United Kingdom Books

After reading many books from Osbert Sitwell and buying first editions where I found them only now I have a perfect idea about who and what the man was. A splendid book which it was oimpossible to close after beginning. Everybody interested in this family and man should begin with this work. It is well written, humorous in a convincing way and perfectly thrustworthy and gives you by the way for the most important books "the critical heritage".I am sure every reader will after finishing this books start buying those which he has not been reading. Splendid.

Francis Frith was a professional photographer in Great Britain (having already made a substantial fortune with a printing company) from about 1860, and the picture postcard company he founded and which was carried on by his sons and grandsons lasted until 1970. But its heyday was the twenty years either side of 1900 -- the high Victorian and Edwardian eras and on through the Great War -- in which every post office and village shop in the country, it seemed, carried his images of local sights for sale to tourists. Frith's photos are still very popular among collectors and local historians, for he and his assistants set out to record every single view of interest in the whole of England. The huge collection of images the company left behind were well on the way to uncaring destruction when a group of collectors were able to get hold of the surviving items -- "merely" 60,000 original glass plates and a quarter-million prints, now the basis of an unparalleled visual museum of the lives, work, and social mores of the English people over several generations. Ziegler has contributed the text for this collection of some 650 historical photos, which are accompanied by several hundred recent photos of the same views by John Cleare. For the student of modern social history, the result is fascinating, especially when a series of photos of, say, a seaside resort captures visitors from the 1890s, 1920s, 1950s, and late 1990s; in some cases, the clothing styles are the only significant change. Ziegler is generally quite able at providing context and historical discussion -- where the hedgerows went, the difference in status between the topper and the bowler. My only real complaint in that regard is that the captions of the photos much too frequently simply repeat a sentence or two from the text on the same page; under proper editorial guidance, this would have been an opportunity to slip in an additional remark or observation without adding to the book's length.

I was delighted by 'Britain Then & Now,' Philip Ziegler's book on the amazing Francis Frith landscape photos of Victorian Britain, most of which have been updated by superb contemporary color landscape photos by John Cleare, or by landscape views taken in the same position several decades apart, say in 1900, 1920 & 1950. I have almost never seen this 'then & now' format used for sites in Britain, though it has been very frequently used for sites here in the United States. The changes to the landscape over so many decades are stunning, often shocking. Discover, for example, what is hidden behind the garish neon signage of Piccadilly Circus !! Not a book which is likely to please defenders of advertising, modernism, or "the ubiquitous motor vehicle," but which will not only please, but delight the rest of us. Architecture is supposed to be "the most public of the Fine Arts," yet one has to wonder how respectfully Britain's marvelous legacy of this artwork has been treated, after reading this volume.

This book was invaluable in helping me to come up with just the right uniform for my character Edward Ware to don when he shipped out to Gallipoli in 1915. He stands on the docks at Liverpool wearing a Khaki Drill Service Dress uniform made from sand colored twilled cotton cloth. This uniform is pictured on plate B between p 24 and p. 33. This is the sort of book that makes World War I come alive for the reader.Those Who Dream By Day

Well written and worth the price.The one down side is Mr.Chappell still pushes the line that the Germans suffered more losses on the Somme, then the British and French combined. A bitter pill for the British to swallow. German losses were less then 1/3 the total losses of the British and French. This was the estimate of the Britsh War Office after the battle and kept quiet for obvious reasons. The first day alone the loss rate was 18 to 1 in the Germans favor.

It is hard to undersrand why this has yet to be reviewed as it has been out for a while. So here goes.
There is no need to rehash the contents of the publisher's blurb above. Chappel's name is enough to recommend serious consideration of acquiring it.
For those of us who see Mike Chappell's name on a publication know there is not much more to say. He is one of the finest and most respected illustrators working in modern times. His precision of detail is superb, yet there is no stiffness in his figures.
So when I see that Mike Chappell is both writer and illustrator of a work in my fields of interest, I do not hesitate to order it, for I know that I am in for an even more pleasurable hour of good reading of a most reliable work in prose and picture. His prose is just as vigorous as is his art work.
Just as I have with most other works to which he has contributed as either writer (too seldom) or as illustrator, I will put it on the reference shelf and consult it again.
So if you want a book worth reading repeatedly get those he wrote and seriously consider those others to which he has contributed.
At one time, Chappell published a self produced magaxine format series concerning the British Army in the Twentieth Century. Unfortunately they are no longer in print.

