Download or read book London s Secret History written by Peter Bushell and published by Constable & Robinson. This book was released on 1983 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book London Under written by Peter Ackroyd and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this vividly descriptive short study, Peter Ackroyd tunnels down through the geological layers of London, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness and excavating the lore and mythology beneath the surface. There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. To go under London is to penetrate history, and Ackroyd's book is filled with the stories unique to this underworld: the hydraulic device used to lower bodies into the catacombs in Kensal Green cemetery; the door in the plinth of the statue of Boadicea on Westminster Bridge that leads to a huge tunnel packed with cables for gas, water, and telephone; the sulphurous fumes on the Underground's Metropolitan Line. Highly imaginative and delightfully entertaining, London Under is Ackroyd at his best.
Download or read book The Secret History of Our Streets written by Joseph Bullman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a modern version of a classic survey from the 19th century, where Charles Booth [(1840-1916)] spent 17 years exploring the social and economic conditions of every street in Victorian London, this ... book tells the story of six London streets and the people who lived there. The selection represents the wifdest possible picture of the city both socially and geographically; from Deptford High Street, Camberwell Grove and Reverdy Road in the south, to Caledonian Road in the north, Portland Road in the west and Arnold Circus in the east. Each has a fascinating history of its own, from the rich being pushed out by the super-rich in Notting Hill to the first public housing scheme being launched at Arnold Circus. Together, however, their stories reveal the big underlying forces that have shaped London for thye last 130 years: gentrification, migration, slum clearances, property speculation, and the rural being subsumed by a growing metropolis. ..."--Jacket.
Download or read book The Secret History of Georgian London written by Dan Cruickshank and published by Arrow. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our leading historians describes how Georgian London was shaped by the sex industry
Download or read book Secret London written by Rachel Howard and published by Jonglez. This book was released on 2018 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide to London's most peculiar and under-the-radar bars and restaurants is for serious foodies, intrepid drinkers, urban explorers -- and anyone curious to discover the infinite possibilities to have fun in London.
Download or read book Shapeshifters written by John B. Kachuba and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2019-06-10 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is something about a shapeshifter—a person who can transform into an animal—that captures our imagination; that causes us to want to howl at the moon, or flit through the night like a bat. Werewolves, vampires, demons, and other weird creatures appeal to our animal nature, our “dark side,” our desire to break free of the bonds of society and proper behavior. Real or imaginary, shapeshifters lurk deep in our psyches and remain formidable cultural icons. The myths, magic, and meaning surrounding shapeshifters are brought vividly to life in John B. Kachuba’s compelling and original cultural history. Rituals in early cultures worldwide seemingly allowed shamans, sorcerers, witches, and wizards to transform at will into animals and back again. Today, there are millions of people who believe that shapeshifters walk among us and may even be world leaders. Featuring a fantastic and ghoulish array of examples from history, literature, film, TV, and computer games, Shapeshifters explores our secret desire to become something other than human.
Download or read book London s Sinful Secret written by Dan Cruickshank and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Georgian London evokes images of elegant mannered buildings, but it was also a city where prostitution was rife and houses of ill repute widespread in a sex trade that employed thousands. In London's Sinful Secret, Dan Cruickshank explores this erotic Georgian underworld and shows how it affected almost every aspect of life and culture in the city from the smart new streets that sprang up in Marylebone, to the squalid alleys around Charing Cross to the coffee houses, where prostitutes plied their trade, to the work of artists such as William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds. Cruickshank uses memoirs, newspaper accounts and court records to create a surprisingly bawdy portrait of London at its most-mannered and, for the first time, exposes its secret, sinful underside. "A lively work of social history, full of surprises and memorable characters." - Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book The London Cage written by Helen Fry and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first complete account of the fiercely guarded secrets of London’s clandestine interrogation center, operated by the British Secret Service from 1940 to 1948 Behind the locked doors of three mansions in London’s exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German prisoners of war were subjected to “special intelligence treatment.” The stakes were high: the war’s outcome could hinge on obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold. After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war crimes. This riveting book reveals the full details of operations at the London Cage and subsequent efforts to hide them. Helen Fry’s extraordinary original research uncovers the grim picture of prisoners’ daily lives and of systemic Soviet-style mistreatment. The author also provides sensational evidence to counter official denials concerning the use of “truth drugs” and “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Bringing dark secrets to light, this groundbreaking book at last provides an objective and complete history of the London Cage.
