Stephen Roberts

This book is made up of five biographical studies ranging across the trades of nineteenth century Birmingham. As well as the lead chapter about the pen maker Joseph Gillott, there are essays on the brass founder Robert Walter Winfield, the glass manufacturer Rice Harris, the button and electroplate manufacturer James Deykin and the rule manufacturer John Rabone. The antiquarian J.A. Langford - himself once a chair maker - was much impressed by a description of what was manufactured in Birmingham in one week in the 1870s: 'A week's work in Birmingham, in its aggregate results, is something wonderful. It comprises the fabrication of 14,000,000 of pens, 6,000 bedsteads, 7,000 guns, 300,000 of cut nails, 100,000,000 of buttons, 1,000 saddles, 5,000,000 of copper and bronze coins, 20,000 pairs of spectacles, 6 tons of papier mache ware, 30,000 worth of jewellery, 4,000 miles of iron and steel wire, 10 tons of pins, 5 tons of hair pins, hooks, eyes and eyelets, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts, screw bolts, spikes and rivets, 50 tons of wrought iron hinges, 350 miles length of wax for vestas, 40 tons of refined metal, 40 tons of German silver, 1,000 dozen of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 1,000 roasting jacks, 150 sewing machines, 800 tons of brass and copper wares, besides the almost endless multitude of miscellaneous articles of which no statistics can be given, but which, like those enumerated, find employment for hundreds and thousands of busy hands, and are destined to supply the manifold wants of humanity from China to Peru.'

‘By the gains of Industry, we promote Art’ ‘In Birmingham you may generally recognise a board school by it being the best building in the neighbourhood, with its lofty towers, gabled windows, warm red bricks and stained glass.’ So observed the Pall Mall Gazette in 1894. The famous civic gospel shaped Birmingham as ‘the best governed city in the world.’ The inspiration for the transformation of Birmingham in the second half of the 19th century came from the sermons of ‘the greatest talker in England’ George Dawson. The men who oversaw the improvement of the town mostly sat on Sunday mornings in the pews of the Church of the Saviour. These were the men who were responsible for: a unique memorial library dedicated to the works of Warwickshire’s very own William Shakespeare; the foremost provincial institute (the Birmingham and Midland Institute); the first municipal technical school; the most famous art school in the country; and an enviable new art gallery. More improvements were developed by the town council: schools, baths and wash houses; the municipalisation of the gas and water supplies; and an impressive new thoroughfare, suitably christened Corporation Street.

Federico García Lorca is Spain’s most famous poet and dramatist, and an icon of its culture. He is the author of a series of innovative works that changed the face of Spanish poetry and drama. In this new biography Stephen Roberts seeks out the roots of the man and his work in the places in which Lorca lived and died: the countryside where he spent his childhood; the Granada and Madrid of the 1910s, ’20s and ’30s where he was educated and first achieved success as a writer; and the mountains outside Granada where his body lies in an undiscovered grave. The book provides a full portrait of a complex and brilliant man, as well as giving new insights into the works that made his name.

In his day the Victorian businessman Charles Seely was known as 'Pigs'. It has long been believed that this nickname was derived from his refusal to bring to an end a contract supplying the Admiralty with iron ballast when it no longer needed it. It's a great story, but that's what it is ... a story. This is the first biography of Charles Seely and the authors reveal the real reason why Seely became known as 'Pigs'. The book tells a remarkable story. Seely was a man of great ambition and enterprise and he drove hard bargains. He rose from being co-partner in a corn mill to being the owner of mines and landed estates that brought him immense wealth. The 'Baker's Boy' from Lincoln lived at a prestigious address in London and owned a beautiful country house on the Isle of Wight, where he played host to Garibaldi. An independently-minded Liberal, Seely represented Lincoln in the House of Commons for almost a quarter of a century. This book offers something of interest to all those fascinated by our Victorian predecessors.

This book offers readers an absorbing portrait of Birmingham's nineteenth century. It provides eyewitness accounts of the main events and personalities of the time. These twenty-five autobiographical articles were originally published in the Birmingham Gazette and Express in 1907-9, but have been long forgotten. In bringing them back to attention, the editor provides fascinating glimpses into life in Victorian Birmingham. Who knew that the town famous for brass bedsteads, buttons and glass produced a prize-winning strawberry? Or that a leading politician, wounded at being described as the ugliest man in Birmingham, set out to find a man who was even uglier? 'Stephen Roberts is an indefatigable and dedicated researcher of Victorian Birmingham. His knowledge is deep and wide-ranging yet he succeeds in sharing his expertise in an accessible and engaging way through his engrossing books and lively talks.' - Carl Chinn.

