United Kingdom Books

For those interested in the 'Ripper' saga, or just in the Victorian period in general this book should find a place on your shelf. An excellent, and much needed compliation.

What can you expect from the editor and mastermind of casebook.org? - certainly something every person interested in the whitechapel murders should have on their bookshelves.

Stephen P. Ryder didn't just write a ripper-book about the case in general, because we already have plenty of those. He picked a topic which gives some really good inside information on how Londoners reacted to the killings that happened right in front of their porches - Letters, sent from various persons, some known, most of them completely unknown, to the editors of the leading London newspapers, telling in their own personal words how the killing spree of Jack the Ripper influenced their daily lives.

The chronologial order of the letters helps to get a good feeling how the fear and terror rose among them, the more victims the perpetrator took.

Ryder also gave several of these writers a face, as the book contains lots of photos and illustrations. The text layout is perfectly readable and if you have read enough for one day, it's no problem to continue the next.

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As a bike-mad teenager growing up in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, Tom Simpson was the closest thing to a childhood hero that I had. His racing exploits used to make the headlines in the local paper, and I went to the cinema to see the Movietone News reports of his Classic wins in Europe. On a gas-pipe special bike that was far too big for me I tore around the lanes thinking that I was almost as fast as Tom. Along with thousands of other naive bike racing fans I stood out in the rain the day he was buried in Harworth, and cried, and did not understand.

I read all the books and articles subsequently written about Tom, watched all the programs and videos, and over the years have been left with a cardboard-cutout impression of a talented, ambitious athlete who just tried too hard. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, after all, a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Now William Fotheringham's new book has added a whole new dimension to that flat cardboard cutout, and put real flesh and blood on the dry bones of Tom's story. Far more than a seedy drugs expose, the book puts the many aspects of Tom's character and the various pressures on him in his chosen career into perspective, and into the context of his life and untimely death. There is neither commendation nor condemnation of Tom, but he emerges from this book, as from no other book, as a real person, a real character, a real "lad".

I am now in my second childhood, and Tom is still my hero, and tears still come to my eyes when I think about him, but now I do believe I finally understand.

A quick and engaging book for anyone interested in professional cycling and a historical perspective on one of the most impactful events of TDF history. Written without judgement and very matter of fact regarding drug use and how the "wink and a nod" attitude about it was so pervasive in the early 1960's cycling scene.

Elizabeth I (The British Library, Historic Lives Series) by Susan Doran is a really superb book! Though I have read many books about Queen Elizabeth this one, though concise, thoroughly captures the essence of the history of Elizabeth and her England. Susan Doran provides us a captivating glimpse into the complicated world facing Elizabeth both in her personal and majestic life as she confronts the dynamic political and religious world developing around her and the England she loves. Elizabeth I was a complex person ruling in a complicated world. In a very even handed way, Susan Doran presents how a dynamic Queen Elizabeth, at her best and worst, navigates as best she can, through the perils and complexities confronting her and England. Susan Doran gives us an Elizabeth who is real. She shows Elizabeth as a Queen who has human frailities, who is adept in propaganda, can be as cruel as she is rewarding, yet whose monarchy enthralls and inspires us to this day. Susan Doran's adept use of a superb collection of illustrations throughout the book really provides a wonderful dimension to her protrayal of Elizabeth as a dynamic queen of England. This is a book I recommend to anyone who has an interest in Elizabeth I, Queen of England.

This slim volume is only 144 pages including index. Susan Doran has written a complete, if brief, biography of Elizabeth I that hits all the main points of her life and rule. Nothing important seems to have been left out, and the narrative seems unhurried. One could read this book in a fairly short time, and have an understanding of Elizabeth's reign. However, for those who would like a bit more elaboration, Doran includes a Further Reading List at the end.

Doran's style is clear, engaging, and very readable. This seems to be a book intended for an adult reader, but it would be an excellent introduction for high school students (or even precocious middle schoolers), as well. The only spot where the narrative jars is when Doran briefly compares Elizabeth to Diana, Princess of Wales. Charismatic celebrities exist in every generation, and in twenty years, this reference may seem dated.

This is also an attractive book, apparently one of the first in a new series by The British Library. It includes many color photographs of portraits and documents throughout.

"If you could have dinner with any figure in history, who would it be?" My answer to this question would definately be Queen Victoria. This is especially true after having read this book. Even though Princess Beatrice "edited" Her Majesty's journal, it is still worth the read. These letters and excerpts from the Queen's journal are full of interesting facts, tender moments, and, of course, fiery quotes. I didn't want to put this book down! Even though I now have finished it, I still like to pick up the book and read little sections. I highly recommend this book for those who really want to get to know the real Queen Victoria. My only wish is that the editor had left the Queen's numerous underlines in tact. He says it was too expensive for the printing (which I can understand), but it really adds a lot. If readers are interested in that, they can find it in quotes in other works. This book is a must have!

