The Derbyshire villages of Draycott and Church Wilne have dozed quietly beside the left bank of the Derwent for more than a thousand years, barely registering a mention even in the history of the area. But have things really been as quiet as that? What about the case of the dodgy 18th-century vicar? The flying corpse? The combustible cricketer? And more disastrous, but unexplained, fires than you could shake a stick at. No, things are definitely not as quiet as they seem down by the Derwent. And anyway, why are the local inhabitants known as 'Neddies'?
For many Britons France has provided their first taste of that alien world called 'abroad' - and sometimes their last. Richard Guise has tracked down ten travellers' tales from three centuries, before venturing forth himself to follow some of their wanderings across the country. He finds out what's left from the sights they saw and how dramatically the country and its people changed over these turbulent times - taking in the years of the Grand Tour, the Revolution and the Napoleonic era; the coming of the railways, holidays and guide books; two world wars, recovery and prosperity; and the twenty-first-century threat of terrorism. His virtual companions include two Grand Tourers (Philip Thicknesse and Tobias Smollett - nicknamed Smelfungus), the man rumoured to have inspired Karl Baedeker, a future chairman of London County Council and Richard's own father, a D-Day survivor. They're not all complimentary about France and the French...
All day, every day we're surrounded by things that annoy us. So it's surprising we've had to wait until now for a reasonable list. Speaking up for irritated people all over Britain, the Old Geezer's Dictionary of Irritants points a decisive finger at offenders, with both gusto and humour.
Four English blokes of a certain age strike out from their Leicestershire local and head for the hills of the Dingle Peninsula. This laugh-out-loud tale of their short amble on the wild west coast of Ireland is packed with character and characters, beer and banter, daftness and a dolphin.
Lena Orlin paints a dense picture of everyday life in Renaissance England, with an emphasis on personal privacy, the built environment, and the life story of a remarkable undiscovered woman - merchant's wife and mother of four, Alice Barnham - with a central role in some of the most important untold stories of sixteenth-century women.
The political narrative of late medieval English towns is often reduced to the story of the gradual intensification of oligarchy, in which power was exercised and projected by an ever smaller ruling group over an increasingly subservient urban population. Contesting the City takes its inspiration not from English historiography, but from a more dynamic continental scholarship on towns in the southern Low Countries, Germany, and France. Its premise is that scholarly debate about urban oligarchy has obscured contemporary debate about urban citizenship. It identifies from the records of English towns a tradition of urban citizenship, which did not draw upon the intellectual legacy of classical models of the 'citizen'. This was a vernacular citizenship, which was not peculiar to England, but which was present elsewhere in late medieval Europe. It was a citizenship that was defined and created through action. There were multiple, and divergent, ideas about citizenship, which encouraged townspeople to make demands, to assert rights, and to resist authority. This volume exploits the rich archival sources of the five major towns in England - Bristol, Coventry, London, Norwich, and York - in order to present a new picture of town government and urban politics over three centuries. The power of urban governors was much more precarious than historians have imagined. Urban oligarchy could never prevail - whether ideologically or in practice - when there was never a single, fixed meaning of the citizen.
"An unusually compelling work of scholarly synthesis: a history of a city of revolution in a revolutionary century. Garrioch claims that until 1750 Paris remained a city characterized by a powerful sense of hierarchy. From the mid-century on, however, and with gathering speed, economic, demographic, political, and social change swept the city. Having produced an extremely engaging account of the old corporate society, Garrioch turns to the forces that relentlessly undermined it."—John E. Talbott, author of The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King's Navy, 1778-1813 "A truly wonderful synthesis of the many historical strands that compose the history of eighteenth-century Paris. In rewriting the history of the French Revolution as a more than century-long urban metamorphosis, Garrioch makes a brilliant case for the centrality of Paris in the history of France."—Bonnie Smith, author of The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice
This volume, the earlier of the two-volume official History of Aberdeen, provides a comprehensive picture of the development of the two historic burghs of Old Aberdeen and New Aberdeen over their first seven centuries, from 1100 to 1800. As early as the 14th century, Aberdeen was: recognized as one of the 'four great towns of Scotland'. Early settlement, the growing townscape and social change over the centuries are all traced. Aberdeen's contacts with the sea and other towns overseas and its economy and politics, both local and national, are assessed. And Aberdonians themselves, the vital forces behind the history of the two burghs, are highlighted: their faith and culture, homes and health, and their education and pastimes are all rediscovered.
Bad architecture. Soulless. Are the suburbs really as homogenous and conservative as we think they are? This wide-ranging comparative study of England and the USA offers new interpretations on suburbia.
There had, of course, been other fires, Four Hundred and fifty years before, the city had almost burned to the ground. Yet the signs from the heavens in 1666 were ominous: comets, pyramids of flame, monsters born in city slums. Then, in the early hours on 2 September, a small fire broke out on the ground floor of a baker's house in Pudding Lane. In five days that small fire would devastate the third largest city in the Western world. Adrian Tinniswood's magnificent new account of the Great Fire of London explores the history of a cataclysm and its consequences. It pieces together the untold human story of the Fire and its aftermath - the panic, the search for scapegoats, and the rebirth of a city. Above all, it provides an unsurpassable recreation of what happened to schoolchildren and servants, courtiers and clergyman when the streets of London ran with fire.
