The Little Book of Oxfordshire is a funny, fast-paced, fact-packed compendium of the sort of frivolous, fantastic or simply strange information which no one will want to be without. Here we find out about the most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, famous sons and daughters and literally hundreds of wacky facts (plus some authentically bizarre bits of historic trivia). Combining essential facts with little-known, weird and often hilarious trivia, it is an essential purchase for all lovers of the county. Colourful characters and the general mayhem of Oxford history flow through the pages like the iconic Thames, Isis and Cherwell rivers. Dip in and celebrate!

Willy Cockhead had to live with his name. So too did countless others lumbered with ridiculous monikers, safely hidden away in Oxford's records and censuses - until now. And what names! Some rhyme (Dick Thick), a few are odd (Silly Waters), others you have to say out loud (Rhoda Turtle) and some are just groan-worthy (Blenda Belcher). Uncovered by local author Paul Sullivan and accompanied with strange-but-true anecdotes, this entertaining volume of baffling, ill-thought-out and just plain rude examples champions the people and places of Oxfordshire that got saddled with the daftest of names.

The Secret History of Oxford offers the reader an off-the-beaten-track tour of the city's landmarks and streets. Filled with hundreds of facts and anecdotes, it reveals the amusing, unlikely and downright wonderful stories hidden beneath the surface. Some, such as the fact that the founder of Oxford was eaten by wolves, will be known; many others, such as the fact that Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, stole a piece of New College's unicorn horn, that one of the Fellows of Christ Church was a bear or that Oxford Castle has England's most frequently sighted ghost, are much less widely known - and some of these stories have not appeared in print for hundreds of years. With rare photographs and intriguing information on the people, eras and events that defined the city's history, this book lets the flying cats out of the bags, rattles the dragons' cages and reveals all the skeletons in the city's cupboards.

The Weight Lifted collects Chicago Tribune sportswriter Paul Sullivan's coverage of the Chicago Cubs' historic 2016 championship season. The 16-article collection traces the arc of the Cubs' groundbreaking year, from their spring training in Arizona all the way to their rousing Game Seven victory against the Cleveland Indians. Through interviews with players, fans, team manager Joe Maddon and other key figures, as well as in-depth reporting of the games as they happened, Sullivan details how the Cubs-once deemed "the lovable losers"-overcame the odds to end the longest championship drought in sports history. The Weight Lifted allows Chicago fans to relive the 2016 season from start to incredible finish-a dream that was 108 years in the making.

In this important new text, Paul Sullivan introduces readers to a qualitative methodology rooted in the analysis of dialogue and subjectivity: the dialogical approach. Sullivan unpacks the theory behind a dialogical approach to qualitative research, and relates issues of philosophy and methodology to the practical process of actually doing qualitative research. Sullivan's book foregrounds the role of atmosphere, subjectivity and authorial reflection within texts. His work also enables the researcher to attend to the conflicts, judgments and interpretive activities that take place in language use. Practically speaking, the dialogical approach enables analysis of direct and indirect discourse, speech genres, hesitations, irony and a variety of other conditions that shape our understanding of dialogue in context. As well as exploring the theory behind this innovative method, Sullivan provides sound practical advice that recognises the everyday analytic needs of the reader. Topics include: * The theoretical foundations of the approach * The role of subjectivity in qualitative research * Data preparation and analysis * The future of the approach Theoretical discussion is consistently accompanied by research examples and suggestions as to how the dialogical approach could be used in the reader's own research. This important and timely book is ideal for any reader who wants to do research with dialogue and who is keen to attend to the full nuances and complexities of discourse.

Think you can tell a killer from a king, a pirate from a pope? There's only one way to find out! This amazing little quiz contains sixty different 'odd one outs'. Featuring royals and reprobates, palaces and poorhouses, take it today and find out just how much you really know about British history...

This is the history of Oxford as you have never encountered it before. The first historical record of Oxford laments that the city has been burnt to the ground by Vikings. Its religious houses were founded by a woman who blinded her would-be attacker. Its students were poverty-stricken desperados in perpetual armed conflict with the townsmen. One of its principal colleges, meanwhile, doubled as a slaughterhouse--and its richest streets and university edifices backed on to some of the most pestilential slums in England. With a mangled skeleton in every cupboard, this is the real story of the Oxford. Read it if you dare

Which Prime Minister holds an Oxford beer drinking record? Which Oxford academic ate the heart of King Louis IV? Which Pope came from Oxford? From the momentous to the outlandish, this book is packed full of fun facts about Oxford. With photographs, drawings and cartoons, intriguing information and little-known, weird and often hilarious trivia, it is a highly entertaining guide to where you are, what to look out for now you're here, and how on earth all this came to be. Dip in and celebrate! From famous quotes about the city to local people's likes and dislikes, it's all here in this addictive little book.