This is a wonderful book which is compiled of letters and journal entries written by Queen Victoria. I have read other books about Queen Victoria and find her life to be very interesting. I thought that this book might be difficult to follow because of the format. Christopher Hibbert does a wonderful job with this book making it very easy to follow because of the bits of information he puts into it as the book goes on. The introduction is also very informative. I have trouble putting the book down and highly recommend it!!!!!

Where would England be today without the work of Reginald Joseph Mitchell who designed the Spitfire and Dame Houston who paid for the development of the Merlin engine when the government could not or would not do it. She was a patriot before it was cool to be one.

Mitchell despite his medical condition continued to work until the end. He even designed a 4 engine bomber that looked like a big spitfire and was faster that any other at the time. Unfortunately the prototype was damaged in a German bombing raid on the factory and the government would not fund another. There is no mention of him at the R.A.F. museum in London. An unknown hero. The Spitfire and radar in the UK and the radio proximity fuse in the US changed the outcome of the war.

What a pleasure to read a straight forward, well compiled book about a man and a time where integrity, loyalty and modesty mattered and self aggrandizement was not considered a virtue. So different from the situation today where, honours and plaudits are heaped upon those whose only claim to fame seems to be in the making of money.

It is now fashionable among a set within academia to see racism primarily as a problem of identity and culture - and its removal as a strategy of cultural and mere psychological change. Here is a book that argues that the only way to contest racism and its economic and social causation is to struggle consciously against it.

Louis Kushnick's restorative words in Race, Class And Struggle give back the link between these three essential and indivisible concepts, lucidly and unambiguously: In a racist and highly class-stratified society, the struggle of the black community, essentially against the racism that permeates society, is also a struggle against the class system.

These words come from his essay Parameters of British and North American Racism, and crystallise not only Kushnick's uncluttered perspective but also his trajectory on racism from the heart and thinking of two continents.

The author moved from his original New York Jewish family upbringing to that of adopted Mancunian, and his breadth of perception brings studied insight to both American and British race realities.

Kushnick is one of those rare thinkers and teachers who lives, agitates and writes from a truly bi-continental understanding, carrying through his words the insight from all he has experienced.

So much so, he can move from writing, as an insider, of the American civil rights movement to a critical chapter on British anti-discrimination legislation; from racism and anti-racism in Western Europe to the political economy of white racism in America, marshalling his commentaries and strategies with an impressive authority.

This is a profoundly basic book in the truest sense of the adjective. It exposes the ugly historical foundations that continue to bolster the economic and social structures and practice within which we still live.

From his first page, he traces the current plight of the working class throughout the world to black slavery in the Americas on which modern commerce and industry was founded.

From such beginnings was fostered the centrality of racism in the creation and reproduction of hierarchical and unequal class-based societies. For Kushnick, the price of racism was, and still continues to be, human flesh.

His clear and visceral arguments develop over the 27 years of writings from which these essays are culled. Thus he writes not only about the struggle for human rights, but also their erosion and revocation through the cumulative attacks of the American new Right over the past 20 years. He follows this with the sharpest of essays on the racism within the National Health Service.

Kushnick's book does much to re-awaken the debate about the state, and the need to tackle stereotypical racism, in an edifying and rational focus. This is needed urgently. His work with the Institute of Race Relations, and campaigns against racism and fascism, means that he writes from an activist commitment, and we need that too.

All his arguments stem from a belief in the ends of an inclusive and non-racist democracy. We need to keep on telling New Labour that we cherish that objective too. The crushing of racism is integral to our way forward. CHRIS SEARLE.

Review in major academic journal: SAGE RACE RELATIONS ABSTRACTS vol. 23, No. 2 MAY 1998.

We are only now beginning to reckon with the effect which the collapse of the old Eastern Block has had on social thought. Many commentators prefer to address the spread of globalisation - i.e. many countries, one economy, and that the Americans are the pathfinders. Challenging this nostrum is proving to be a thankless task. How does this book relate to these themes? For a start, the author has broken with the received wisdom now current in Britain, that you do not mention Race, Class and Struggle all in one book!

