 1990s with their computer-age technology. It was also a time during which Fords agricultural business grew into an organization of global proportions taking over both the New Holland & Versatile equipment companies. In 1994 Fiat acquired Fords agricultural machinery interests & merged them with Fiatagri to form a new company under the New Holland name. In the late 1990s New Holland is the leading manufacturer in Europe & many of the Worlds markets. In this book the companion to the first part the author gives an account of all the main Ford & New Holland models as well as the company changes & the personalities involved. It provides a comprehensive resource on this period of tractor history." ...

This new book shares the title of Anthony Pritchards landmark book about the intense rivalry between Ford & Ferrari in the 1960s played out above all at Le Mans. The original book published in 1968 when the battle between these two great marques was still ongoing forms the basis of the new project but with rewritten & much-expanded text to include material that was not available at the time. The engaging text is accompanied by a stunning selection of photographs portraying the two marques in atmospheric detail. ...