Download or read book Cruel Britannia written by Ian Cobain and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A award-winning book from an acclaimed investigative journalist, Cruel Britannia tells the hidden story of Britain's secretive and shameful record of torture, for the first time

Download or read book Cruel Britannia written by Nick Cohen and published by Verso. This book was released on 2000 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the rest of the media lounge in the warm glow of New Labour's rosy dawn, one journalist in Britain has been a consistently sharp and witty scourge of Tony Blair and his bandwagon babes. Step forward Nick Cohen, denizen of the Observer newspaper's celebrated 'Hold on a Minute' column and a writer who has regularly identified Labour's Third Way as the mid-point between truth and lies, decency and hypocrisy, honesty and corruption. Whether he is tearing into Labour's plans to privatize the prison system and introduce curfews for teenagers, or detailing the government's cozying up to Rupert Murdoch and the hot money traders in the City, Cohen maintains a peerless grasp on the power that flows from fusing invective with scrupulous investigation. Even Downing Street Policy Advisor Andrew Adonis was forced to concede that 'no one is better at getting under the Government's skin'. A coruscating barrage of dispatches from his sniper's post, Cruel Britannia celebrates Cohen's lonely stand. It will revivify the disillusioned who anticipated something better from Labour's ascent and fortify those on the left who expected little and received precisely that.

Download or read book Thomas Crapper Corsets and Cruel Britannia written by Peter Hepplewhite and published by Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victorian fashion is unlikely to become popular again. Corsets were in style during the second half of the 1800s and were forced on the waists of girls as young as 5 years old! Tied too tight and the wearer might not be able to sit or breathe, and many sustained broken ribs. More fascinating truths about those living during the Victorian era, including the opium-based drugs used to keep children calm and prison-like schools, will inspire thankfulness in today’s readers! Full-color illustrations offer colorful commentary on this buttoned-up time period as well as supplementary historical details.

Download or read book Serial Killer Quarterly Vol 1 No 4 Cruel Britannia written by Burl Barer and published by Grinning Man Press. This book was released on with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Serial Killer Quarterly's "Cruel Britannia" finishes off 2014 with a four-feature British bloodlust frenzy! Dr. Katherine Ramsland wades through the heavy fog surrounding the "Moors Murders": a series of high-profile child killings committed in the Swinging Sixties by Scottish sadist Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, his English girlfriend and accomplice. To this day, they continue to be the most shocking and headline grabbing crimes in modern Britain! With Katherine's background in psychology and philosophy, there is surely no one better suited to explore Brady's "existentialist exercises" in murder, his psychopathic pedophilia, and folie-a-deux relationship with Hindley. Where the "Moors Murders" remain Britain's most notorious series of murders, the atrocities committed by Fred and Rosemary West are undoubtedly the most depraved. Kim Cresswell churns the stomach with her unbelievable account of incest, bestiality, rape, torture, murder, necrophilia and filicide, culminating in a "Garden of Bones" in Gloucester. Carol Anne Davis looks at one of the greatest abuses of police power in English history: the entrapment of Colin Stagg for the 1992 ripper-style murder of blonde beauty Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common. Meanwhile, the real killer, Robert Napper, was already confined to Broadmoor asylum for the 1993 evisceration murder of Samantha Bisset and the rape and deadly suffocation of her infant daughter. Edgar-Award winning author Burl Barer makes his Serial Killer Quarterly debut, lending his highly original voice to an intriguing re-examination of the murders ascribed to "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe, and the phenomenon of homicidal fame. Robert J. Hoshowsky, Aaron Elliott, and Kim Cresswell also look at three comparably notorious historical London slayers in their pieces on creepy old John Christie, "Acid Bath Vampire" John George Haigh, and Jack the Ripper suspect and bride poisoner George Chapman. Come take a trip with us into the dark heart of the British Isles, from the gritty northern industrial cities of Leeds, Bradford and Manchester to cosmopolitan London to the verdant countryside of Herefordshire! Warning: this issue contains an abundance of mutilation, necrophilia, and tea.

Download or read book Ruled Britannia written by Harry Turtledove and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-11-05 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year is 1597. For nearly a decade, the island of Britain has been under the rule of King Philip in the name of Spain. The citizenry live under an enforced curfew—and in fear of the Inquisition’s agents, who put heretics to the torch in public displays. And with Queen Elizabeth imprisoned in the Tower of London, the British have no symbol to unite them against the enemy who occupies their land. William Shakespeare has no interest in politics. His passion is writing for the theatre, where his words bring laughter and tears to a populace afraid to speak out against the tyranny of the Spanish crown. But now Shakespeare is given an opportunity to pen his greatest work—a drama that will incite the people of Britain to rise against their persecutors—and change the course of history.