This work is a collection of essays published over a period of twenty years. The importance of this book is that it encourages us to rethink the link between the three in our confrontation with the scourge of racism at the tail end of this century. Kushnick explains, where others frighten. While he provides eloquent testimony to how racism blights societies and communities, he avoids the pessimism of race debates by showing the capacity of communities to transcend racial divide through class alliance. The theory running through this important collection is the hegomonic significance of class relationships in the construction of anti-racism politics. The impact and effects of racism vary from country to country and from continent to continent. It is this variance that makes the task of constructing a comparative study of racism daunting. It is here that Kushnick is at his most masterful. He provides a synthesis of the nature and impact of racism in the US and Western Europe. As a social scientist, he writes with the ease of a person with many skills. His historical account of the origins of racism in the two hemispheres is rigorous - above all he takes the reader through the labyrinth of causes as well as the many struggles that have been waged to counteract the pernicious nature of racism. He notes acutely the attacks on gains that have been made in containing the worst forms of racism and notes the relentless pressure both in the US and Western Europe to retreat from anti-racist measures. He writes that there will always be among the majority population, those who feel indifferent to the plight of those at the sharp end of racial discrimination. However, those who thought colour would offer them a shield against inequities and social injustice, are now forced to confront the real meaning of

globalisation in a one-world economy. This is why the class dimension is essential in the thoughtful way in which Kushnick has developed this refreshing analysis. He makes it clear that the most successful achievements in the anti-racist policies came through collective action across the racial divide. Atomisation of struggles weaken rather than strengthen the holistic approach to the worthy effort to rid society of racial injustice, prejudice and social exclusion. Racism defigures society and getting rid of it does not constitute a favour to the socially excluded. This is why the discussion in this book is also anchored around the way opponents of racial injustice and prejudice combine their energies in achieving social transformation in the field of discrimination. For all of these reasons this will prove to be one of the most important books on race because of the way in which events in the US are mirrored in Western Europe This book should be a primer in any undergraduate and post-graduate programme.

SAGE RACE RELATIONS ABSTRACTS vol. 23, No. 2 MAY 1998.

James Tooley and Andrew Coulson (see below) continue the tradition of E.G. West in asking the big question about education. What's with this idea of government schooling anyway?

In Reclaiming Education Tooley constructs an imaginary focus group to ask an even bigger question. If we started again from scratch how would we think about education and schooling? Well, we certainly wouldn't pack kids off for 12 years of monopoly government schooling.

While we are asking questions, how come that there are plenty of failed government schools but no failed Wal-Marts? Could it be that food markets have a brand to protect and so deploy training, quality control, and research and development to make sure that every store in the chain delivers the same retail food experience?

So why wouldn't the same principle apply to child education? Actually it already does. Out in the developing world there are private companies--NIIT in India, Pitagoras in Brazil, TECSUP in Peru, and Educor in South Africa--delivering low-cost branded education, and they are rapidly expanding. They are ruthless about controlling quality, getting feedback from their students, and exploiting market opportunities.

Read all about it. Then dare to imagine a chain of Edu-Marts in the United States delivering low-coast quality education in the inner city.

Tooley will change the way you think about education.

Most education policy discussions revolve around the merits of this or that reform to our existing public schools, failing to even consider alternative education systems. These discussions are rendered moot by the far more profound analysis presented in Reclaiming Education. With this work, James Tooley addresses a question that few other scholars have had the vision or the expertise to ask: What sort of education system will _best_ serve the public? The cogency of his answer and the soundness of the evidence and arguments on which it is based make Reclaiming Education one of the finest and most important books on education policy ever written...

If you're interested in the life of Edward John Trelawny, you'll have to look elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Tre' (as his friends knew him) was a privateer, a scoundrel, a lover of poetry, a freedom-fighter and a loyal friend of the most prolific literary talents of the romantic period. 'The Last Days of Shelley and Byron' is an account, not of Trelawny's extraordinary life & adventures, but of the two men that helped make that life so extraordinary. In his own words, he tells of the secret lives of Byron, Claire Clairmont and the Shelley's, their romp through sunny Italy and the tragic death of Percy off the coast of Spezzia. The tale continues as Tre' follows Byron to the civil wars of Greece, where Byron too dies. To his credit, though, it is never "Trlawny's tale", but "Byron and Shelley's tale" as told by Trelawny. It is a deep, insightful book that shows the poets as only a close friend could. Yet throughout, one can not help but love Trelawny himself: the man who supported the impoverished Mary Shelley to her dying day... the man who bought a slave for $10,000 only to set him free... the man who reached into the embers of Shelly's pyre, withdrawing his heart. If you love the poetry of Byron and Shelley & have even a passing interest in the men behind the legends, then Trelawny's memoirs are a must-read.