Download or read book Rebel Footprints written by David Rosenberg and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A truly radical response to conservative heritage tours and banal day trips, Rebel Footprints brings to life the history of social movements in England’s capital. David Rosenberg transports readers from well-known landmarks to history-making hidden corners, while telling the story of protest and struggle in London from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. From the suffragettes to the socialists, from the chartists to the trade unionists: Rosenberg invites us to step into the footprints of a diverse cast of dedicated fighters for social justice. Individual chapters highlight particular struggles and their participants, from famous faces to lesser-known luminaries. Rosenberg sets London’s radical campaigners against the backdrop of the city’s multi-faceted development. Self-directed walks pair with narratives that seamlessly blend history, politics, and geography, while specially commissioned maps and illustrations immerse the reader in the story of the city. Whether you’re visiting London for the first time, or born and raised there, Rosenberg invites you to see London as you never have before--the radical center of the English-speaking world.
Download or read book Hidden London written by David Bownes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Travel under the streets of London with this lavishly illustrated exploration of abandoned, modified, and reused Underground tunnels, stations, and architecture.
Download or read book The Secret History of Our Streets London written by Joseph Bullman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-05-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret History of Our Streets explores six roads spread across inner London - from Camberwell, Holland Park and Islington to Shoreditch, Deptford and Bermondsey - through the experiences of the people who lived there. Stories of poverty and violence, faith, love and hope, this is an intimate examination of our capital and the changing lives of its inhabitants. The history of over a hundred years of social change, this is the untold history of the sreets beneath our feet. You'll never look at your own street the same way again.
Download or read book Secret Underground London written by Nick Catford and published by Folly Books. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about the mysterious underground world that lies beneath the streets of London but few have ever had the opportunity to see so many aspects of it first-hand and make a detailed photographic record of all that they have seen. This is one of the two factors that make this book so different from all the others that have come before it. The second factor is the meticulous research that has gone into ensuring that the history and background narrative to each of the locations described and illustrated are both concise and accurate.
Download or read book The Secret History of the Blitz written by Joshua Levine and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blitz of 1940-41 is one of the most iconic periods in modern British history - and one of the most misunderstood. The 'Blitz Spirit' is often celebrated, whereas others dismiss it as a myth. Joshua Levine's thrilling biography rejects the tired arguments and reveals the human truth: the Blitz was a time of extremes of experience and behaviour. People werepulling together and helping strangers, but they were also breaking rules and exploiting each other. Life during wartime, the author reveals, was complex and messy and real. From the first page readers will discover a different story to the one they thought they knew - from the sacrifices made by ordinary people to a sudden surge in the popularity of nightclubs; from secret criminal trials at the Old Bailey to a Columbine-style murder in an Oxford College. There were new working opportunities for women and clandestine homosexual relationships conducted in the shadows. The Blitz also allowed for a melting pot of cultures: whilst prayers were offered up in a south London mosque, Jamaican sailors crossed the country. Unlikely friendships were fostered and surprising sexualities explored - these years saw a boom in prostitution and even the emergence of a popular weekly magazine for fetishists. On the darker side, racketeers and spivs made money out of the chaos, and looters prowled the night to prey on bomb victims. From the lack of cheese to the increased suicide rate, this astonishing and entertaining book takes the true pulse of a 'blitzed nation'. And it shows how social change during this time led to political change - which in turn has built the Britain we know today.
