Kirjahaku

Famous for having found the great missionary and explorer Dr David Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika and immortalised as the utterer of perhaps the four most often quoted words of greeting of all time - 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' - Henry Morton Stanley was himself a man who characterised the great wave of exploring fever that gripped the nineteenth century.

Heathrow is 60 on 1 January 2006. Alan Gallop chronicles Heathrow's first 60 years, exploring how a small agricultural community on the outskirts of London became the site of the world's leading international airport.

What was it like in a Victorian Workhouse? Was the food really as bad as we imagine? Take a step back in time with Alan Gallop and ask yourself if you could have survived in such harsh conditions.

Using documents, interviews with experts and contemporary news sources, this book explores how and why Affray became the last British submarine lost at sea. It provides a recreation of the last mission of this doomed submarine, the effect it had on the families of those who perished, and on British public opinion at the time.

The story of how William F. Cody, army scout, Indian fighter, stagecoach driver and buffalo hunter, became an acting sensation with his Wild West show, playing to millions of people in America and Europe for over 30 years. This account highlights the tours of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Includes details of the many towns and villages visited by Buffalo Bill and how the residents reacted to this incredible spectacular. This entertaining account of Buffalo Bill's tours of Britain is richly illustrated, with many previously unpublished photographs, cartoons, and posters.

Victoria's Children of the Dark tells the story of Queen Victoria's invisible subjects - women and children who laboured beneath her 'green and pleasant land' harvesting the coal to fuel the furnaces of the industrial revolution. Following the real fortunes of seven-year-old Joey Burkinshaw and his family, Alan Gallop recreates the events surrounding the 1838 Husker Pit disaster at Silkstone, Yorkshire - a tragedy which helped lead to better working conditions for miners. Chained to carts and toiling half-naked for eighteen-hour shifts in near darkness, children as young as four were employed by mine owners. Yet it was not until the catastrophe at Silkstone when twenty-six children were drowned in a mineshaft that Victoria and her subjects realised that many Britons were existing in virtual slavery. This powerful and dramatic account exposes the real lives and working conditions of nineteenth-century miners. A gripping human story, Victoria's Children of the Dark brings history, particularly the history of childhood, vividly to life.

In April 1951, the disappearance of HM submarine Affray knocked news of the Korean War and Festival of Britain from the front pages. Affray had put to sea on a routine peacetime simulated war patrol in the English Channel. She radioed her last position at 2115hrs on 16 April, 30 miles south of the Isle of Wight - preparing to dive. This was the last signal ever received from the submarine. After months of searching, divers eventually discovered Affray resting upright on the sea bottom with no obvious signs of damage to her hull. Hatches were closed tight and emergency buoys were still in their casings. It was obvious that whatever had caused Affray to sink, and had ended the lives of all those on board, had occurred quickly. Sixty years later, in this compelling maritime investigation, Alan Gallop uses previously top secret documents, interviews with experts and contemporary news sources to explore how and why Affray became the last British submarine lost at sea - and possibly the greatest maritime mystery since the Marie Celeste.

On 1 January 1946 a handful of staff at London’s new peace-time airport, Heath Row, prepared to handle its first commercial flight in a converted Lancaster bomber, carrying ten passengers and some newly demobbed RAF pilots, radio officers and flight engineers on an epic journey to South America. Sixty-five years, over 14 million flights and 1.4 billion passengers later, Heathrow – with a staff of around 50,000 people – recently saw its controversial fifth passenger terminal weather a rocky start and find its feet as an integral part of this ever-expanding airport. Time Flies is a fascinating history of Heathrow from its pioneering first days in bruised and battered post-war West London, right up to its present. Bringing together Heathrow’s human and commercial histories and using first-hand stories from each decade of the airport’s operations, this is a balanced and entertaining look at the triumphs, tribulations and controversies that made Heathrow what it is today.

In 1834 six farm labourers from the Dorset hamlet of Tolpuddle fell foul of draconian Victorian laws prohibiting assembly . Today the names of George Loveless and his brother James, Thomas Standfield and his son John, James Brine and James Hammett, who made up the Tolpuddle Martyrs, stand high on the roll of British men who have been victimised for their beliefs but stood steadfast in the face of persecution. They refused to be persuaded to betray their principles either by the promise of release or by transportation to Australia. The Tolpuddle men fought to win their freedom sustained by their passionate conviction that their sacrifices would not be in vain. Their experience and example have proved to be an inspiration for future generations and they remain icons of pioneering trade unionism. The Author has thoroughly researched their story and the result is a fascinating and revealing re-examination of this legendary saga. Their triumph over legal persecution and abuses of power over 180 years ago is told afresh in this comprehensive and attractively illustrated book which delves deeper into their story than ever before.

Love it or loathe it, Heathrow is the United Kingdom's largest and most important airport by a distance. It currently serves over 190 routes to more than 80 countries. Over 100 billion of imports and exports are handled every year, making it the UK's primary port by value. This fascinating book traces the often controversial development of the airport over the last 70 years from the most humble of beginnings. Thanks to the author's in-depth knowledge the arguments for and against the building of a third runway are thoroughly and objectively described. There have been, and indeed still are, those who advocate building a brand new hub airport for London but it is a fact that Heathrow has long been the cornerstone of the local economy, providing jobs for over 70,000 staff. This entertaining, controversial and superbly illustrated book is about much more than the bitter third runway battle. It contains many amusing anecdotes and a wealth of statistics that serve to make Heathrow such a key part of the country's infrastructure.