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Ancient Ireland and Britain were large Celtic territories on the northwest edge of Europe. They were subject to myth and speculation by the early Greeks and Romans, but they later became the focus for trade, exploration and partial conquest. Dr Raoul McLaughlin presents the ancient sources for the Atlantic Celts in chapters covering the resources, commerce, warfare and beliefs of the oceanic Celts. This book contains updated translations of ancient sources concerning the lands known as Ivernia and Britannia. These accounts reveal what the Greeks and Romans knew about the origins, culture, and social practices of the insular Celts. The evidence begins in 600 BC when Carthaginian merchant ships explored the Atlantic coasts of western Europe searching for metal alloys. Then, in 325 BC, a Greek mariner named Pytheas explored the northern limits of the Atlantic territories and returned with accounts of Bretannike, Ierne and Thule. But it was Rome that led armies across the northern seas to conquer Britain. This book includes the campaign reports of Julius Caesar, along with accounts of conquests by the Emperor Claudius. These ancient texts reveal the ambitions, conflict and compromises involved in establishing the Roman province of Britannia, which by AD 60 encompassed most of southern Britain. This book therefore provides a unique resource for future scholarship and a fascinating insight for anyone interested in the distant Celtic past.

Throughout her adult life, English novelist Virginia Woolf was surrounded by a tight group of friends and relatives. Known collectively as the Bloomsbury Group, they lived near each other in townhouses in the Bloomsbury section of London and in country homes in Sussex. Because of their strong influence on British literature, art and culture, much has been written about these creative people who lived in squares and loved in triangles, particularly in their early years. But by the 1920s, the Bloomsbury Group had come of age and were becoming more successful and well-known. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s looks at the personal and professional lives of Virginia and her husband, Leonard Woolf, who founded the Hogarth Press in their London home; Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, her husband, art critic Clive Bell, and her partner in art and life, painter Duncan Grant; essayist Lytton Strachey who, after publication of his radical biography Eminent Victorians, awoke to find himself famous; art critic and founder of the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry; international economist John Maynard Keynes; E. M. Forster who published his last major novel, A Passage to India, in 1923; and American ex-patriate author of the epic 1922 poem, The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot. These characters hung out in drawing rooms, art studios and country homes, gossiping, bickering, loving and hating each other. Come back to the fabulous decade of the 1920s and follow these writers and artists as they re-invent literature and art.

This book celebrates the bicentenary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway by looking, not at locomotives, but at the rolling stock behind them, both passenger vehicles and goods wagons. 1825 saw the first train load of passengers hauled by a steam locomotive, but it was an experience not to be immediately repeated, as the Stockton & Darlington passenger service after the opening ceremony was by a horse-drawn stage coach. It was not long, however, before steam took over on other lines. At first, travel was basic – the first class had closed carriages, second class open carriages with a canopy for cover, while the third class were little more than goods wagons with seats. The book traces the development of carriages over the years with increasing levels of comfort – taking the story right up to the present day. There are sections on the special trains, the most glamorous side of travel, as well as the familiar everyday coaches. It also looks as the experience of train travel over the years, including a section on accidents. Freight movement has also changed with the times, from the days when trains were made up of loose-coupled wagons to the container trains of today. There is a last look at the railway past and the preserved railways that recreate the age of steam.

For movie buffs and Paris lovers alike, The Movie Lover’s Guide to Paris is the ultimate companion for experiencing the City of Light through the lens of cinema. With over a century of cinematic history, Paris has been a muse for filmmakers, inspiring countless poignant moments on screen. With this book you can step into the frame and experience Paris like you’re a part of the action. Explore iconic film locations, dine at the bistros your favourite characters have frequented, catch a classic at an art-house cinema, and immerse yourself in fascinating film events and tours. Whether you're planning your first trip to Paris, already wandering its streets, or dreaming of the city from afar, this book offers fresh inspiration and insider knowledge to help you experience Paris as captured by the world’s greatest filmmakers. Written by the author of The Art Lover’s Guide to Paris and The Architecture Lover’s Guide to Paris, this is the definitive guide for anyone wanting to experience the city at its most cinematic and magical.