Download or read book The History Thieves written by Ian Cobain and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2017-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1889, the first Official Secrets Act was passed, creating offences of 'disclosure of information' and 'breach of official trust'. It limited and monitored what the public could, and should, be told. Since then a culture of secrecy has flourished. As successive governments have been selective about what they choose to share with the public, we have been left with a distorted and incomplete understanding not only of the workings of the state but of our nation's culture and its past. In this important book, Ian Cobain offers a fresh appraisal of some of the key moments in British history since the end of WWII, including: the measures taken to conceal the existence of Bletchley Park and its successor, GCHQ, for three decades; the unreported wars fought during the 1960s and 1970s; the hidden links with terrorist cells during the Troubles; the sometimes opaque workings of the criminal justice system; the state's peacetime surveillance techniques; and the convenient loopholes in the Freedom of Information Act. Drawing on previously unseen material and rigorous research, The History Thieves reveals how a complex bureaucratic machine has grown up around the British state, allowing governments to evade accountability and their secrets to be buried.

Download or read book Anatomy of a Killing written by Ian Cobain and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2021-05-08 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A concise and gripping history of the Troubles, revealing the people behind the pain and violence” from the award-winning investigative journalist (Vice). On the morning of Saturday 22nd April 1978, members of an Active Service Unit of the IRA hijacked a car and crossed the countryside to the town of Lisburn. Within an hour, they had killed an off-duty policeman in front of his young son. In Anatomy of a Killing, award-winning journalist Ian Cobain documents the hours leading up to the killing, and the months and years of violence, attrition and rebellion surrounding it. Drawing on interviews with those most closely involved, as well as court files, police notes, military intelligence reports, IRA strategy papers, memoirs and government records, this is a unique perspective on the Troubles, and a revelatory work of investigative journalism. “As gripping as a thriller, except that this isn’t fiction but cold, spine-tingling reality.” —Daily Mail “A remarkable piece of forensic journalism.” —Ed Moloney, author of Voices from the Grave “Reads like a work of fiction . . . True and harrowing.” —Irish Sunday Independent (Books of the Year)

Download or read book Slave Empire written by Padraic X. Scanlan and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Engrossing and powerful . . . rich and thought-provoking' Fara Dabhoiwala, Guardian 'Path-breaking . . . a major rewriting of history' Mihir Bose, Irish Times 'Slave Empire is lucid, elegant and forensic. It deals with appalling horrors in cool and convincing prose.' The Economist The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was 'free' and that, for all its flaws, it promised liberty to all its subjects was never true. The British empire was built on slavery. Slave Empire puts enslaved people at the centre the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In intimate, human detail, Padraic Scanlon shows how British imperial power and industrial capitalism were inextricable from plantation slavery. With vivid original research and careful synthesis of innovative historical scholarship, Slave Empire shows that British freedom and British slavery were made together.

Download or read book Henry V written by Malcolm Vale and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than just a single-minded warrior-king, Henry V comes to life in this fresh account as a gifted ruler acutely conscious of spiritual matters and his subjects’ welfare Shakespeare’s centuries-old portrayal of Henry V established the king’s reputation as a warmongering monarch, a perception that has persisted ever since. But in this exciting, thoroughly researched volume a different view of Henry emerges: a multidimensional ruler of great piety, a hands-on governor who introduced a radically new conception of England’s European role in secular and ecclesiastical affairs, a composer of music, an art patron, and a dutiful king who fully appreciated his obligations toward those he ruled. Historian Malcolm Vale draws on extensive primary archival evidence that includes many documents annotated or endorsed in Henry’s own hand. Focusing on a series of themes—the interaction between king and church, the rise of the English language as a medium of government and politics, the role of ceremony in Henry’s kingship, and more—Vale revises understandings of Henry V and his conduct of the everyday affairs of England, Normandy, and the kingdom of France.

Download or read book Horrible Histories Ruthless Romans written by Terry Deary and published by Scholastic UK. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruthless Romans reveals the grim goings-on of the greatest empire ever, from the terrible twins who founded Rome to the evil emperors who made murder into a sport. Read on for gory details about the cruel Colosseum and the people and animals who were massacred there... and find out how, if you upset them enough, the ruthless Romans would CRUCIFY you. Eeek!

Download or read book Whatever Happened to Tradition written by Tim Stanley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The West feels lost. Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus: we hurtle from one crisis to another, lacking definition, terrified that our best days are behind us. The central argument of this book is that we can only face the future with hope if we have a proper sense of tradition – political, social and religious. We ignore our past at our peril. The problem, argues Tim Stanley, is that the Western tradition is anti-tradition, that we have a habit of discarding old ways and old knowledge, leaving us uncertain how to act or, even, of who we really are. In this wide-ranging book, we see how tradition can be both beautiful and useful, from the deserts of Australia to the court of nineteenth-century Japan. Some of the concepts defended here are highly controversial in the modern West: authority, nostalgia, rejection of self and the hunt for spiritual transcendence. We'll even meet a tribe who dress up their dead relatives and invite them to tea. Stanley illustrates how apparently eccentric yet universal principles can nurture the individual from birth to death, plugging them into the wider community, and creating a bond between generations. He also demonstrates that tradition, far from being pretentious or rigid, survives through clever adaptation, that it can be surprisingly egalitarian. The good news, he argues, is that it can also be rebuilt. It's been done before. The process is fraught with danger, but the ultimate prize of rediscovering tradition is self-knowledge and freedom.