This book is divided into six parts, reflecting the various ways that people knew Lewis: Earliest Perspectives (memoirs by those who knew Lewis from the 1920s - contributors include Leo Baker, Alan Bede Griffiths, O.S.B., and A.C. Harwood), Master (people who were acquainted with Lewis as Oxford don - contributors include Erik Routley, Luke Rigby O.S.B., Derek Brewer, John Wain, and Peter Payley), Colleague (fellow dons Adam Fox, Gervase Mathew O.P., and Richard W. Ladborough), Transatlantic Ties (American contributors Charles Wrong, Jane Douglass, Nathan C. Starr, and Eugene McGovern), Much More Than A Tutor (people who knew Lewis outside the classroom - contributors include Walter Hooper, Charles Gilmore, Clifford Morris, George Sayer, Roger Lancelyn Green, Dr. Robert E. Havard, and James Dundas-Grant), and The Essence That Prevails (perspectives about the influence of C.S. Lewis written by A.C. Harwood, Austin Farrer, and Walter Hooper.) Other books that are similar to C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table include In Search of C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis: Speaker and Teacher, and Light on C.S. Lewis.

This book is a collection of essays regarding C.S. Lewis by those who were acquainted with him at various times in his life. I've returned to reread it, or parts of it, from time to time. The book fills in some gaps for those of us who won't know him personally until we join him on the other side.

How did different people think of C.S. Lewis, the famous radio broadcaster, Oxford tutor, lecturer, and author? This collection of narratives from those who knew the man gives a strong flavoring of his personality and characteristics. Easy to read, organized, and candid, I enjoyed a leisurely reading experience with this book.

As a degree level theatre studies student, this was an invaluable text which gave a welcome insight into the Forced Entertainment theatre phenomenen. Not only does it offer analysis of their working process, it also offers an amusing collection of experiences and feelings that make the book thoroughly readable. A gem.

I use this book throughout the graduate program with MFA and PhD students in theatre and dance. They find in it things that they have been trying to articulate for themselves and are intellectually challenged and enriched as well as given encouragement for trying to express their own ideas about their practices. Has lots of other good things about it. Great combination of theory and practice and accessibility.

Forced Entertainment and Tim Etchells have been for the past decade or so, chewing on the edges of performance and theatre. This book is an excellent collection of texts that open up and demystify the experimental devising process. Etchells writes his theory much in the same way has he creates performance. A must for anyone into the fuzzy gaps between the various performance disciplines

Mr. Buczacki provides a nice, well-written history of the various houses and gardens directly associated with the long life of Winston Churchill. In doing so, the author also reveals important elements of the non-political side of this most remarkable man.

Many general histories of Churchill speak in passing of the domestic trials imposed after the purchase of the family's most important home, Chartwell. Reading this book gives one a keen understanding of what Mrs. Churchill endured as Chartwell and its grounds were slowly, slowly brought into good shape.

If you have a friend who is interested in English landscaping and gardens, this is a book to consider. If that friend also is an admirer of Sir Winston, then it is a must purchase.

a great book one of the must have for any churchill library . great anecdotes good pictures .recommended by the churchill society

I am a huge fan of Winston Churchill (I'm even tackling Martin Gilbert's eight volume biography at the moment!). Since WSC loved Chartwell so much, and spent so much of his time there, I come to this subject with some interest. My wife visited Chartwell a couple of years ago -- what a treat. That experience only heightened my interest and great appreciation for the house and its history. Leaving no stone unturned, this book provides a complete (if sometimes a bit dry) history of the house. It also has some great photos of the house at various points in history. If you want to know nearly everything about this ancient, though modern, house and home to WSC then this is the book for you.