In 1576, a young man could have attended the first performance at The Theatre, newly-built by James Burbage, the first arena exclusively dedicated to the drama in England since Roman times. Sixty-years later, as a very old man, he could have attended the last performance at the Globe Theatre before its summary closure by the Puritans. The two dates represent the beginning and the end of the golden age of English theatre. In this book, Nicholas Fogg recounts the epic and often tumultuous story of those years – the great poets and actors, the rivalries, personalities, hostility and panache that contributed to a monumental era, going beyond such household words as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Burbage, Alleyn and Jonson to the lesser-known who also made their vital contribution to the world that was the stage, which ranged from the humble provincial inn yard of the touring company to the sumptuous royal palace. Yet it was at heart a popular theatre, created by the people for the people, reflecting the vital breath of its times and continuing to speak to us today: a story which involves us all because it represents the universal drama in which we all play our many parts.

By September 1944 the Third Reich was under constant attack by Allied bombers and suffering an onslaught by the Red Army to the east. The Nazi high command struggled for ideas to reduce the effect of the ceaseless bombing and thereby create some breathing space to build and strengthen their new weapon: jet-propelled aircraft. They believed that this new invention could turn the tide of the war. At the end of 1944 a proposal was offered by Oberst Hans-Joachim "Hajo" Herrmann. His plan called for 1,500 fighter aircraft to conduct a massive attack against an Allied bomber formation on April 7, 1945, inflicting such casualties that the Allies would think twice about continuing their bombing campaign. Attacking bombers was not a new idea, but the method of attack was new. The German pilots were to fly their planes into the bombers, causing enough damage to bring down the aircraft. Unlike the Japanese Kamikaze pilots who carried explosives on board and died in the attack, the German pilots were instructed to bail out and parachute to safety to fly another day. Sonderkommando Elbe: The Luftwaffe’s Kamikaze Force is the full story of the unit and its pilots.

America, it is said, deals with its trauma through the medium of Hollywood, and few experiences have been more traumatic than its involvement in the Vietnam War. As the last US helicopters fled the American Embassy compound during the fall of Saigon, they left behind a country devastated by twenty years of death and destruction. They were heading back to a country that was damaged in a different way. The America that ended its involvement in Vietnam in 1975 was defeated, humiliated, divided and scarred. It was a bewildering transformation for a nation that considered itself to be on the right side of history. Only a generation earlier, Americans were united in celebrating the bravery of the GIs and Marines who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima and Normandy. Now they were confronted with an uglier face of war: pointless sacrifice, disillusioned and mutinous soldiers, massacres of innocent civilians and the shooting of unarmed student protestors. For a long time America found it impossible to process the experience, until Hollywood led the way. The movie industry had started out treating Vietnam like an extension of the Second World War. The gung-ho John Wayne action film The Green Berets (made with the full support of the Pentagon) had a simplistic “we’re the good guys” message. However, as American casualties mounted in Vietnam, social unrest erupted and the war’s aims looked ever murkier, the movie studios backed off. After The Green Berets in 1968 no major films were made about the conflict until the controversial and groundbreaking The Deer Hunter a decade later. The subject was deemed too hot to handle, although some brave filmmakers tackled it in roundabout ways (‘Soldier Blue’ was a re-telling of the My Lai massacre, set in the Old West). Eventually, The Deer Hunter ripped off the sticking plaster and let daylight into the American experience in Vietnam. Its depiction of US soldiers as victims, not heroes, caused fights in movie theatres and led to questions in Congress. But it paved the way for the greatest run of war movies ever made. Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and many more rewrote the grammar of combat films and helped a wounded nation come to terms with an unloved war. This is the story of how those films got made, how they were received at the time and how they shaped the American experience of Vietnam. The names behind them are legends in the movie industry, from directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and Michael Cimino to actors including John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Robert de Niro and Meryl Streep.

