Great Britain unearths the hidden legends, laws, landscapes, discoveries, adventures and locations that have shaped Britain's compelling, and at times, tumultuous past. Explore how Britain was formed - its geology and climate, the quirky characters and events of its history and the origin of British institutions, such as public schools, fish and chips and driving on the left hand side. 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.

Over 200 underground railways are in service or under construction around the world. Many although of great importance to their cities and passengers are otherwise unremarkable, however others have fascinating stories to tell. With unique histories, unusual circumstances around their construction, unbelievable technical challenges to overcome, beautiful architecture and a whole host of colourful personalities this enthralling collection has it all. The first underground railway opened in London in 1863, with numerous major cities following, and since the year 2,000 an explosion in new systems with over 30 metros opening in China alone! From the Budapest World Heritage site, to the longest and busiest in Beijing; from the stunning architecture of Moscow to the mysterious Pyongyang Metro; from the Buenos Aires Subte the first in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world to the forthcoming Crossrail in London and the City Rail Link, the first in New Zealand.

Cathedrals and abbeys are the most beautiful and iconic buildings of the British Isles, and have formed the bedrock of our nation for centuries. This absorbing collection of amazing and extraordinary facts opens the doors of these fascinating structures to reveal their rich historical and architectural heritage. From stories of English Popes, martyred archbishops and renegade bishops to iconoclastic kings, power-hungry nobles and architectural dynasties, as well as the role of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, we explore how the people and religion in Britain have shaped these buildings over the last 2,000 years. Also read about the architectural heritage of British cathedrals, from troublesome spires, stained glass wonders and buy-a-brick campaigns to abbeys in the sea, fortified castle-cathedrals and mass graves. Along with tales of famous memorials and artefacts, fascinating folklore and architectural feats, these intriguing and diverse facts will provide something for every enthusiast to dip into and relish.

"Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London at War" is a unique collection of surprising revelations, heroic deeds and other quirky pieces of trivia from the conflicts that have shaped London's fascinating past. From British wartime commanders and other characters who called London their home, through the privations of war and their social impact, to the devastation caused by the Blitz in World War II and London's subsequently resilience, an intriguing history is revealed. With stories of human endeavour in the face of adversity, the rich history of this great capital city at war is revealed.

In the sweltering summer of 1858 the stink of sewage from the polluted Thames was so offensive that it drove Members of Parliament from the chamber of the House of Commons. Sewage from over 2 million Londoners was pouring into the river, carried by the tides. The Times called the crisis "The Great Stink". Parliament had to act - drastic measures were required to improve London's primitive system of sanitation. The great engineer entrusted with this task was Sir Joseph Bazalgette, his response to conceive and build the system of intercepting sewers, pumping stations and treatment works that serves London to this day. In the process he cleansed the Thames and helped banish cholera, but this was only one of his great achievements. This enthralling history gives a vivid insight into Bazalgette's achievements and the era in which he worked and lived, including his heroic battles with politicians and bureaucrats, to transform the face and health of the world's largest city.

Lose yourself in the vast sewer networks that lie beneath the world's great cities - past and present. Let detailed archival plans, maps and photographs guide you through these subterranean labyrinths - previously accessible only to their builders, engineers and, perhaps, the odd rogue explorer. This execrable exploration traces the evolution of waste management from the ingenious infra-structures of the ancient world to the seeping cesspits and festering open sewers of the medieval period. It investigates and celebrates the work of the civil engineers whose pioneering integrated sewer systems brought to a close the devastating cholera epidemics of the mid-19th century and continue to serve a vastly increased population today. And let's not forget those giant fatbergs clogging our underground arteries, or the storm-surge super-structures of tomorrow.

