This is the true tale of a boy born into a typical East End family in the Second World War, beginning with his early memories of hop picking and having little money, and moving on to his life in the 1950s and his experience of the devastating east coast floods of 1953. These early memories are the author's own, but what he remembers are a number of events and places that many others growing up in Essex will also recall. This is an entertaining, humorous and nostalgic read for anyone who remembers Essex in the Second World War and beyond.
E.J. Rudsdale’s role as a museum curator and air-raid shelter superintendent at Colchester Castle during the Second World War gave him the perfect opportunity to record life on the Home Front in his journals. Seventy years later, the selected extracts gathered here provide a remarkable insight into wartime life. Rudsdale’s writing is characterised throughout by his wry observations of wartime officialdom and his lack of conformity with the prevailing views of the time. He was a pacifist, which gives his journals an unusual perspective. However, even as a civilian he could not escape the conflict, living in a garrison town threatened by invasion and regular bombing raids. His journals, therefore, record anxious and tragic events, but throughout it all his sense of humour is never diminished. This absorbing collection demonstrates Rudsdale’s ability to bring a scene vividly to life and each account highlights the daily pressures that people endured as they valiantly tried to carry on with normal life in spite of the war.
Although only children at the time, the Second World War had a permanent effect on the schoolboys who lived through the conflict. Watching a country preparing for war and then being immersed in the horrors of the Blitz brought encounters and events that some will never forget. Now in their seventies and eighties, many are revisiting their memories of this time of upheaval and strife for the first time. In this charming book, David F. Wood recalls his days as a schoolboy in Essex, where his family moved when the Luftwaffe threatened his native London. With the same sense of fascination that grips many men of his generation, he describes watching airmen parachute to safety during the Battle of Britain and witnessing a Messerschmitt dramatically crash-landing close to his home. The accounts of his days spent playing with his new friends in the nearby countryside provide a stark contrast to the ravages of a war that was going on all around them. The first of a new series documenting the memories of these wartime schoolboys, this book is a must for anyone who wishes to learn more about life on the Home Front through the eyes of someone who witnessed it first hand.
"You always wore old clothes while hop picking as they got stained and smelly from the hops. My pride of attire from the hopping box during my early teens was a pair of horse riding jodhpurs."This is the tale of a boy born into a typical East End of London family during the Blitz. Told with nostalgia and humour, he begins with his early memories of hop picking in Kent, life in the 1950s and the east coast floods of 1953.After leaving school at 15 Alan joined the Merchant Navy illegally. He had a brush with danger during the Suez Crisis, suffered appendicitis while sailing down the coast of Africa, and spent a spell in an Australian prison!
In the midst of an international crisis, Heidi Milligan, a beautiful, brilliant American naval commander, accidentally discovers an obscure reference to the long-buried North American Treaty, a precedent-shattering secret pact between the United States and Great Britain. The President believes that the treaty offers the single shot at salvation for an energy-starved, economically devastated nation, but the only two copies plummeted into the watery depths of the Atlantic in twin disasters long ago. The original document must be found—and the one American who can do the job is Dirk Pitt. But in London, a daring counterplot is being orchestrated to see that the treaty is never implemented. Brian Shaw, a master spy who has often worked hand in hand with American agents, now confronts his most challenging command. Pitt’s mission: Raise the North American Treaty. Shaw’s mission: Stop Pitt. Praise for Night Probe! and the Dirk Pitt® novels “A rich tale . . . an absorbing, carefully told mystery with plenty of surprises.”—Los Angeles Times “Dirk Pitt is a combination James Bond and Jacques Cousteau.”—New York Daily News
"The most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off." THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE They are the last generation, the innocent victims of an accidental war, living out their last days, making do with what they have, hoping for a miracle. As the deadly rain moves ever closer, the world as we know it winds toward an inevitable end....
Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time is a collection of indigenous science fiction and urban fantasy focusing on LGBT and two-spirit characters. These stories range from a transgender woman undergoing an experimental transition process to young lovers separated through decades and meeting in their own far future. These are stories of machines and magic, love and self-love.
From the bestselling coauthor of Wittgenstein's Poker, a fascinating tour through the history of moral philosophy A runaway train is racing toward five men who are tied to the track. Unless the train is stopped, it will inevitably kill all five men. You are standing on a footbridge looking down on the unfolding disaster. However, a fat man, a stranger, is standing next to you: if you push him off the bridge, he will topple onto the line and, although he will die, his chunky body will stop the train, saving five lives. Would you kill the fat man? The question may seem bizarre. But it's one variation of a puzzle that has baffled moral philosophers for almost half a century and that more recently has come to preoccupy neuroscientists, psychologists, and other thinkers as well. In this book, David Edmonds, coauthor of the bestselling Wittgenstein's Poker, tells the riveting story of why and how philosophers have struggled with this ethical dilemma, sometimes called the trolley problem. In the process, he provides an entertaining and informative tour through the history of moral philosophy. Most people feel it's wrong to kill the fat man. But why? After all, in taking one life you could save five. As Edmonds shows, answering the question is far more complex—and important—than it first appears. In fact, how we answer it tells us a great deal about right and wrong.
Fair, witty appraisal of cranks, quacks, and quackeries of science and pseudoscience: hollow earth, Velikovsky, orgone energy, Dianetics, flying saucers, Bridey Murphy, food and medical fads, and much more.
