From humble beginnings as a ‘barefoot boy’ in a small town in the heart of South Africa, he learned to mix with presidents and prime ministers, with royalty and popes, and quickly embraced the high-life of the jet-set who surrounded him. Throughout life, he was a serial womanizer, bedding famous European film stars (and their secretaries). He ......
Volume 3, officers with surnames R to W. In the turbulent times of the post-World War One era, new political parties emerged frequently in Germany, many with opposing extremist policies. The Communist movement grew out of the Socialist working classes using the Russian Bolshevik Party as a template. In direct opposition, the new National Socialist ......
`Belfast Transport' is the story of public transport in Belfast from the horse buses of the 1860s to the Metro buses which were introduced in 2005. It is a fascinating story encompassing the change from horse buses to horse trams; the introduction of motor buses; 30 years of the trolleybuses; the closure of the tramways in the early 1950s; the ......
The year 2002 saw a radical change on the railways of Devon and Cornwall: it was the last year of daily locomotive hauled passenger trains (other than the overnight London sleeper). These remaining workings were in the capable hands of the ubiquitous Class 47 diesel locomotives, which had plied their trade on the rails of the south-west for almost ......
Junction, the Beighton Branch and Sheffield District Railway
In the days when coal was king, an ambitious plan was laid for an east-to-west cross country rail route, connecting the Manchester Ship Canal at Warrington to a new dock near the small east coast village of Sutton-on-Sea. Grandly titled The Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway, history was to show that this line would reach neither ......
Yards, crofts ginnels and lanes are found in many northern towns. Kendal's yards are special and are fascinating to residents and visitors alike. They are a characteristic feature of the town and demonstrate the lively history of the people who lived and worked in them. Originating in the burgage plots of Norman times, they developed over the ......
The American Aircraft Building Programme of the First World War
A comprehensive study of the American Aeroplane building programme of WW1, its promises, its performance, and its failure, together with a summary of what went wrong, and why, including a brief history of military aviation in America prior to the war and details of the Liberty engine and each aircraft type selected for production.
This book, featuring a mix of high-quality colour and black and white photographs, together with informative commentaries, covers the railways and ironstone lines of the East Midlands in the late 1950s and 1960s. Most of the photographs have never been published and all were taken by the author, his father, and their friends.
This is the dramatic, often erratic, and at times unbelievable story of the fortunes and misfortunes over 900 years to the present day of one of England's premier aristocratic families, who in 1661 were given the Earldom of Essex by Charles II. This fascinating, previously untold story begins just after the Norman Conquest with a Hugh Capel in ......