First hand anecdotal snap shots offer a taste of daily life during the author's fifteen-year period at the High Down and Woomera rocket test sites. The preparation of eight Black Knight and four Black Arrow rockets up to their liftoff are recounted in detail with relevant diagrams and a few photos. So-called "rocket-science" jargon is deliberately sidestepped throughout. Delays that dogged Black Arrow's birth are touched along with a full explanation for terminating RO's maiden flight. Peripheral issues met during the final two proving flights are also discussed. The launch team's bittersweet feelings as R3 was readied and lifted off to deliver Prospero into earth orbit are chronicled alongside their dismay at the projects unfitting end. Black Arrow was Britain's only home grown rocket to stage an orbital insertion and may also be the only rocket to achieve this using peroxide oxidiser.

For more than three centuries the collections of the Ashmolean Museum have occupied a position of primary importance in the history of collecting in Great Britain and an honourable position in the development of museums on a European scale. Many collection catalogues (especially those of the natural sciences), compiled by curators over the past two or three hundred years, have never before been published. This volume - a further volume, designated Part II is to follow - starts to bring these collections to a wider audience. Their independent importance is considerable, for they provide not only a record through time of the fluctuating content of the Ashmolean but also an index of the changing preoccupations of the collectors and donors who progressively enriched the museum, of the curators who tended it, and of the wider community of scholars for whom the collections represented a fundamental resource.

In June, 1973, a group of eleven teachers, students and pupils from Glasgow boarded a new school minibus and began a trip - across Europe, Turkey, Syria and Iraq - to Persepolis, in Iran, the ceremonial capital of the great king Darius of Persia and his son and successor Xerxes. This is the story, based on the diary and photographs of one of the teachers. A fascinating mix of archaeology and culture, the practicalities of travel on a tight budget, bureaucracy, political disruption, and food and drink. Liberally illustrated with maps of the route and photographs of ancient sites, cities and landscapes, and of the minibus and its inhabitants.

In June, 1973, a group of eleven teachers, students and pupils from Glasgow boarded a new school minibus and began a trip - across Europe, Turkey, Syria and Iraq - to Persepolis, in Iran, the ceremonial capital of the great king Darius of Persia and his son and successor Xerxes. This is the story, based on the diary and photographs of one of the teachers. A fascinating mix of archaeology and culture, the practicalities of travel on a tight budget, bureaucracy, political disruption, and food and drink. Liberally illustrated with maps of the route and photographs of ancient sites, cities and landscapes, and of the minibus and its inhabitants.

This work is a revealing study of the enigmatic Indus civilization and how a rich repertoire of archaeological tools is being used to probe its puzzles. The Indus Valley gave rise to one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the Bronze Age, an extraordinarily peaceful society that developed everything from a complex political organization to sanitary plumbing to a rich mythology. Then it vanished, forgotten by history for centuries, until remarkable finds in the 1920s led to its rediscovery. The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives takes readers back to a civilization as complex as its contemporaries in Mesopotamia and Egypt, one that covered a far larger region, yet lasted a much briefer time (less than a millennium) and left far fewer traces. Researchers have tentatively reconstructed a model of Indus life based on limited material remains and despite its virtually indecipherable written record. This volume describes what is known about the roots of Indus civilization in farming culture, as well as its far-flung trading network, sophisticated crafts and architecture, and surprisingly war-free way of life. extraordinary methods that have brought it back to life.