Teaching and dating for an average, middle-aged guy can be rough at times. Throughout the years, things that help shape our lives happen and leave us standing there thinking this can't be real. Well, they are real. These are the stories of my life through two different views. One as an educator and one as a single guy.

What happened to the Chartists after the movement was over? Many local spokesmen in fact remained prominent figures in their communities - and carried the principles they had fought for in the 1840s into their later careers. This book tells the stories of two such men who became, respectively, a town councillor and a minister in Birmingham. James Whateley spoke up for working men in the council chamber. He called for polling hours to be extended into the evenings to increase working class participation; and he campaigned on behalf of postmen who made up to eight deliveries a day and who, faced with few letter boxes, had to wait for each door to be opened. Charles Clarke, from his pulpit, inspired members of his congregation to enter local politics and improve their town - six of them became mayors - and campaigned for free, compulsory, secular schooling for working class children. The book is illustrated with twelve contemporary cartoons and photographs.

The Chartist Movement has attracted a great deal of interest from scholars. Lists of primary and secondary sources have filled two volumes. This volume is intended as a supplement to The Chartist Movement: A New Annotated Bibliography (1995), edited by Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson and Stephen Roberts. There is no overlap. It lists manuscript material located in the last quarter of a century - including petitions, letters and sketches - and the many books, articles and theses that have been produced. For all those interested in Chartism, this book is indispensable.

"Half poet, half mad, half terrified, half ecstatic. Exhausted at the beauty of words, fascinated that I still haven't a clue what's going on..." Flight means movement upon the wind, and lately Lady Wind has been up to something grand. I think she is crying with delight at what is unfolding around us. We think it is hazy with smoke, but it is merely the inner eye getting used to a new sight beyond a plastic and neon spirituality. Oxygen can get in through your open window, and when it does you will take off your shoes, put down your basket of plucked blackberries, and sit before the majestic fires of the universe. If you would rather buy a book of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning at this point, I understand. Honesty and humility are never easy for self-absorbed poets who sneak about on a thin slab of emotional ice-they think they are adept at compassion, wicked in wit, and living on the edge of a more sane world. They could also be tragically wrong, so pay no attention whatsoever to them. In Flight, Steve presents another collection of word sculptures, poetics, and reflective nudges towards awakening, trying to be as honest and as real as a shifting beam of sunlight.

"The mystics get it-everyone one else fights about it." Illumina is a provocative collection of thoughts, poetry, and reflections-an energising tumble of ideas retelling old wonders in a modern poetic cant. Illumina forges the often-broken words of poetry with the speech of wonder, much like an audacious moon, pausing for a moment in the stillness, waits for you to see for the first time. If we remain still long enough, we may glimpse the beauty of a rare light and discover how deep that light actually goes within the human soul. Like his previous books, here again Steve presents a patchwork of words that delight to bathe you in their sacred white waters. Your thoughts are primed and poised, ready to discover the world of Illumina.

"My soul is a window slightly ajar and I spy a wandering star I can finally breathe my wish upon." "As a poet and a writer I often feel like I am scribbling on a sidewalk full of tiny cracks. From these small fissures, thoughts and concepts and possibilities fizzle up through my concrete-dull mind - a small word, a metaphor, a fragment of a phrase - and sometimes I am awake enough to notice them and write them down." This new collection of poetry attempts to capture that sudden glance from darkness into a brighter light which brings an all-together different way of looking at reality. There will forever remain an invitation for all of us to break free from our limitations so often bound by our narcissistic triteness and experience the wonder of life in all its possibilities.

Sir Benjamin Stone lived a full life, and was certainly a more contented man than his restless Birmingham contemporary Joseph Chamberlain. Elected to Parliament in 1895, Stone would have been an undistinguished backbencher had it not been for his camera. On the terrace of the House of Commons he lined up his fellow-MPs and various interesting visitors to have their pictures taken. Dubbed 'Sir Snapshot' by the press, he became in these years the most well-known amateur photographer in the country. Stone was an intrepid traveller too, embarking - equipped, of course, with his camera - on a voyage around the world in 1891 and a journey of almost one thousand miles up the Amazon in 1893. He was also an insatiable collector, particularly of botanical and geological specimens and a shrewd businessman, with investments in glass and paper manufacture and house-building and quarrying. Stone was also a Tory politician. He doggedly promoted the Tory cause in Liberal-dominated Birmingham in the 1870s and early 1880s, and, after the Liberal rupture over Irish Home Rule in 1886, became an equally-determined supporter of the new Unionist alliance.Drawing on newspapers and his own extensive personal papers, this is the first biography of Sir Benjamin Stone to be written. It is published to mark the centenary of his death.The volume includes twenty rarely-seen or previously unpublished photographs by Sir Benjamin Stone