Download or read book Why Torture Doesn t Work written by Shane O'Mara and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Besides being cruel and inhumane, torture does not work the way torturers assume it does. As Shane O’Mara’s account of the neuroscience of suffering reveals, extreme stress creates profound problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable, or even counterproductive and dangerous.

Download or read book New Theatre Quarterly 80 Volume 20 Part 4 written by Simon Trussler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-21 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet.

Download or read book The Persecution of the Knights Templar Scandal Torture Trial written by Alain Demurger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of history's most infamous trial, following the doomed Order of the Knights Templar from scandal to suppression. The trial of the Knights Templar is one of the most infamous in history. Accused of heresy by the king of France, the Templars were arrested and imprisoned, had their goods seized and their monasteries ransacked. Under brutal interrogation and torture, many made shocking confessions: denial of Christ, desecration of the Cross, sex acts, and more. This narrative follows the everyday reality of the trial, from the early days of scandal and scheming in 1305, via torture, imprisonment and the dissolution of the order, to 1314, when leaders Jacques de Molay and Geoffroy de Charnay were burned at the stake. Through first-hand testimony and written records of the interrogations of 231 French Templars, this book illuminates the stories of hundreds of ordinary members, some of whom testified at the trial, as well as the many others who denied the charges or retracted their confessions. This is a deeply researched and immersive account that gives a striking vision of the relentless persecution, and the oft-underestimated resistance, of the once-mighty Knights Templar.

Download or read book The First Crusade written by Peter Frankopan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to tradition, the First Crusade began at the instigation of Pope Urban II and culminated in July 1099, when thousands of western European knights liberated Jerusalem from the rising menace of Islam. But what if the First Crusade's real catalyst lay far to the east of Rome? In this groundbreaking book, countering nearly a millennium of scholarship, Peter Frankopan reveals the untold history of the First Crusade. Nearly all historians of the First Crusade focus on the papacy and its willing warriors in the West, along with innumerable popular tales of bravery, tragedy, and resilience. In sharp contrast, Frankopan examines events from the East, in particular from Constantinople, seat of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The result is revelatory. The true instigator of the First Crusade, we see, was the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who in 1095, with his realm under siege from the Turks and on the point of collapse, begged the pope for military support. Basing his account on long-ignored eastern sources, Frankopan also gives a provocative and highly original explanation of the world-changing events that followed the First Crusade. The Vatican's victory cemented papal power, while Constantinople, the heart of the still-vital Byzantine Empire, never recovered. As a result, both Alexios and Byzantium were consigned to the margins of history. From Frankopan's revolutionary work, we gain a more faithful understanding of the way the taking of Jerusalem set the stage for western Europe's dominance up to the present day and shaped the modern world.

Download or read book A Question of Torture written by Alfred McCoy and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A startling exposé of the CIA's development and spread of psychological torture, from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and beyond In this revelatory account of the CIA's secret, fifty-year effort to develop new forms of torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy uncovers the deep, disturbing roots of recent scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Far from aberrations, as the White House has claimed, A Question of Torture shows that these abuses are the product of a long-standing covert program of interrogation. Developed at the cost of billions of dollars, the CIA's method combined "sensory deprivation" and "self-inflicted pain" to create a revolutionary psychological approach—the first innovation in torture in centuries. The simple techniques—involving isolation, hooding, hours of standing, extremes of hot and cold, and manipulation of time—constitute an all-out assault on the victim's senses, destroying the basis of personal identity. McCoy follows the years of research—which, he reveals, compromised universities and the U.S. Army—and the method's dissemination, from Vietnam through Iran to Central America. He traces how after 9/11 torture became Washington's weapon of choice in both the CIA's global prisons and in "torture-friendly" countries to which detainees are dispatched. Finally McCoy argues that information extracted by coercion is worthless, making a case for the legal approach favored by the FBI. Scrupulously documented and grippingly told, A Question of Torture is a devastating indictment of inhumane practices that have spread throughout the intelligence system, damaging American's laws, military, and international standing.

Download or read book A History of Political Trials written by John Laughland and published by Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern use of international tribunals to try heads of state for genocide and crimes against humanity is often considered a positive development. In A History of Political Trials, John Laughland shows that trials of heads of state are in fact not new, and that previous trials throughout history have themselves violated the law and due process.