For a country with a relatively small population, Scotland has had a massive impact on the world. This intriguing miscellany uncovers the culture surrounding its shores, and celebrates the many characters, legends, firsts and inventions that have shaped the country's rich and majestic history. This eye opening collection of trivia will enlighten you on many of the myths surrounding Scotland. Bagpipes, tartan and haggis are all archetypal images of Scotland, and yet none of them likely originated here. Clan wars, family feuds, invasions and battles are just some of the historical subjects divulged in this fascinating miscellany. Scots have also helped to create modern life, with innovators ushering in the Industrial Revolution, medical breakthroughs, not forgetting the Scottish engineers famed across the globe. Along the way you will also find entries on the food, the sporting heritage and darker tales of murder most foul. Brief, accessible and entertaining pieces on a wide variety of subjects makes it the perfect book to dip in to. The amazing and extraordinary facts series presents interesting, surprising and little-known facts and stories about a wide range of topics which are guaranteed to inform, absorb and entertain in equal measure.

Matching archive photos with their modern viewpoint, London Then and Now gives a fascinating insight into the history of Europe's financial capital. London has changed rapidly in the last 150 years. The Luftwaffe helped modify many parts of central London and the East End in the 1940s, but some of the most dramatic changes have come in the last 20 years. Stretching from Hampton Court and Kew Gardens in West London, the book takes a winding route along the river Thames to the soaring spires of Canary Wharf in Dockland and the stately Royal Naval College at Greenwich. Sites include: Hampton Court Palace, Kew Gardens, Hammersmith Bridge (Boat Race), Kings Road Chelsea, Battersea Power Station, Lambeth Palace, The Tate, Palace of Westminster, Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben), Whitehall, Horseguards Parade, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Harrods, Albert Memorial, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, Festival Hall, Savoy Hotel, Oxo Tower, Covent Garden, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Royal Opera House, Soho, Tate Modern, Bank of England, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, HMS Belfast, Samuel Pepys' Church, London Bridge/Shard, Docklands, Greenwich Observatory (GMT) and the Royal Naval College

1950s Ireland was the age of De Valera and John Charles McQuaid. It was the age before television, Vatican II, and home central heating. A time when motor cars and public telephones had wind-up handles, when boys wore short trousers and girls wore ribbons, when nuns wore white bonnets and priests wore black hats in church. To the young people of today, the 1950s seem like another age. But for those who played, learned and worked at this time, this era feels like just yesterday. This delightful collection of memories will appeal to all who grew up in 1950s Ireland and will jog memories about all aspects of life as it was.

Chatham played a very important part in the nation's Great War effort. It was one of the British Royal Navy's three 'Manning Ports', with more than a third of the town's ships manned by men allocated to the Chatham Division. The war was only 6 weeks old when Chatham felt the affects of war for the first time. On 22 September 1914, three Royal Naval vessels from the Chatham Division, HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue, were sunk in quick succession by a German submarine, U-9. A total of 1,459 men lost their lives that day, 1,260 of whom were from the Chatham Division. Two months later, on 26 November, the battleship HMS Bulwark exploded and sunk whilst at anchor off of Sheerness on the Kent coast. There was a loss of 736 men, many of whom were from the Chatham area. On 18 August 1914, Private 6737 Walter Henry Smith, who was nineteen and serving with the 6th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, became the first person to be killed during wartime Chatham. He was on sentry duty with a colleague, who accidentally dropped his loaded rifle, discharging a bullet that strook Private Smith and killed him. It wasn't all doom and gloom, however.Winston Churchill, as the First Lord of the Admiralty, visited Chatham early on in the war, on 30 August 1914. On 18 September 1915, two German prisoners of war, Lieutenant Otto Thelen and Lieutenant Hans Keilback, escaped from Donnington Hall in Leicestershire. At first, it was believed they had escaped the country and were on their way back to Germany, but they were re-captured in Chatham four days later. By the end of the war, Chatham and the men who were stationed there had truly played their part in ensuring a historic Allied victory.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.

Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

To find out more about this book, go to http://www.DevilInTheWhiteCity.com.