On 23 May 1945, Heinrich Himmler - Reichsführer SS and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany - was reported to have committed suicide in British custody. But how much of the official narrative holds tru? n The Murder of Heinrich Himmler, historian Krzysztof Drozdowski delves into inconsistencies and unanswered questions surrounding Himmler’s final hours. Drawing on newly accessed archives, eyewitness statements, and correspondence, Drozdowski explores whether Himmler was really the man who died in Lüneburg, or if he was silenced to prevent the spread of dangerous secrets. Why was the autopsy report sealed until 2045? Why were the Soviets and Americans denied access to the body? What role did British intelligence and military authorities play? Could Himmler have escaped, or was his death the result of a well-planned cover-u? his compelling book offers not only a thorough re-examination of Himmler’s demise, but also a chilling glimpse into the murky world of post-war intelligence and political intrigue.

Sir Geoffrey de Langley, a Warwickshire knight, was studied within the context of a ‘crisis’ of the knightly class. This much respected, and much cited study, concluded that this family failed to achieve anything much of note and fell from history, due to lack of heirs. Meanwhile, in Middleton, Lancashire, historians were trying to establish the beginnings of the local Langley family. Their most famous son is ‘Cardinal’ Thomas de Langley, Bishop of Durham. Thomas’ parents seem to spring up from nowhere, as sheep farmers. Some built Agecroft Hall, but that now stands in Virginia, USA. Despite much hypothesis, nothing is confirmed with a primary source. The Langley Cartulary was translated, and published, which confirmed the bride’s pedigree, when Isabella de la Pole married Sir Walter de Langley, of Kent. In Shipton-under-Wychwood, a local historian published a history of the Langley family, wardens of Wychwood Forest. But at no point, until now, has the possibility that all of this research tells the story of the same family, been explored. Spurred on by the fact she knew for certain that the Langley family of Warwickshire had survived, the author tells the story of her journey from a chance internet search, through historical archives, abbeys, houses and cemeteries, deciphering manuscripts, and trying to understand Latin. Slowly drawing together the genealogical chart, she could then relate the tales of the monk driven to insanity by study, the babes in the wood, the murder of a young Oxford scholar and a long journey across Europe with a leopard. The result is an easy-to-digest retelling of medieval history from the point of view of the knight, and his family. Studying the lives of those who work, those who fight and those who pray, she uncovers secrets, answers questions and provides a better understanding of what the period was like when one was not of high birth.

It is a political, military and social history of the East European subcontinent at constant war – imperial, national, civil, and brigandage – for scholars and readers interested in warfare, empires, and the “phenomenon” of Ukraine. Overlapping major powers – the Ottomans, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Muscovy-Russia – clashed over the grand geopolitical Ukraine, stretching from the Danube through the Black Sea and Caucasus to the Caspian Sea. Embedded in this turbulent conflict is the emergence of Ukraine or several “Ukraines,” proto-states of military groups, bound together by strategic objectives, social class and economic interest. They were sponsored by the empires and overwhelmed them from within, developing superior resources and fighting capabilities. It is a link to contemporary Ukraine and a fascinating glance into the current confrontation.

