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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Historical, political & military
An amazing woman from Bourne, Collyweston and Maxey who had a
profound impact on history but has been virtually forgotten in our
Lincolnshire locality. Read tales of her survival from the
traumatic birth of her son (Henry VII) when aged only thirteen, her
ever-changing fortunes in the Wars of the Roses, being condemned as
a traitor by Richard III and her eventual triumph, which saw her
become the matriarch of the Tudor dynasty. As the only blood link
from the Normans to our present Royal Family (documented here), her
legacy through her symbols and academia is still far-reaching
today.
Van al die gebeure in die Kaapkolonie gedurende die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog het die teregstelling van Hans Lötter, asook dié van kmdt. Gideon Scheepers, die meeste emosie onder Afrikaners ontketen. Lötter en sy mederebelle in die Kolonie het die verbeelding van die plaaslike bevolking aangegryp en die Britte maande lank hoofbrekens besorg. Sy gevangeneming, verhoor en teregstelling deur ’n Britse vuurpeloton op Middelburg, Kaap, het groot woede en verontwaardiging veroorsaak en hom verewig as Boeremartelaar in die Afrikaner-volksoorleweringe. Nou word sy boeiende verhaal vir die eerste keer volledig vertel.
Again available in paperback is Eric Sevareid's widely
acclaimed Not So Wild a Dream. In this brilliant first-person
account of a young journalist's experience during World War II,
Sevareid records both the events of the war and the development of
journalistic strategies for covering international affairs. He also
recalls vividly his own youth in North Dakota, his decision to
study journalism, and his early involvement in radio reporting
during the beginnings of World War II.
Horace 'Jim' Greasley was twenty years of age in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and latterly Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in Northern France, with just thirty rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. He was taken prisoner on 25th May 1940 and forced to endure a ten week march across France and Belgium en-route to Holland.
Horace survived...barely...food was scarce; he took nourishment from dandelion leaves, small insects and occasionally a secret food package from a sympathetic villager, and drank rain water from ditches. Many of his fellow comrades were not so fortunate. Falling by the side of the road through sheer exhaustion and malnourishment meant a bullet through the back of the head and the corpse left to rot. After a three day train journey without food and water, Horace found himself incarcerated in a prison camp in Poland. It was there he embarked on an incredible love affair with a German girl interpreting for his captors.
He experienced the sweet taste of freedom each time he escaped to see her, yet incredibly he made his way back into the camp each time, sometimes two, three times every week. Horace broke out of the camp then crept back in again under the cover of darkness after his natural urges were fulfilled. He brought food back to his fellow prisoners to supplement their meagre rations. He broke out of the camp over two hundred times and towards the end of the war even managed to bring radio parts back in. The BBC news would be delivered daily to over 3,000 prisoners. This is an incredible tale of one man's adversity and defiance of the German nation.
In 1862, Private Grant Taylor of the 40th Alabama Infantry regiment
began writing home to his wife Malinda. Thus started an almost
three year correspondence of some 160 letters that chronicle the
impact of the American Civil War on one rural Alabama family. For
the Taylors and their kin, the war brought precious little glory or
sentimental notions of causes won or lost. Their rough prose
provides more evidence of the downside of the Civil War experience
that is historically significant and emotionally touching.
Brian Mawhinney, now Baron Mawhinney of Peterborough, has led an
extraordinary life by anyone's standards. Born into a conservative
Christian family in Belfast his life and career were continuously
informed by the values of the gospel. However, his path was to take
him far beyond his simple Belfast background and the legal or
medical career his parents envisaged for him, and to the heights of
British politics as a Government minister, and then to the heart of
football administration as Chairman of the Football League. Written
with his ten grandchildren in mind (to help them "understand your
grandpa a little better", Mawhinney's memoirs capture at once the
history of recent British politics and football, and the essential
decency of the author.
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