Roy Brooks became a legend in his own time for the puckish delight he took in telling the truth, the whole truth - and even the unwholesome truth - about the properties, as an estate agent, that he advertised for sale. From 1950 to his death in 1971, his fame for these revolutionary, outrageous, funny, and on occasions, painful advertisements spread far and wide. In a trade well known for its euphemisms, optimistic cliches and skilful camouflage, he won the delighted applause of the property-buying and newspaper-reading, public.;This is a collection of the best of Roy Brooks' property advertisements in the Sunday Times and Observer newspapers.
A classic study of military leadership uncovering why generals fail The Crimea, the Boer War, the Somme, Tobruk, Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs: these are just some of the milestones in a century of military incompetence, of costly mishaps and tragic blunders. Are these simple accidents—as the "bloody fool" theory has it—or are they inevitable? The psychologist Norman F. Dixon argues that there is a pattern to inept generalship, and he locates this pattern within the very act of creating armies in the first place, which in his view produces a levelling down of human capability that encourages the mediocre and limits the gifted. In this light, successful generals achieve what they do despite the stultifying features of the organization to which they belong. On the Psychology of Military Incompetence is at once an original exploration of the battles that have defined the last two centuries of human civilization and an essential guide for the next generation of military leaders.
The timid and rather lonely Evelyn Tradescant is a recent failure at love who has a passion for natural history. She meets Theo Gormann by accident and is drawn into his net. But Evelyn soon discovers she has a share of power in their relationship, power that she relishes manipulating . . . .
Born Nikolai Pewsner into a Russian-Jewish family in Leipzig in 1902, Nikolaus Pevsner was a dedicated scholar who pursued a promising career as an academic in Dresden and Göttingen. When, in 1933 Jews were no longer permitted to teach in German universities, he lost his job and looked for employment in England. Here, over a long and amazingly industrious career, he made himself an authority on the exploration and enjoyment of English art and architecture, so much so that his magisterial county-by-county series of 46 books on The Buildings of England (first published 1951 - 74) is usually referred to simply as 'Pevsner'. As a critic, academic and champion of Modernism, Pevsner became a central figure in the architectural consensus that accompanied post-war reconstruction; as a 'general practitioner' of architectural history, he covered an astonishing range, from Gothic cathedrals and Georgian coffee houses to the Festival of Britain and Brutalist tower blocks. Susie Harries explores the truth about Nikolaus Pevsner's reported sympathies with elements of Nazi ideology, his internment in England as an enemy alien and his sometimes painful assimilation into his country of exile. His Heftchen - secret diaries he kept from the age of 14 for another sixty years - reveal hidden aspirations and anxieties, as do his numerous letters (he wrote to his wife, Lola, every day that they were apart).Harries is the first biographer to have read Pevsner's private papers and, through them, to have seen into the workings of his mind.Her definitive biography is not only rich in context and far-ranging, but is also brought to life by quotations from Pevsner himself. He was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism; trained in the rigour of German scholarship, he became an Everyman in his copious commissions, publications, broadcasts and lectures on art, architecture, design, education, town planning, social housing, conservation, Mannerism, the Bauhaus, the Victorians, Zeitgeist, Englishness and how a nation's character may, or must, be reflected in its art. His life - as an outsider yet an insider at the heart of English art history - illuminates both the predicament and the prowess of the continental émigrés who did so much to shape British culture after 1945.
To ‘walk in Pimlico’ is, according to the Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang, the colloquial expression 'to be handsomely dressed'. Comedian, clog dancer, comic vocalist, actor and all-round funny fellow Corney Sage is treading the boards at the Constellation in Whitechapel when he stumbles across the body of an actress outside the theatre and catches sight of the killer as he escapes. Corney was not the only witness. Fellow actress Lucy Strong also saw what happened and when the murderer returns to the scene of the crime that same night, both fear for their lives. Corney and Lucy flee London separately, keeping in touch with each other through a series of advertisements in the trade paper, the Era. Certain they have escaped the same fate as Bessie, they settle into their new lives away from London. But the murderer – a master of disguise – is slowly closing in on them and it is only a matter of time before he pounces . . . From the drawing rooms of polite society to the back rooms of brothels, through music halls, circus rings and freak shows, Ann Featherstone brilliantly reconstructs 19th century England in this gripping psychological thriller.
CORDUROY MANSIONS - Book 1 In the Corduroy Mansions series of novels, set in London’s hip Pimlico neighborhood, we meet a cast of charming eccentrics, including perhaps the world’s most clever terrier, who make their home in a handsome, though slightly dilapidated, apartment block. Corduroy Mansions is the affectionate nickname given to a genteel, crumbling mansion block in London’s vibrant Pimlico neighborhood and the home turf of a captivating collection of quirky and altogether McCall-Smithian characters. There’s the middle-aged wine merchant William, who’s trying to convince his reluctant twenty-four-year-old son, Eddie, to leave the nest; and Marcia, the boutique caterer who has her sights set on William. There’s also the (justifiably) much-loathed Member of Parliament Oedipus Snark; his mother, Berthea, who’s writing his biography and hating every minute of it; and his long-suffering girlfriend, Barbara, a literary agent who would like to be his wife (but, then, she’d like to be almost anyone’s wife). There’s the vitamin evangelist, the psychoanalyst, the art student with a puzzling boyfriend and Freddie de la Hay, the Pimlico terrier who insists on wearing a seat belt and is almost certainly the only avowed vegetarian canine in London. Filled with the ins and outs of neighborliness in all its unexpected variations, Corduroy Mansions showcases the life, laughter and humanity that have become the hallmarks of Alexander McCall Smith’s work.