Category Archives: Accessories
Riviera Gold: The intriguing mystery for Sherlock Holmes fans
It`s summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and
Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann`s first novel, Buddenbrooks, is drawn from his own life and experience. Subtitled The Decline of a Family, his story of a prosperous Hanseatic merchant family and their gradual disintegration is also an extraordinary portrayal of the transition from the stable bourgeois life of the nineteenth century to a modern uncertainty.
Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn as Told by a Friend
Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkuhn is one of the most convincing accounts of genius ever written. Thomas Mann charts Leverkuhn`s extraordinary career: from his precious childhood to his tragic death – when Leverkuhn reveals the horrifying price he had to pay for his achievement. Zeitbolm, the narrator, tells his friend`s
The War of Don Emmanuel`s Nether Parts
When the spoilt and haughty Dona Constanza tries to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, she starts a running battle with the locals. The skirmishes are so severe that the Government dispatches a squadron of soldiers led by the fat, brutal and stupid Figueras to deal with them. Despite visiting plagues of laughing
Cat and Mouse
To compensate for his unusually large Adam`s apple – source of both discomfort and distress – fourteen year old Joachim Mahlke turns himself into athlete and ace diver. Soon he is known to his peers and his nation as `The Great Mahlke`. But to his enemies, he remains a target. He is different and doomed
The Island of the Day Before
The year is 1643. Roberto, a young nobleman, survives war, the Bastille, exile and shipwreck as he voyages to a Pacific island straddling the date meridian. There he waits now, alone on the mysteriously deserted Daphne, separated by treacherous reefs from the island beyond: the island of the day before. If he could reach it,
The Country Railway
Britain`s towns and cities were famously transformed in the nineteenth century by the coming of the railways, turning their fortunes around and giving urban dwellers new opportunities to travel across the country – yet the effect on the rural population was arguably far greater. Whilst some of the initial trunk lines were designed to link
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman
While the economy of his small South American country collapses, President Veracruz joins his improbable populace of ex-soldiers, former guerrillas, unfrocked priests and reformed – though by no means inactive – whores, in a bizarre search for sexual fulfilment. But for Cardinal Guzman, a man tormented by his own private daemons, their stupendous, hedonistic fiestas
Narrow Gauge Railways
Narrow gauge railways, so well suited to difficult, mountainous terrain, were built in many of the UK`s most scenic locations. Their genesis was in mines and quarries where they replaced man- or horse-pulled wagons, but their adaptability meant that by the 1860s they were also carrying passengers, in some cases over quite considerable distances. Today
Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord
Dionisio Vivo, a South American lecturer in philosophy, is puzzled by the hideously mutilated corpses that keep turning up outside his front door. To his friend, Ramon, one of the few honest policemen in town, the message is all too clear: Dionisio`s letters to the press, exposing the drug barons, must stop; and although Dionisio
Railway Accidents
Britain`s rail network is now among the safest in the world, but the journey that brought it to that point has been long and eventful. Early incidents like the felling of William Huskisson MP by Stephenson`s Rocket (1830) showed how new ideas could bring new dangers; yet from disaster came new safety measures, and within
A Century of Railway Travel
From the Edwardian golden age of steam to the present, no mode of travel has captured the hearts of the British people like the railways. In wartime and peace, along major routes and minor, steam, diesel and electric trains have moved goods, taken commuters to work or families on holidays – a constant presence in
The Touring Caravan
From the original horse-drawn caravan to the sophisticated and well-appointed luxury leisure vehicle we know today, this book follows the dynamic evolution of the touring caravan from the 1900s to the present day. Using a selection of images from his archive library, expert Andrew Jenkinson reveals how technical advances as well as interior design revolutionised
British Sports Cars of the 1950s and 60s
Nobody built sports cars like British manufacturers in the 1950s and 1960s. There was something very special about the combination of low-slung open two-seater bodywork with a spartan interior, a slick sporting gearchange and a rorty exhaust note. This was wind-in-the-hair motoring, and it was affordable by the average young man – at least, until
Capability Brown and the English Landscape Garden
The name Lancelot `Capability` Brown has become synonymous with the eighteenth-century English landscape garden: between 1751 and 1783 his consultancy handled over 170 major commissions. Ruthlessly efficient, he could stake out the `capabilities` of a particular terrain within an hour on horseback. Rising to the position of Master Gardener to George III, his trademark features
Mail Trains
Central to the prompt delivery of the nation`s mail is its efficient transit throughout the country. From 1830, the Post Office relied increasingly on the overland rail network to achieve this. Railway Post Offices, Sunday Sorting Tenders and District Sorting Carriages were amongst the services introduced. More important lines carried the famous `Night Mails`; rarely
Family Cars of the 1970s
?The 1970s was a critical decade for the British motor industry. A downward spiral in industrial relations led to crippling strikes, two major oil crises made thirsty older designs virtually unsaleable, and foreign manufacturers moved in with products that were affordable, reliable and available on demand. Britain`s roads became more cosmopolitan than ever, and manufacturers
British Railways in the 1950s and `60s
?As Britain moved from austerity to prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s, it became clear that British Railways needed to modernise its equipment and rationalise its network if it was to hold its own in the face of growing competition from road and air transport. After attempting to maintain pre-war networks and technology in the
Smugglers and Smuggling: In Britain, 1700-1850
Smuggling was rife in Britain between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and since then smugglers have come often to be romanticised as cheeky rogues – as highwaymen of the coasts and Robin Hood figures. The reality could be very different. Cut-throat businessmen determined to make a profit, many smugglers were prepared to use excessive force
Rowing in Britain
“?Boat races and regattas are mainstays of the British summer – but where did these races originate and how have they become so important a part of our culture? Historian, writer and novice sculler Julie Summers here explains the history of British rowing as a competitive sport from the early nineteenth century to the present