It has been a favorite pastime of academic biographers of both Shelley and Byron to deride Trelawny. This should suprise nobody. To begin with, with few exceptions, one of the primary qualifications of being a full-fledged academic is delight in derision, especially in derision of those who have firsthand knowledge of the subjects they have spent hours in the stacks on University libraries to gain, perhaps, one mote of additional information.-The common criticism of Trelawny is that he was "naive"-By this they mean that his gives a simple, straightforward account of the time he spent with the two great poets without any ponderous theories to bog him down.-Trelawny first admired Byron, but quickly became disillusioned with his cynicism and became a lifelong admirer of Shelley, so much so that he remarked thus, "As a general rule,threfore, it is wise to avoid writers whose works amuse or delight you, for when you see them they will delight you no more. Shelley was a grand exception to this rule. To form a just idea of his poetry, you should have witnessed his daily life; his words and actions best illustrated his writings." After Shelley's death, he continues to follow Byron on his misadventures until his death. The book is a treat in that it is a delight to read, with page-turning accounts of his roistering times with two great men who shaped our literary world.-Not one footnote! He was there!

The lives and deaths of Shelley and Byron ought to interest the world--not just the readers of English--for their poetry covered every topic: the rise and fall of empires, nation-building and nation-breaking, and the vanity of the men who would lead them in victory or defeat. And Edward John Trelawny shows us each poet as a human being. The production of fine writing should not be a mystery; beautiful language comes most eloquently from a troubled heart and a mind committed to seeking knowledge. Trelawny reminds us that Byron's and Shelley's lives were focused on connecting to people through their work; Tre begins each chapter with lines from the work of Byron or Shelley.

The Introduction to this edition of Trelawny's book is written by Anne Barton, a professor at Trinity College, Cambridge University, from which Byron himself graduated about 200 years ago. I disagree with her that Tre's writing is "focused for the most part upon himself" as though he were self-centered, though Barton does say he had "hidden depths" (xx). Based on the form and structure and content of Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (and Tre's subsequent life), it seems that Trelawny was aware of the nuances of human character and was more than adequate to the task of knowing complex people. The details he provides in key places are so specific that they could not have been lies or fabrications; Byron's claim that Trelawny could not tell the truth was simply evidence of Byron's pleasure in teasing banter. "Byron's idle talk during the exhumation of [Edward Elliker] William's remains," Trelawny writes, "did not proceed from want of feeling, but from his anxiety to conceal what he felt from others" (146). Byron also concealed his feelings at the cremation of Shelley's remains. It's clear throughout the book that Tre is a sharp observer--of himself and others. And Tre was sensitive to what Mary Godwin Shelley and Williams' wife, Jane, felt about the drowning of their husbands in the Bay of Spezia. Mary Shelley wrote to Tre that she experienced a "blank moral death" (176). Tre shows that the breakup of the Pisan Circle--because of Shelley's drowning--was clearly a personal tragedy with far-reaching consequences.

This is a book for all seasons--but better appreciated while strolling on a beach in some far-flung corner of a poetic universe.

If you're interested in the life of Edward John Trelawny, you'll have to look elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Tre' (as his friends knew him) was a privateer, a scoundrel, a lover of poetry, a freedom-fighter and a loyal friend of the most prolific literary talents of the romantic period. "Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author" is an account, not of Trelawny's extraordinary life & adventures, but of the two men that helped make that life so extraordinary. In his own words, he tells of the secret lives of Byron and the Shelley's, their romp through sunny Italy and the tragic death of Percy in the coast of Spezzia. The tale continues as Tre' follows Byron to the bloody civil war in Greece, where Byron too dies. To his credit, though, it is never "Trelawny's tale", but "Byron and Shelley's tale" as told by Trelawny. This deep, insightful book shows the poets as only a close friend could. Yet throughout, one can not help but love Trelawny himself: the man who supported the impoverished Mary Shelley to her dying day... the man who bought a slave for $10,000 only to set him free... the man who reached into the embers of Shelley's pyre, withdrawing his heart. If you love the poetry of Byron and Shelley & have even a passing interest in the men behind the legends, then Trelawny's memoirs are a must-read.

Wow, who knew the electoral process could be so interesting! This book should be required reading for anyone interested in British no Western European politics. For without this type of review we cannot plan for the future. Kudos Dr. Field.

The author has obviously well-crafted this book out of his extensive knowledge of the field. Perhaps best of all is the manner of the books presentation and flow . . . it is almost as if one were sitting in a comfy chair by the fire with the author, brandy in hand, discussing politics. An excellent read.