Neil Hanson

The inspiration for the Broadway musical Swept Away: "An exciting, historically accurate depiction of a disastrous 19th-century sea journey." --Publishers Weekly In the late 1800s, the Essex coast of England was known for producing the toughest, most skilled seamen. Tom Dudley was one of them. Though a well-known and respected figure among the local yacht-racing community, he had little experience of deep-sea sailing. Still, Tom agreed to sail more than ten thousand miles to deliver a yacht to its new owner in Sydney, Australia. Almost immediately, the twenty-year-old Mignonette starts taking on water--a harbinger for events to come. Tom stops for repairs at Southampton, where his crew abandons him. After recruiting three new men--including a teenage boy who lies about his age--Tom sets off, filled with optimism and dreams of new opportunities in a new land. But then a savage storm sinks the Mignonette, leaving Tom and his crew in a thirteen-foot-long dinghy a thousand miles from land. In a shark-filled sea, with no water and little food, the men face a horrific fate--and must sacrifice their very humanity to survive . . . Four men set out on the Mignonette, but only three will make it back alive. "The nightmarish events of the shipwreck are reported with real power." --The New York Times Book Review "Makes astonishing reading . . . extraordinary." --The Times Literary Supplement "A gripping tale of four sailors adrift at sea . . . Gruesome and completely fascinating." --Kirkus Reviews "A terrific story . . . a riveting read." --The Spectator

The remarkable true story behind Britain's only war crimes trial

Whether in wartime or peace, tales of love, laughter and hardship from the girls in the Rowntrees factory in Yorkshire, England.

Touching true stories from the heyday of the Butlin’s holiday camps. ‘When I got to the camp I felt as if I’d suddenly walked into Utopia – it was so colourful, so warm, so friendly. There were lights across the roads, there were banners fluttering in the breeze… There seemed to be laughter coming from every building.’ With grey post-WWII skies hanging low over Britain, factories lining the streets and smoke stacks dotting the horizon, there was one way that ordinary families could escape: the ever-cheerful holiday camps of Butlin’s. When Billy Butlin founded his holiday camps in 1936, they were bastions of community spirit and havens of luxury. Here, for one week, wives and mothers were freed from the toil and drudgery of housework, children ran free through the grounds, fathers and husbands hung up their work clothes. Ever-helpful redcoats were on hand all hours of the day, dinner halls ready with plentiful food for old and young alike, bars stocked to quench any level of thirst, ballrooms waiting to be flooded with shiny shoes, rustling dresses and peals of laughter. And, as the sun went down on another exhausting, happy day, a chorus line was ready to sing holidaymakers back to their beds. Rich in period detail and highly evocative, Wish You Were Here! tells the story of seven women who worked as redcoats in Butlin’s Golden Age. It’s all here: Knobbly Knees and Glamourous Grannies, the laughter and tears, hardships and heartbreaks, loves and losses of their lives in and out of the holiday camps, and above all the lifelong friendships they formed with each other and those who also worked or holidayed there. Funny, moving and heartwarming, these are the timeless tales of a community spirit that burned brightly in a much-loved British institution.

The delightful tale of a young couple who in the late 1970s, on impulse, became the new landlords of the most remote, bleak and lonely pub - The Tan Hill Inn - located in the desolate landscape of the Yorkshire Dales. Having seen an article in the newspaper about the pub's search for a new manager, they arrived just three weeks later as the new landlords of the The Tan Hill Inn. It is a wild, wind-swept place, set alone in a sea of peat bog and heather moorland that stretches unbroken as far as the eye can see. With only sheep and grouse for company, their closest neighbour was four miles away and the nearest town twelve. They had no experience of licensed trade or running a pub, no knowledge of farming and a complete inability to understand the dialect of the sheep farmers who were their local customers. Eager, well-meaning, but in over their heads, our two heroes embarked on a disaster-strewn career that somehow also turned into a lifelong love affair with the Dales.The Inn at the Top is an entertaining ramble around the Inn, the breath-taking Dales countryside and a remarkable array of local characters, giving an insight into life in a very different different time and place.

Whether in wartime or peace, tales of love, laughter and hardship from the girls in the Rowntrees factory in Yorkshire “On a warm Monday morning in 1932, just two days after leaving school, fourteen-year-old Madge was about to join her nine brothers and sisters at Rowntree’s. The smell of chocolate was in the air but as she walked up the road, her footsteps slowed at the daunting thought of what lay ahead…” From the 1930s through to the 1980s, as Britain endured war, depression, hardship and strikes, the women at the Rowntree’s factory in York kept the chocolates coming. This is the true story of The Sweethearts, the women who roasted the cocoa beans, piped the icing and packed the boxes that became gifts for lovers, snacks for workers and treats for children across the country. More often than not, their working days provided welcome relief from bad husbands and bad housing, a community where they could find new confidence, friendship and when the supervisor wasn’t looking, the occasional chocolate.

The tragic story of the disastrous London fire is told here from both a human and architectural point of view, as the fire destroyed lives along with buildings such as the original St. Paul's cathedral.

"Untold numbers perished: great buildings and ancient districts disappeared: knowledge acquired and stored over centuries were lost forever. The Great Fire of London accomplished what the Spanish Armada and the plague had failed to do - it reduced the world's most majestic city to utter ruin." The Great Fire of London recreates this cataclysmic event through precisely etched dramas drawn from firsthand accounts of those who lived through the all-consuming blaze. Like all great disasters, the great fire brought out the best, the worst, and the most heartbreaking aspects of humanity. You'll meet the king who rallied his subjects to battle the fire, the cart drivers who charged a lifetime's wages to haul a single load of goods to safety, and the elderly couple who continued to sweep their tidy cottage, even as they were engulfed in flames.