This is an overview of archæological and textual record of Britain during this poorly understood period. Its premise on the origins of the sub-Roman kingdoms of Britain is that prior to the official withdrawal of the Legions in 410, the primarily pagan secular elite of the British provinces were replaced by a Christian administration of low status origins. After the failure of Constantine III to gain the purple, this administration adopted native British power structures based on kingship. This theory can be used to successfully explain the decline of the villas, the rise of Christian ecclesiastics (based on Martinian militancy), and the introduction of pagan mercenaries who eventually created the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the East. The work is notable for its careful inclusion of Britain in the context of the wider remnants of the Western Empire. Better attested events and evidence from Gaul, Spain, Italy, and North Africa are used to explain what occurred in Britain. This is a great read and arguably a part of the basic body of current knowledge and synthesis regarding the Dark Ages in Britain.

In the forward to CIVITAS TO KINGDOM, N.P. Brooks of the University of Birmingham suggests that K.R. Dark's new book may give the phrase "The Dark Ages" a new meaning. Using information from historical, archeological, and other sources available in the early 1990s, Dark has constructed a new interpretation of Britain in the years between 410 A.D. when the Roman Empire sent an official letter stating it could no longer defend the Britannia, and the germanization of most of Britannia by the Anglo-Saxons in the 800s.

Dark's study covers the provinces not immediatly subdued by the Angle and Saxon mercenaries the Romans hired to "protect" Britannia before 400 A.D. Non-Anglo-Saxon Britain included the nothern and central areas of the island, plus Cornwall and Wales. Dark says the inhabitants of this area maintained an 'Antique Roman Society' which combined political, economic and other aspects of pre-Roman and Roman eras.

Dark has assembled an enormous amount of information gleaned from recent historical studies (text anayses) and archeological studies as well as other sources. He asks, "What is Roman". After he lists and defines the characteristics most scholars agree are "Roman" he shows how material evidence supports the notion that the Roman Britannia survived what has been described as a barbaric Celtic era. One the other hand, he says, "the polities of Britain, tribes, civitates, or kingdoms, remained stable from the Pre-Roman Iron-Age to the sub-Roman period....the general picture is of overall continuity but not a static system...the conventional picture of the fifth-to-seventh-century 'Celtic West' as a reversion to Iron-Age cultural and political organization is mistaken."

This is an excellent book, quite readable, and loaded with footnotes for those who wish to go further.

Most of us know, on some intellectual level, that change and continuity are both simultaneous processes. There is no period in all of history where one is entirely absent, though there are many times when one takes precedence over the other. Without a doubt, the post-Roman (often called, somewhat decievingly, the "sub-Roman") period was one such period for the British Isles. The dominant religion changed from pagan to Christian, Pictland became Scotland, Britain became England, and the Britons became Welsh or Breton or Cornish. The Roman Empire fell, and independent British kingdoms sprang up, only to be washed away in the tide of Anglo-Saxon invasion within a century or two. From 400 CE to 600 CE, in the space of a short 200 years, the makeup of the country changed almost completely.

With all this going on, it's easy to forget that there was a great deal of continuity here, as well. Kenneth Dark, in this excellent scholarly tour de force, reminds us of that little fact. He argues that the political structure of post-Roman Britain was made up of Roman civitates (cities--used as the basic unit of administration by the Roman Empire, almost like a state in the US) which, with the end of Roman authority, elevated themselves to the status of kingdoms. These civitates were themselves based on the Celtic tribes that the Romans had conquered centuries before--rather than take time and energy to create a new aristocracy (which would no doubt even further alienate the newly conquered Britons), they simply adopted the old tribal aristocracy as imperial apparatus, like so many other hegemonic empires. Kenneth Dark shows the survival of Roman traditions and culture through the "Dark Ages," and points out that many of the traits we think of as a "reversion to native Celtic customs" may, in fact, have been the natural trajectory of the way Roman culture was heading in Late Antiquity.