Today, foreigners travel to the Yucatan for ruins, temples, and pyramids, white sand beaches and clear blue water. One hundred years ago, they went for cheap labor, an abundance of land, and the opportunity to make a fortune exporting cattle, henequen fiber, sugarcane, or rum. Sometimes they found death.
In 1875 an American plantation manager named Robert Stephens and a number of his workers were murdered by a band of Maya rebels. To this day, no one knows why. Was it the result of feuding between aristocratic families for greater power and wealth? Was it the foreseeable consequence of years of oppression and abuse of Maya plantation workers? Was a rebel leader seeking money and fame--or perhaps retribution for the loss of the woman he loved?
For whites, the events that took place at Xuxub, Stephens's plantation, are virtually unknown, even though they engendered a diplomatic and legal dispute that vexed Mexican-U.S. relations for over six decades. The construction of "official" histories allowed the very name of Xuxub to die, much as the plantation itself was subsumed by the jungle. For the Maya, however, what happened at Xuxub is more than a story they pass down through generations--it is a defining moment in how they see themselves.
Sullivan masterfully weaves the intricately tangled threads of this story into a fascinating account of human accomplishments and failings, in which good and evil are never quite what they seem at first, and truth proves to be elusive. "Xuxub Must Die" seeks not only to fathom a mystery, but also to explore the nature of guilt, blame, and understanding.

Francis Hall was a Victorian man of the British empire who sailed from England to Mombassa in 1892 to work for the Imperial British East African Company. He wrote a series of letters to his immediate family, which were recently discovered in the Kenya National Archive. The letters are published here in their original form, along with supplementary information from the Royal Geographical Society in London, and material gleaned from the Francis Hall archive in Oxford on the early days of colonial settlement.

In Remixology: Tracing the Dub Diaspora Paul Sullivan explores the evolution of Dub; the avant-garde verso of Reggae. Dub as a set of studio strategies and techniques was among the first forms of popular music to turn the idea of song inside out, and is still far from being fully explored. With a unique grip on dance, electronic, and popular music, dub-born notions of remix and re-interpretation set the stage for the music of the twenty-first century. This book explores the origins of dub in '70s Kingston, Jamaica and traces its evolution as a genre, approach and attitude to music to the present day. Stopping off in the cities where it has made most impact - London, Berlin, Toronto, Kingston, Bristol, New York, Sullivan's study spans a range of genres, from post-punk to dub-techno, jungle to the now ubiquitous dubstep. Along the way he speaks to a host of international musicians, DJs and luminaries of the dub world including Scientist, Adrian Sherwood, Channel, U Roy, Clive Chin, Dennis Bovell, Shut Up And Dance, DJ Spooky, Francois Kevorkian, Mala and Roots Manuva. This wide-ranging and lucid book follows several parallel threads, including the evolution of the MC, the birth of sound system culture and the broader story of the post-war Jamaican diaspora itself. One of the few books to be written specifically on dub and its global influence, Remixology is also one of the first to look at the specific relationship between dub and the concept that cuts across all postmodern creative disciplines today: the Remix.

Sooner or later everyone encounters a situation in which the stakes are high and the outcome is vital. And even top performers can crumble when faced with such extreme pressure. But then there are the performers who thrive under such conditions. In "Clutch", you'll meet: a skinny sergeant who saved his battalion in Iraq; a rookie baseball player who pitched his team into its first World Series; and, a lawyer who struggled in school but became one of the top litigators in America. According to Sullivan, clutch performance does not stem from an innate ability. It's a learned skill - the art of operating in high-stress situations as if they were everyday conditions. Even some of the most experienced and talented performers lack this skill - but Sullivan shows that anyone can develop it.

You'll find no pretty parades of princes or benevolent industrialists here. This is Deadly Derby, caught red handed - a city built by the Romans over the dead bodies of Britons; trashed, burnt and reinvented by the Vikings; bludgeoned into a Dark Age den of vice by the Saxons; razed once again by the Normans; and simmering with murder, slavery, wickedness and profanity ever since. Heretics roasted throughout the sixteenth century; plague decimated the population at whim in the seventeenth century; and in the eighteenth a new form of malevolence arrived with slave-devouring factories and industrialists. Invading Scottish Jacobites in 1745 were the least of Derby's worries - murder and violent crime were riding high from the outset, and the city slums bred all imaginable forms of vice and desperation. All rounded off with heavy bombing in World War II. Welcome to the real Derby!