United Kingdom Books

If you like your beer, love great food and want to find some great places to stay that are all unique and not "large chain" hotels, this guide is for you.

Baring-Gould has taken it upon himself to explain what the childhood of Sherlock Holmes was like, as well as what really happened during the Great Hiatus, Holmes vs. the Ripper, and even Dr. Watson's first wife. (ACD wrote but never published a play in which Watson traveled to San Francisco and met Constance Adams in 1884.) A nice touch is the timeline at the end of the book, starting from the meeting of Holmes' parents, and an index of books and magazines from 1920-1960. Basically, a necessity for true Sherlockians.

One of my great regrets is that I've never made it to Britain -- yet. But, I buy the 365 Days calendar each year and take a different trip there every month. This is a marvelous calendar, chock-a-block with beautiful photos. Buy it and enjoy.

Crispin Black, an intelligence analyst who was attached to the Cabinet Office from 1999 to 2002, has written a brilliant, scathing study of Britain's intelligence services' performance before and after the London bombings. He notes that straight after the bombings, government and media claimed, with no evidence and before any investigation, that the bombings `came out of the blue', that they `were inevitable' and that `Everything that could have been done had been done'.

The government spends £1.5 billion a year on counter-intelligence, but to what effect? The name and telephone number of the 7-7 bombing's presumed ringleader had emerged in the investigation into an earlier plot to bomb London, but MI5 failed to follow up this lead. A month before the attack, MI5's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre secretly reduced our threat state from `severe general' to `substantial', claiming, "At present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the UK."

Yet French Intelligence had specifically told them that a plot would emerge from elements of the Pakistani community in Britain radicalised by the attack on Iraq. The heads of the Foreign Office and of the Joint Intelligence Committee had both warned that the government's foreign policy was alienating Muslims.

Yet the government still refuses to accept this, diverting MI5 from paying due attention to the domestic threat. No wonder the government summarily dismissed all the calls for a public inquiry.

There were also failures after the bombings. When the security services shot Mr de Menezes at Stockwell tube station, the only well-organised part of the operation was the issuing of swift smooth lies. Our border security is so poor that Hussain Osman, an alleged 21/7 bomber, left Britain, undetected, on the Eurostar. Fortunately, Italy returned him to Britain within two months of the government's request for his extradition. By contrast, Rachid Ramda is still here, ten years after the French requested his extradition in connection with the 1995 bombing in Paris.

Black argues for unifying what he calls `our antiquated divided intelligence structure'. He says that we need better local intelligence, not the `world intelligence' that we get from the `special relationship' with the US state. "When our threats are local why not be a European intelligence power - where we devote time and effort to our own security rather than getting stuck into trouble abroad?"

Though there was a misstep in mailing (the suite # was left off the address when originally mailed* & I paid additional postage), I was very pleased when I received this book. [*Don't know if this was my error or the shipper's error........]

We went to England in July 2008 for a 2 week trip and found this book extremely useful! During our trip, we drove over 1500 miles and went from London to Cornwall to Nottingham and didn't get lost thanks to this great book! It was very easy to use and the internet websites it references were helpful too!

This 2007 version of the AA Leisure Guide to the Peak District is a terrific resource for planning and enjoying a vacation in Britain's oldest and still very impressive national park.

Located south and east of Manchester in the center of England, the Peak District features a beautiful collection of landscapes, including moderate hills, long ridgelines, cliffs, remote moors, and pretty river valleys. If the scale of the hills here is less than, say, the Cairngorms in Scotland, they are likely to be more user-friendly to the average walking-fit tourist. The Peak District is also home to several old resort towns, including Buxton and Matlock, and to a collection of impressive private homes open to visitors, including Chatsworth House and Haddon Hall.

The guide covers the Peak District in five geographic sections: The Dark Peak, the White Peak, Buxton and the Western Moors, the Southern Dales, and the Derwent Valley and Eastern Moors. The format notes the essential sights for each section and their location on a map graphic, provides directions for driving tours, and details at least one extended walk and one cycling tour per section. General information on the Peak District, such as transportation considerations and the location of pubs and tea rooms, is also included. An impressive selection of color photographs provides a good sense of the landscapes and of the more popular attractions. A couple of large-scale maps in the back permit navigation into and through the Peak District from the nearest big cities.

This updated guide is very highly recommended as a planning and touring resource for those intended to visit the Peak District.

This was a very good map and very helpful to find my way around Glasgow.

I've used these annual books since 1994; of several reference works to locate great B&Bs, this is the best.

Professor Bayley's An ABC of Shakespeare provides plot synopses for all of the plays, lists sources Shakespeare probably accessed, and gives biographical information about relevant translators and authors like Arthur Golding, Montaigne, and Ovid. The plot synopses here are more lengthy and detailed than those found in the Oxford Companion to English Literature. In addition, the book includes many short articles about other topics of note in Elizabethan society in Shakespeare's day. A compact work, this book is easily carried to the theater.