Though Kenneth Dark may overstate his case, it is a case that perhaps needs to be overstated. The study of post-Roman Britain, I think, has lost its equilibrium in the "Change versus Continuity" debate, making this book a valuable counter-weight. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in that murky historical gloss from the end of Roman rule, to the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Such a great book - well written and thoughtful.

Unlike many books on dance culture which tend to lapse into a who's who type of history, Malbon's sociological approach touches on WHY people go clubbing and what they take from the experience. For a lot of people, it's more than a scene or fad. While clubs come and go (Studio 54, the Misshapes) and venues change (your bedroom, your friend's basement, the secret location by the pier), the longing for the oceanic experience remains the same.

Best one out there. Expensive (DANG!) but well worth it.

Respectful and not pompous though decidedly academic this book reaches out to honestly describe why people go clubbing. Yes, it is about dancing, and drugs, subjects for which words hardly ever do justice. Nevertheless, for those who have an interest in trying to describe the indescribable, this is one of the more readable and agreeable attempts. However, even as I've quoted sections to friends (yes, they're worth quoting), I am left with what another dancer told me quite spontaneously: she likes to dance, be it merengue, salsa, cumbia, because, as she says, I feel closer to God. I suppose it's just one of those things that you either understand or you don't.

ben.malbon@bmpddb.com

I found this well researched book fascinating. I have never before read a non-fiction work in one sitting (Then I reread it taking notes). This work undermines (without ever saying so ) many of the cultural myths that drive our current economy. Commons have been viable and sustainable economies and cultures. I should also add that as an avid science fiction reader I found a description of as alien a society as any I have otherwise read about.

I like to order oneeson@hotmail.co

According to E.P. Thompson (Customs in Common) best work on the subject -- and if not the only then certainly the most important. Sorry, I'm not an academic, just a student. For an insightful review, please look in a history journal.

My 8-year-old history buff loved this book. He read it very carefully. As he was reading, he would get out other history books to read about whatever he was reading about in this book. When he finished this book, he bought a biography of Elizabeth I. He frequently goes back and refers to this book when reading other books about history. I highly recommend this book.

This is a beautifully illustrated, interesting book. Most rulers receive a 1-2 page treatment (although later monarchs have more pages dedicated to them) complete with ancestral charts, timelines, and other helpful additions to the main text. I'm sure this is meant as a coffee table or reference book, but I sat down, read it cover to cover, and then bothered my family and friends with all the facts I'd learned for the next month. A great book.

so great book the best book about british monarchy ever published . a lot of photos and paintings which make an atmosphire let you live in the old ages moving to the middle ages and to the victorian . beleive me you will live the british monarchy , live with queens and kings walk throw the history of uk as no historymania did before

This book fills a niche, and does so perfectly. I wanted a reference work for literature, but I didn't want to pay $50 for one. This book gives short, concise blurbs, which is often all one needs. It is organized well and is inclusive enough for the average household. Not a book for specialists, but excellent for the layperson and student.

I ordered the Oxford companion to help me study for my comprehensive exams. Even though I didn't use it much for that purpose, I think that it is a must have for anyone planning to major in English in college. The text is in dictionary format; many terms/concepts you find will come up in any college lit course. It is a great purchase and probably much cheaper than what you will find in a University bookstore.

This is a compact version of the 6th edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. The emphasis is naturally on British literature (John Galt is not listed as a character in Atlas Shrugged, but as a Scottish novelist). There is coverage of writers from the United States, Canada, Africa, the Caribbean, and India.

Among the entries are:
- short biographies of novelists, dramatists and poets, and also a few philosophers (Swedenborg), historians, scholars, critics, biographers, travel writers, and journalists
- plot summaries and descriptions of poems

Other notable entries:
- literary and intellectual movements, genres, and critical theory
- figures in Irish mythology
- gay and lesbian literature
- literary societies, libraries, publishers, and even coffee houses

Certain topics get a two-page treatment. (Black British literature, science fiction, structuralism and post-structuralism, ghost stories, post-colonial literature, romantic fiction, spy fiction, etc.)

There's no editorializing. They "describe and characterize rather than judge."