Download or read book Growing Up in Medieval London written by Barbara A. Hanawalt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-02-23 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Barbara Hanawalt's acclaimed history The Ties That Bound first appeared, it was hailed for its unprecedented research and vivid re-creation of medieval life. David Levine, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called Hanawalt's book "as stimulating for the questions it asks as for the answers it provides" and he concluded that "one comes away from this stimulating book with the same sense of wonder that Thomas Hardy's Angel Clare felt [:] 'The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.'" Now, in Growing Up in Medieval London, Hanawalt again reveals the larger, fuller, more dramatic life of the common people, in this instance, the lives of children in London. Bringing together a wealth of evidence drawn from court records, literary sources, and books of advice, Hanawalt weaves a rich tapestry of the life of London youth during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Much of what she finds is eye opening. She shows for instance that--contrary to the belief of some historians--medieval adults did recognize and pay close attention to the various stages of childhood and adolescence. For instance, manuals on childrearing, such as "Rhodes's Book of Nurture" or "Seager's School of Virtue," clearly reflect the value parents placed in laying the proper groundwork for a child's future. Likewise, wardship cases reveal that in fact London laws granted orphans greater protection than do our own courts. Hanawalt also breaks ground with her innovative narrative style. To bring medieval childhood to life, she creates composite profiles, based on the experiences of real children, which provide a more vivid portrait than otherwise possible of the trials and tribulations of medieval youths at work and at play. We discover through these portraits that the road to adulthood was fraught with danger. We meet Alison the Bastard Heiress, whose guardians married her off to their apprentice in order to gain control of her inheritance. We learn how Joan Rawlyns of Aldenham thwarted an attempt to sell her into prostitution. And we hear the unfortunate story of William Raynold and Thomas Appleford, two mercer's apprentices who found themselves forgotten by their senile master, and abused by his wife. These composite portraits, and many more, enrich our understanding of the many stages of life in the Middle Ages. Written by a leading historian of the Middle Ages, these pages evoke the color and drama of medieval life. Ranging from birth and baptism, to apprenticeship and adulthood, here is a myth-shattering, innovative work that illuminates the nature of childhood in the Middle Ages.
Download or read book London s Secret Square Mile written by David Long and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The streetscape of London's historic square mile has been evolving for centuries, but the City's busy commercial heart still boasts an extensive network of narrow passages and alleyways, secret squares and half-hidden courtyards. Using his wealth of local knowledge, historian David Long guides you through these ancient rights of passage – many dating back to medieval times or earlier – their evocative names recalling old taverns, notable individuals and City traditions. Hidden behind the glass, steel and stone of London's banks and big business, these survivors of modern development bear witness to nearly 2,000 years of British history.
Download or read book London Fields written by Martin Amis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A blackly comic late 20th-century murder mystery set against the looming end of the millennium, in which a woman tries to orchestrate her own extinction—from "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation" (TIME). “Lyrical and obscene, colloquial and rhapsodic." —The New York Times First published in 1989, London Fields is set ten years into a dark future, against a backdrop of environmental and social decay and the looming threat of global cataclysm. As the dreaded Y2K approaches, Nicola Six, a “black hole” of sex and self-loathing, has chosen her thirty-fifth birthday, November 5, 1999, as the date of her own murder. Whom to manipulate into killing her is the question; her choice wavers between violent lowlife Keith Talent, who is obsessed with winning a darts tournament, and a dimly romantic banker named Guy Clinch. When Samson Young—a writer suffering from a long bout of writer’s block—stumbles upon these three, he believes he has found a story that will write itself. A highly unusual mystery with an unexpected twist at the end, London Fields is also a corrosively funny narrative of pyrotechnic complexity and scalding moral vision.
Download or read book London Recruits written by Ken Keable and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ANC members found it very difficult to escape police surveillance after the Rivonia trial ... in 1963-64. But white people from outside South Africa - being unknown and unsuspected - could move about freely to do things for the ANC. London Recruits tells of the secret work they did: how they were recruited, their activities in South Africa and neighbouring countries, their motives and how they feel about it in retrospect."--Back cover
