On the 9th of June 1865, Charles Dickens was travelling aboard the Folkestone to London Boat Train with his mistress and her mother, when it derailed while crossing a viaduct near Staplehurst in Kent. The train plunged down a bank into a dry river bed, killing ten passengers, and badly wounding forty. Dickens was profoundly affected by the disaster, and a year later, he published The Signalman, a supremely atmospheric ghost story in which the narrator, while investigating a dank and lonely railway cutting, meets the signalman who works there. His new acquaintance appears to live under the shadow of an unbearable secret, haunted by an apparition whose appearance prefigures terrible rail accidents. Drawing on Dickens own experiences, and introduced by Simon Bradley, author of The Railways, The Signalman is both an important piece of rail history, and a sinister tale which will make you think twice next time you enter the quiet carriage.

This is the essential companion to the architecture of Cambridgeshire, fully revised for the first time in sixty years and featuring superb new photography. Half of the book is devoted to the famous university city, with its astonishingly rich and varied inheritance of college buildings including striking post-war additions. A combination of boldness and innovation may be found at Ely Cathedral, one of the greatest achievements of English medieval design. By comparison, the rest of the county remains surprisingly little known. Its largely unspoiled landscapes vary from the northern flat fen country to the rolling chalk uplands of the south and east; its architecture encompasses rewarding village churches, distinctive vernacular building in timber, stone, and brick, the former monastic sites at Denny and Anglesey, and the magnificent aristocratic seat of Wimpole Hall.

In Brian May's Red Special you will discover everything about Brian May's unique, home-made guitar. Brian reveals all, from the guitar's origins to playing on the roof of Buckingham Palace, from Live Aid to the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, from the set of Bohemian Rhapsody to opening the Academy Awards in 2019 where the film scooped four Oscars. All of this is accompanied by original diagrams, sketches and notes from the building of the guitar, as well as a selection of classic photographs including Brian on stage with his guitar, close-ups and even an X-ray. Rare images are included throughout, as the entire guitar was dismantled and photographed for the book.

The newly revised Pevsner guide to the buildings of Oxford and South-East Oxfordshire This updated guide addresses half a century of change and development since the previous edition, including a wealth of ambitious new buildings for the University and its colleges. Familiar buildings such as the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera are reinterpreted, and the many renovations and extensions are described and assessed. Oxford’s commercial buildings, suburbs, and houses are also explored in depth, including much that is published here for the first time. The county area extends from the outskirts of Oxford to Henley-on-Thames, following the historic Thameside boundary of Oxfordshire and taking in the hills of the southern Chilterns. Here the new volume includes fresh accounts of major country houses such as Nuneham Courtenay and Thame Park, new assessments of church restorations, furnishings, and stained glass, more inclusive coverage of commercial buildings in the towns and a fuller selection of vernacular and rural buildings across the whole of this attractive and rewarding part of England.

Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2015 Currently filming for BBC programme Full Steam Ahead Britain's railways have been a vital part of national life for nearly 200 years. Transforming lives and landscapes, they have left their mark on everything from timekeeping to tourism. As a self-contained world governed by distinctive rules and traditions, the network also exerts a fascination all its own. From the classical grandeur of Newcastle station to the ceaseless traffic of Clapham Junction, from the mysteries of Brunel's atmospheric railway to the lost routines of the great marshalling yards, Simon Bradley explores the world of Britain's railways, the evolution of the trains, and the changing experiences of passengers and workers. The Victorians' private compartments, railway rugs and footwarmers have made way for air-conditioned carriages with airline-type seating, but the railways remain a giant and diverse anthology of structures from every period, and parts of the system are the oldest in the world. Using fresh research, keen observation and a wealth of cultural references, Bradley weaves from this network a remarkable story of technological achievement, of architecture and engineering, of shifting social classes and gender relations, of safety and crime, of tourism and the changing world of work. The Railways shows us that to travel through Britain by train is to journey through time as well as space.

This essential guide opens up the treasures of London's most alluring quarter. At its core are Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and the palatial Government buildings of Whitehall, together with the great band of Royal Parks stretching westward toward Kensington. It also includes London's West End (Covent Garden, Soho, Mayfair, and St. James's) and the less well-known Belgravia and Pimlico. For each area there is a detailed gazetteer and brief introduction. A general introduction provides a historical and artistic overview. Numerous maps and plans, over 100 new color photographs, full indexes, and an illustrated glossary help to make this book invaluable as both reference work and guide. This is the fifth of six Pevsner Architectural Guides volumes on London available in cloth.

Simon Bradley traces the history of the station, introducing us to the men behind the architecture and looks at its new international status. This fine new edition includes a fascinating chapter on the new hotel and some timely revisions bringing it fully up to date. 'A marvellous piece of social, aesthetic and technological history... it is impossible to praise Bradley's book too highly' A. N. Wilson, Daily Telegraph 'Brilliantly and with deft hand, Simon Bradley makes sense of it all ... fabulous' Sunday Telegraph 'A masterpiece of historical context ... immensely readable' Sunday Times 'This fine book examines the history of both the church that gave the station its name and the railway terminus ... unexpectedly compelling' Daily Mail

This compact and accessible book is for anyone who would like to understand more about the architectural history of English churches. Clear and easy to use, the text explains the key components of church architecture-stylistic developments, functional requirements, regional variations, and arcane vocabulary. Readers can equip themselves to explore historic churches knowledgeably, evaluate dates and restoration phases, interpret stained glass and monuments, and make their own discoveries. Written by one of the editors of the Pevsner Architectural Guides and distilling years of experience visiting churches, the book includes explanations of how to learn more from building plans, tips for further research, searching for clues, and analyzing the evidence.

The term aecolonisationAe encompasses much diversity, from the settlement of the western Mediterranean and the Black Sea by Greeks in the archaic period to the foundation of Roman colonies in mainland Italy during the Republic. Though very different in their motives and methods, both Greek and Roman colonisations are presented by our sources as organised and clearly defined processes, within which internal and external relations were firmly delineated. This volume contains six new studies, two Greek and four Roman. Contributors employ historiographical, comparative and post-colonial approaches to question ancient constructs. The book contains detailed case-studies as well as synoptic treatments. Contributors build on recent research in Greek and Roman history to show how ideologies of colonisation develop and come to dominate the historical record.