It was only the ‘above average’ pilots and navigators who were invited to volunteer for what was some of the most challenging, daring and rewarding flying operations of the Second World War. Their role was to take Mosquitos at low level through the night across Europe to loiter near a Luftwaffe airfield to attack and shoot down returning enemy bombers or night fighters. The Mosquito intruders’ story starts during the Battle of Britain, when RAF planners noticed a few German interlopers ‘hiding’ in the returning bomber streams, so that they could attack landing RAF aircraft. They recognised that this was a tactic the RAF could also employ. To exploit this concept properly, the RAF needed the right equipment, training programme and airmen. Each would take time to establish. It was not until mid-1943, with the superior performance and capabilities of the iconic de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito FB VI, that the intruders’ full impact would at last be felt. The first three intruder squadrons, Nos. 23, 418 and 605, were the elite of the elite. Their ‘Battle Honours’ demonstrate their contribution to delivering victory over the Axis forces. Mosquito Intruders – Target Europe uses diaries, first-hand accounts, contemporaneous sources, and official records to take the reader through the development of the intruder concept, their early days equipped initially with the Douglas DB-7 Boston and the Mosquito NF II (Special), to the operations of the first three Mosquito intruder squadrons. These three squadrons defended Malta, supported the invasion of Sicily, assisted No. 617 ‘Dambusters’ Squadron on their famous Dortmund-Ems Canal raid, were the first to attack on D-Day, and worked out how to defeat the V1 flying bombs. They were led from the front, and through example, by larger-than-life fighter aces. The Mosquito demanded respect and could take punishment. Beautifully balanced, fast and with a powerful punch, for most of the aircrew, it was the aircraft of their dreams. By the end of Mosquito Intruders – Target Europe, you will understand why!

The White Mouse: Gestapo’s Most Wanted tells the extraordinary true story of Nancy Wake during one of the darkest chapters in modern history. This new biography traces Nancy’s path across the globe, from her youth in Australia, to New York, London, Paris, and Marseilles – and her evolution from free-spirited journalist to wartime hero. When Europe slid towards war, Nancy found herself swept into the heart of the Resistance movement in Marseilles. And she chose to make a difference. What followed was a life marked by extraordinary courage, personal sacrifice, and unwavering defiance. Drawing on interviews, personal anecdotes, and rich historical detail, the book offers a full account of Nancy Wake’s life. It focuses not only on her most dangerous exploits but also examines the motivations and early influences that drove her to top the Gestapo’s Most Wanted List and become a leader in the Maquis. Her journey will take the reader from suburban Australia to daring missions behind enemy lines. More than just a tale of espionage, this is a story of risk, resilience, and the woman who made a vow to never look away from injustice — and kept it. Interwoven with historical context and dramatically retold, The White Mouse brings Nancy Wake’s courage and character to life, reclaiming her place in a period of history often dominated by men. For readers drawn to stories of defiance, resilience, and unsung wartime heroism, this is both an engaging biography and a reflection on bravery in the face of crisis.

Born into the shadows of Victorian London, Mary Carr began her criminal career as a pickpocketing flower-girl, rising to be the undisputed Queen of the Forty Thieves. Under her rule, the Forty transformed from a band of violent, disorganised thieves into a ruthless, well-oiled gang, making a fortune from hotel robberies and blackmail. By 1891, Mary ruled Southwark, Lambeth, and beyond, her power extending from seedy back alleys to high society establishments. But Mary was more than just a criminal mastermind. A ‘swan-necked beauty’ and muse to esteemed artist Frederic Leighton, she navigated both the art world and the criminal underworld with ease. She was a revered gang boss and a beloved benefactor, caring for the families of imprisoned comrades and ruling with both generosity and iron discipline. When a young boy, Michael McGee, vanished at the Epsom races, eyes on the street turned to Mary, who had recently adopted a young blonde-haired boy and had been showing him off to the world. But her defiance would prove her undoing. Betrayed by an informant, she was arrested for child theft in 1896, sentenced to three years in prison, and lost everything. How does a woman who loses her home, her title and her son all in one blow rise agai? mma Woodhouse's compelling narrative unravels the legend of Mary Carr — a woman who defied Victorian expectations, reshaped London’s underworld, and became one of the most fascinating figures of her time.