In the sweltering summer of 1858 the stink of sewage from the polluted Thames was so offensive that it drove Members of Parliament from the chamber of the House of Commons. Sewage generated by a population of over 2 million Londoners was pouring into the river, carried to and fro by the tides. The Times called the crisis "The Great Stink". Parliament had to act - drastic measures were required to clean the Thames and improve London's primitive system of sanitation. The great engineer entrusted with this enormous task was Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and this book is a fascinating account of his life and work. Bazalgette's response to the challenge was to conceive and build the system of intercepting sewers, pumping stations and treatment works that serves London to this day. In the process he cleansed the River Thames and helped to banish cholera, but this was only one of the achievements of his career. This enthralling history gives a vivid insight into Bazalgette's achievements and the era in which he worked and lived, including his heroic battle with politicians, bureaucrats and huge engineering problems to transform the face and health of the world's largest city.

London is unrivalled as a source of inspiration for writers from Geoffrey Chaucer to J.K. Rowling. From 221B Baker Street to the Old Curiosity Shop will explore the capital both from the viewpoint of the many writers who have used it as a stage for their plots and their characters; and of the readers whose imagination is fired by the knowledge that they are standing outside the home of David Copperfield on the Strand or Count Dracula's residence in Piccadilly. All of London's clubs, pubs, restaurants, houses and streets that have been made famous in the works of the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, Charles Dickens and Evelyn Waugh are featured in this exhaustively researched volume. Listed geographically, each entry provides a description of the location, its place in literature and its inspiration. From Fleming's legendary Blades Club in Mayfair, that made appearances in both Moonraker and Goldfinger, to Waugh's bohemian Shepheard's Hotel from Vile Bodies, that was based on the celebrated Cavendish Hotel, to the haunts of Sherlock Holmes and Bertie Wooster, From 221B Baker Street to the Old Curiosity Shop will appeal to all lovers of classic fiction set in the great city.

For millennia the normal, natural and pleasurable activity of eating has been surrounded by fear and anxiety. Religious traditions have long decreed what foods are right for their followers to eat, but secularisation and scientific progress have not made the situation easier. Our present obsession with health, obesity, ethics and science has seemingly developed from a society that is over-supplied with the necessities of life. For the first time, social historian Stephen Halliday looks at the history of our fascinating relationship with food, from Galen in the first century AD declaring that fruit was the worst kind of food to eat, to John Kellogg's belief that eating wholegrain cereals would prevent masturbation and bring people closer to God. Through modern fears and food scares such as mad cow disease to our current fascination with superfoods, 'friendly' bacteria and organic farming, Our Troubles with Food is a thorough analysis of our changing attitudes towards food and a reminder that we are not so very different from our forbears after all.

Why did London have to wait so long for a main-line railway beneath its streets? For a few years in the mid-nineteenth century, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's broad-gauge Great Western trains ran from Reading to Faringdon. Now, after many false starts, his vision is being realised as the Elizabeth Line prepares to carry passengers from Reading to the City once again, and beyond to Essex and Kent, using engineering that would have earned the admiration of the greatest Victorian engineers. London historian Stephen Halliday presents an engaging discussion of Crossrail's fascinating origins and the heroic engineering that made it all possible.

London's Underground is one of the best-known and most distinctive aspects of the city. Since Victorian times, this remarkable feat of engineering has made an extraordinary contribution to the economy of the capital and played a vital role in the daily life of generations of Londoners. Stephen Halliday's informative, entertaining, wide-ranging history of the Underground celebrates the vision and determination of the Victorian Pioneers who conceived this revolutionary transport system. His book records the scandal, disappointments, and disasters that have punctuated the story and the careers of the gifted, dedicated, sometimes corrupt individuals that have shaped its history. It also gives a fascinating insight into the neglected, often unseen aspects of this subterranean system - the dense network of tunnels, shafts and chambers that have been created beneath the city streets.

There have been more prisons in London than in any other European city. Of these, Newgate was the largest, most notorious and worst. Built during the twelfth century, it became a legendary place - the inspiration of more poems, plays and novels than any other building in London. It was a place of cruelty and wretchedness, at various times holding Dick Turpin, Titus Oates, Daniel Defoe, Jack Sheppard and Casanova. Because prisons were privately run, any time spent in prison had to be paid for by the prisoner. Housing varied from a private cell with a cleaning woman and a visiting prostitute, to simply lying on the floor with no cover. Those who died inside - and only a quarter of prisoners survived until their execution day - had to stay in Newgate as a rotting corpse until relatives found the money for the body to be released. Stephen Halliday tells the story of Newgate's origins, the criminals it held, the punishments meted out and its rebuilding and reform. This is a compelling slice of London's social and criminal history.