St Andrews is without doubt one of Scotland's most historic and beautiful cities. Once the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland, it played a prominent role in the nation's political life until the seventeenth century. In addition, it is also home of the nation's oldest university; and whilst claims that it is the birthplace of golf may remain controversial, there is no doubt it is regarded as world capital of the game today. This fascinating and comprehensive account of St Andrews traces its history from Pictish times to the present day. It is based not only on a huge amount of original research, but also on an intimate knowledge of the town which Raymond Lamont-Brown accumulated in over twenty years' residence there. In addition to facts and figures, the book also introduces many of the people who have featured prominently in the story of St Andrews - from doughty residents such as Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair and Cardinal Archbishop David Beaton to illustrious visitors like Mary, Queen of Scots, John Knox and Samuel Johnson.

This new compilation of photographs of East Grinstead, its locality and people, comprises 180 unpublished images, mostly dating from c. 1902-3 onwards, and all but ten from the collection at East Grinstead Museum. Nearly all were taken by local professional photographers, and it is by individual photographer that the images are arranged in chronological order: William Page, Arthur Harding, Edgar Kinsey, Ernest Watts, Harold Connold and Malcolm Powell.

In the light of recent discoveries, Leicester has rightfully taken its place on the world stage. This timely and accessible new history gives an overview of the city's history from the days of the Roman city of Ratae to the modern city of today. Leicester has been an important center for the last 2,000 years. When the Romans arrived they developed an existing settlement into Ratae, an administrative capital. Medieval Leicester was famous for its abbey and, in the fourteenth century, the castle became a base for the Plantagenets. During the Tudor, Stuart, and Georgian periods the town's status declined slightly, but nonetheless it remained an important market town. Industrialisation and population growth radically changed Leicester during Victorian times, and it once again became prosperous, its economy underpinned by the hosiery, boot, and shoe and engineering industries - the basis of modern Leicester. This popular history provides new insights and brings the story of the city up to date.

A rare and evocative memoir of a respected constitutional scholar, dedicated public servant, political reformer, and facilitator of peace in the land of his ancestors. John D. Feerick's life has all the elements of a modern Horatio Alger story: the poor boy who achieves success by dint of his hard work. But Feerick brought other elements to that classic American success story: his deep religious faith, his integrity, and his paramount concern for social justice. In his memoir, That Further Shore, Feerick shares his inspiring story, from his humble beginnings: born to immigrant parents in the South Bronx, going on to practice law, participating in framing the U.S. Constitution's Twenty-Fifth Amendment, serving as dean of Fordham Law, and serving as President of the New York City Bar Association and chair of state commissions on government integrity. Beginning with Feerick's ancestry and early life experiences, including a detailed genealogical description of Feerick's Irish ancestors in County Mayo and his laborious quest to identify them and their relationships with one another, the book then presents an evocative survey of the now-vanished world of a working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood in the South Bronx. Feerick's account of how he financed his education from elementary school through law school is a moving tribute to the immigrant work ethic that he inherited from his parents and shared with many young Americans of his generation. The book then traces Feerick's career as a lawyer and how he gave up a lucrative partnership in a prestigious New York City law firm at an early age to accept the office of Dean of the Fordham School of Law at a fraction of his previous income because he felt it was time to give back something to the world. John Feerick has consistently shown his commitment to the law as a vocation as well as a profession by his efforts to protect the rights of the poor, to enable minorities to achieve their rightful places in American society, and to combat political corruption. That Further Shore is an inspiring memoir of how one humble and decent man helped to make America a more just and equitable society.

With a history going back 2000 years it is hardly surprising that so many of London's streets are known throughout the globe. Even today, several Roman roads pass through the capital and London's financial centre, The City of London is full of winding alleys and ancient ways with names from times gone by. Over the years the City's streets have become less familiar than roads in and around the West End and for this reason The Streets of London: The story behind London's most famous streets is primarily about roads in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.

A remote, barren and ruggedly beautiful island lies at the southern end of the Outer Hebrides. Its people, loyal for centuries, have abandoned it but the beauty and history of Mingulay remain. The story of St Kilda, whose inhabitants were also forced to leave, is well known, but that of Mingulay is no less poignant, and is told in this acclaimed book for the first time. Ben Buxton documents the story of a people and of an island. In the nineteenth century Mingulay was home to up to 160 islanders who lived by crofting, fishing and by catching seabirds from cliffs which are among the highest in Britain. Looking back through the annals of history, he uncovers the traditions of a hospitable, close community which thrived under clan rule. But set in lonely isolation in the stormy Atlantic, with no proper landing place, absentee landlords and insufficient fertile land, life for Mingulay's inhabitants was hard, and By 1912, the 'voluntary' evacuation of the island was complete.