The Soviet T-34 tank is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable symbols of the Red Army and its struggle against the Third Reich in the Second World War. Not surprisingly, over the years a considerable number of books and films have been dedicated to Stalin’s so-called ‘wonder tank’. Many historians, especially those in Russia, peremptorily call the T-34 the best tank of the war. In so doing, they often refer to the ‘authoritative’ opinion of Heinz Guderian and other German generals. Von Kleist, for example, is stated to have once referred to the T-34 as ‘the finest tank in the world’. But, as Dmitry Zubov sets out to explore in this book, was this the true pictur? he reality of the summer of 1941, following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, revealed that it took the Wehrmacht only a couple of months to turn Stalin’s tank armada into little more than a pile of scrap metal. Despite this inauspicious beginning to its combat service, the myth of the T-34’s ‘invincibility’ was already being born. It was a development that, argues Dmitry Zubov, was in part driven by the Soviet propaganda machine, but also by their enemy. As the fighting wore on, the Germans became increasingly bogged down in endless operations to cover their flanks from the mythical counterattacks of Stalin’s Red Army, which by that time had actually lost most of its combat capability. But to hide the consequences of Hitler’s incompetent command, German generals had to explain the collapse of Operation Barbarossa by the incredible resilience of Soviet soldiers, the appalling ‘Russian winter’, and finally, by the ‘vast superiority’, to quote Guderian, of the T-34 tank. Between them, Hitler’s commanders argued, they had torn apart their excellent plans. These facts motivated the author to examine the real history of the creation, production, and combat use of Stalin’s ‘wonder tank’. Under the numerous layers of Soviet secrecy, myths, propaganda and outright lies, he has exposed a bitter reality. The T-34 tank was not a masterpiece of Soviet engineering, but in fact a design that, in reality, was based on plans ‘borrowed’ by Soviets from designers in the West. Produced in an incredible hurry by unskilled workers, Stalin’s ‘wonder tank’ often presented an easy target for the German panzers and anti-tank gunners, and battlefield graves for their Soviet crews.

The murder of Emily Beilby Kaye in 1924 was a crime of shocking brutality. Her body, having been dismembered, was found scattered, and her killer’s capture and subsequent trial unraveled under the glare of public scrutiny. Despite its notoriety at the time and its role in shaping modern forensic investigation, this case has been largely overlooked in dedicated true crime accounts. This book investigates the infamous ‘Second Crumbles Murder’ with fresh eyes, drawing on archival material, trial transcripts, memoirs of investigators, and contemporary press reports. It explores the intense human drama, involving an apparently charming male protagonist, along with the gruesome details that captivated the nation, and the forensic breakthroughs – including the introduction of the ‘Murder Bag’ – that left a lasting legacy. For true crime enthusiasts and history buffs alike, this is the definitive account of a crime that shocked 1920s Britain and continues to fascinate today.

From the flamboyant preacher accused of forgery to the fourteen year old burned at the stake for coining, the eighteenth century was rife with financial crime. This book outlines the stories of men and women accused and convicted of coining and forgery at a time when the death penalty was used for over 200 crimes and society was unforgiving. When the British government decided to produce low value paper currency in 1797 to pay for the war with France they had overlooked the consequences of a population unfamiliar with banknotes. From 1797 to 1812 over 300 people went to the gallows. This book tells the story of some of these people. The schoolmaster pressed into the Royal Navy who turned forger on discharge. The exciseman who found himself out of pocket when whisky production was regulated and forged money to pay his bills. A coining gang holed up on a farm in Birmingham who ran a successful monetary enterprise until the law caught up with them. Finally, there’s the architect who was transported to Australia for forgery whose face ended up on a (legal) banknote. All these characters and more give an insight into the crime of forgery in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. When Rachael Rowe discovered a forger in the family, her research took her on a journey to find out more about the crime and why people in the eighteenth century were intent on breaking the law. Using original records, the book highlights the scope of the crime and shows how national and global events combined to fuel an increase in forgeries with devastating effects for the criminals and their dependants.