London is a city of markets: markets in meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, money, insurance, shipping and, occasionally, in stolen goods. As both a major port and the nation's capital, it was almost inevitable that commerce became the bedrock on which the city has risen to be one of the world's greatest modern marketplaces. Many of today's street names remind the observant pedestrian of the commercial centres that were to be found in them in times past: Bread Street, Milk Street and Ironmonger Lane; London's market history is all around us. Stephen Halliday's book is a comprehensive account of the long, lurid and often controversial history of London's markets, from Roman Londinium to the London of Boris Johnson, as well as a guide to visiting them (and emerging with a bargain). He explores the historic markets still in existence, and the sites of those that no longer exist, and recounts the fascinating stories of the famous, not-so-famous and sometimes infamous Londoners who have populated them, both as buyers and sellers, through the ages.

London is unrivalled as a source of inspiration for writers from Geoffrey Chaucer to J.K. Rowling. From 221B Baker Street to the Old Curiosity Shop will explore the capital both from the viewpoint of the many writers who have used it as a stage for their plots and their characters; and of the readers whose imagination is fired by the knowledge that they are standing outside the home of David Copperfield on the Strand or Count Dracula's residence in Piccadilly. All of London's clubs, pubs, restaurants, houses and streets that have been made famous in the works of the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, Charles Dickens and Evelyn Waugh are featured in this exhaustively researched volume. Listed geographically, each entry provides a description of the location, its place in literature and its inspiration. From Fleming's legendary Blades Club in Mayfair, that made appearances in both Moonraker and Goldfinger, to Waugh's bohemian Shepheard's Hotel from Vile Bodies, that was based on the celebrated Cavendish Hotel, to the haunts of Sherlock Holmes and Bertie Wooster, From 221B Baker Street to the Old Curiosity Shop will appeal to all lovers of classic fiction set in the great city.

Stephen Halliday's beautifully illustrated book shows how the ramshackle collection of communities that entered the 19th century became the world's first metropolis. This fascinating story is told through the lives of eight men who created the Victorian capital and is a must read for all! In 1801 the population of London was almost one million. A century later, on the death of Queen Victoria, it had passed six million, and the city had been transformed. John Nash defined the modern West End with his 'New Street' (Regent Street) between the farm at Regent's Park and the swamp at St James' Park. Marc Brunel invented the tunnelling shield that made the underground railways possible. Thomas Cubitt built houses for aristocrats in Belgravia and homes for the middle classes at Pimlico and Bloomsbury. Sir Charles Barry built the New Palace of Westminster to replace the charred ruins of the old one. Sir Joseph Paxton designed the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the profits of which enabled...Alfred Waterhouse to build the Natural History Museum and thus begin the South Kensington museums. Sir Joseph Bazalgette built the sewers, streets and parks that made the metropolis a safe place to live, and...Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Metropolitan Railway, began the process that created the suburbs of Metroland and elsewhere. Stephen Halliday's portraits of these remarkable men give a fascinating insight into the diversity of their careers and achievements. They created the imperial capital from which Victoria ruled over the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

Victorian Britain was the world's industrial powerhouse. Its factories, mills and foundries supplied a global demand for manufactured goods. As Britain changed from an agricultural to an industrial ecomony, people swarmed into the towns and cities where the work was; by the end of Queen Victoria's reign, almost 80 per cent of the population was urban. Overcrowding and filthy living conditions, though, were a recipe for disaster, and diseases such as cholera, typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox and puerperal (childbed) fever were a part of everyday life for (usually poor) town-and city-dwellers. However, thanks to a dedicated band of doctors, nurses, midwives, scientists, engineers and social reformers, by the time the Victorian era became the Edwardian, they were almost eradicated, and no longer a constant source of fear. Stephen Halliday tells the fascinating story of how these individuals fought opposition from politicians, taxpayers and often their own colleagues to overcome these diseases and make the country a safer place for everyone to live.