When Blackpool Tower was being built, many people said it would be a failure. Originally estimated at GBP150,000, it ended up costing twice that much and John Bickerstaffe nearly went bust building this unique attraction. But he was right. Once the Tower was open, his company made a profit every year that it existed as an independent public entity. Not only was the Tower profitable, but it fuelled the Tower Company as Bickerstaffe built it into the dominant entertainment group in Blackpool. Under his leadership it acquired the Palace and later the Winter Gardens and Opera House. By the 1930s it was running ballrooms, cinemas, live theatre and the famous Tower Circus. The Bickerstaffe brothers were also key figures in Blackpool's civic life. This is a story of the Victorian entrepreneurship that created Blackpool's most iconic building, and led to Blackpool being the apogee of seaside entertainment.

What historical tragedy could possibly make a young Wallingford girl daub a wall with her own tears? What really happened to the family who encountered a UFO in Stanford-in-the-Vale?What made a Highworth Squire's ghost choose to be banished to a barrel of cider?And what does the Uffington White Horse get up to once every hundred years?The Vale of the White Horse and the beautiful countryside of South Oxfordshire is a landscape steeped in thousands of years of legends, history and mystery. Here are witches, monsters and ghosts; old legends and modern-day tales of strange encounters with the unknown. From the mildly curious to the frighteningly inexplicable, The Veiled Vale is a treasure trove of fabulous folklore and modern mysteries.

Since its original publication in 1978, "Delirious New York" has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture.
"Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. "Delirious New York" is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

Whitby is a beautiful fishing town on the North Yorkshire coast, best known for its fish and chip restaurants and its connections with the world's most famous vampire - Dracula. But, did you know that Whitby has more secrets locked away among the narrow streets and beneath the tall cliffs? Why are Easter celebrations a result of a meeting in Whitby? What Whitby innovation kept people safe at sea until the invention of radar? Who or what is buried in the mysterious grave with the skulls and crossbones? And what secrets lurk beneath the waves off its coast? In Secret Whitby you'll find the answers to these questions, and many more revelations that will surprise you and keep you guessing with every turn of the page.

With a proud history of industry and creativity, Manchester is one of the world's greatest cities. In 2015 it was designated 'The Northern Powerhouse' but, of course, being the home of the Industrial Revolution, it always was. Manchester gave the world technological innovation as well as manufacturing strength. By the second half of the nineteenth century Manchester was home to more than 100 mills and well over 1,000 warehouses. It was in Manchester that Whitworth devised a standard for screw threads in 1841. Here John Dalton developed modern atomic theory, Rutherford split the atom and Alan Turing and colleagues developed the world's first computer. It also has a great cultural heritage, from the Halle Orchestra, founded in 1858, to the first regional repertory theatre set up by Annie Horniman in 1908. 'Madchester' was at the centre of the UK music scene in the '80s. 2015 saw the opening of HOME - a major new GBP25 million arts centre. The skyline of Manchester is again being transformed. The Victorian men of Manchester would be surprised to see the vast modern buildings that now sit side by side with the old. Here we tell Manchester's story from Roman Britain through to the twenty-first century.

Long before its rise as a celebrated seat of learning, Cambridge was a small market town on the banks of a river formerly known as the Granta. From its occupation by the Romans in the first century AD, through its growth and development as a world-class university, to its current status as one of the world's leading technology hubs, the city has a proud and distinctive identity. Few cities can equal Cambridge for culture. With its famous college and university buildings, outstanding museums and galleries, historic churches, Arts and Crafts houses and bold post-war architecture, the city provides an inestimably rich stock of buildings, spanning almost ten centuries. In Cambridge in 50 Buildings, local author Susie Boulton explores the city's history through a selection of its greatest architectural treasures. From the splendour of King's College Chapel, founded by Henry VI, to state-of-the-art centres dedicated to pure innovation, this unique study celebrates the city's rich architectural heritage in a new and accessible way. Readers are guided on an engaging tour of the city's historic buildings and modern architectural projects. Illustrated throughout, Cambridge in 50 Buildings will be of interest to residents, visitors and those with links to the city.