United Kingdom Books

This book is irresistable. And it is complete. For the experienced English researcher that is stuck I would say there's got to be something in this book that will help. I have an ancestor that was a Coastguardsman in Devon, circa 1850. This position made the book's index and on page 406 I learn that there are a number of records in the English Public Records Office on members of the Coastguard.

Now in a completely updated and substantially revised second edition, "Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide To British Genealogy And Family History by Mark Herber continues to be an invaluable and indispensable genealogical reference guide for novice and experienced genealogists alike whose researches require them to access the voluminous British archives of records and other published resources. Originally published in 1997 in association with the Society of Genealogists based in London, this new and expanded edition of "Ancestral Trails" provides an informed and informative guide to what records and published sources are available, how to access them, how to analyze what they archive; how to use the divers 'finding-aids' and indexes. "Ancestral Trails" also shows how to obtain and process information from living relatives, how to construct family trees, how to utilize the preserved records of birth, marriage, death, and other census data. Also covered are such sources as wills, parish records, civil and ecclesiastical court records, poll books, and property records. "Ancestral Trails" is a core addition to any professional genealogy library reference collection and a 'must' for aspiring genealogists having to deal with British source material.

This is simply the best manual of English genealogy ever published. Let's hope any upcoming edition acknowledges the existance of the Internet.

"No other publication gives such comprehensive and up-to-date guidance on tracing British ancestry and researching family history. Illustrated throughout with more than ninety examples of the major types of records, and with detailed lists of further reading, Ancestral Trails will be the essential companion and guide for all family historians." Anthony Camp, Director, Society of Genealogists.

This excellent publication was created in association with the prestigious Society of Genealogists, perhaps akin to the US' National Genealogical Society. The author Mark D. Herber is a solicitor who began researching his family in 1979. He has successfully traced some of his lines back to around 1580.

Indeed I was impressed with this 674 page "encyclopedia." (Quotes added for emphasis!) The bibliography alone is twenty-two pages. My experience with English records has been limited to early parish records in Devon and some Court of Canterbury wills, so I was most eager to have the opinion of three friends who do extensive English, Welsh and Irish research, and indeed are successful in helping others make strong headway in their research. You can imagine the excitement at our local LDS Family History Center as they poured over the book with uncustomary enthusiasm!

The consensus is that ANCESTRAL TRAILS is as definitive of British research as Ancestry's THE SOURCE is of American genealogy. Lew, a 1st generation Brit, was impressed with the chapter on military records, and made a note to order the book forthwith. Elsie, born of English immigrant parents, had been inquiring previously about manor court records and found this publication provided more than she had found in explanation elsewhere. I was impressed with the 94 illustrations, including typical certificates of vital records, representative samples of wills and the like.

Also impressive is the attention given to beginning genealogists. Basics such as pedigree charts, personal recollections & memorabilia, spelling, handwriting, dates, obtaining certificates and organization of collected materials are discussed with ample illustrations.

Additional chapters include: General Problems Encountered by Researchers, Civil Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Census Returns, Parish Registers, Churchyards and Cemeteries, Directories, Combining Sources, Archives, Libraries and Family History Societies, Wills and Administrations,Catholic, Nonconformist and Jewish Records, Marriage and Divorce, Maps, Land Registrations and Property Records, Local and Social History, Newspapers and Elections,Parish and Town Records, Records of the Army, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force, Records of Shipping and Seaman, Records of Trades, Professions and Business, Oaths, Taxation and Insurance Records Records of Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts, Records of the Criminal Courts and Criminals, Education, Peerages, the Gentry, Famous People and Heraldry, Further Property Records, Tracing Migrants and Living Relatives, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands Immigration, Emigration and Investigation Abroad

Appendices included essential information under the following topics: Codes for areas and volumes in the GRO Indexes, Indexes to other GRO records, Chapman County Codes, Seize Quarters of Bessie Maude Symes, Extracts from the Bullied and Keates family trees, Public Record Office Information Leaflets, County Record Offices & other archives, Commencement dates of the reigns of English and British monarchs, Wills & Administrations in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury: A Summary of Finding-Aids, Records of the Court of Chancery: A summary of Finding-Aids.

Owing only to its tiny print, you'll need a magnifying glass in addition to your bi-focals to glean all that's contained in Ancestral Trails. On the best advice of our resident "British Research Gurus," I most heartily recommend this book.

DearMYRTLE

Daily Genealogy Columnist

Genealogy Forum on America Online

Keyword: dearmyrtle

I checked this book out from my local library because I felt that I was floundering with my British research. This book answered all the questions that I had, and much, much more. I'm not going to write a long review of this because there are a couple of other excellent reviews here already. I just wanted to add that there is a second edition of this book, from January 2004, available in England, but unfortunately not in the US yet. Because the internet is so valuable to those of us trying to do research from abroad, I decided to spend the extra money and order the newer edition from www.amazon.co.uk . It is more expensive, but it seemed worth it to me to have the most recent edition. If that's important to you, check the publication date on the edition advertised.

An excellent description of that time in England. Brought back a lot of memories. Probably less interesting to folks who had NOT lived through it.

Austerity Britain presents an interesting retrospective on the tough times in the immediate post-war era. It is a good companion/follow on to "How we lived then" about the actual war years. Some of the political philosophy, particularly in the earlier chapters can be a bit heavy going, but the view on what it was like to live through the period is good, particularly if you did actually survive those years, as did this reviewer.

I bought this book at the same time I purchased Peter Clarke's marvelous "The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire" on what I thought the reasonable assumption that it might provide the social history complement to Clarke's account of the geopolitical death rattles of the Empire following the war. That it precisely served that function better than I could have imagined does not in any way diminish its value as a brilliant stand-alone analysis of everyday life in post-war Britain that will certainly never be duplicated in either its scholarship or compass. Kynaston weaves an incredibly rich fabric of first-person accounts and commentaries ranging from housewives to the Labour party's leadership to incipient and established entertainers to sports stars and innumerable others high and low on the social scale, each citation perfectly apt and illustrative in its context. The reader feels he is living the period, suffering with the deprived homemaker, hoping against experience with the coal miner, sensing pitfalls to the social planning completely unanticipated at the time, and generally acquiring an understanding of those years that completely supplants everything one thought one knew of the subject. The book is a bit of a slog what with over 600 pages of text, and in my experience, there are very few works of this size that are worth the time an effort. Be assured that this is one of them and that every reader is looking forward to the promised sequel covering the years 1953-79. Social history, indeed, history, doesn't get much better than this.

A very nice journey into the past, where you as the traveler, are entertained, amazed and surprised at how the English people survived the war. I was entranced to read how the English took everything, well actually, without anything that we all took for granted, in stride. They suffered the most during the war and gave their all for victory. This is a wonderful story told as how it was to live, eat, entertain and get on.

Written for a British eye more than for an American, this American learned a stronger respect for the people of Britain for the way they won the war and then won back their share of industry and prosperity. Having won a glorious victory, within hours the victorious citizens of the country that sustained almost six years of war following on a prolonged depression realized that the trials of war time would be extended by the austerity of post-war Europe. While England won the war, they paid a high price. More important, the collective, heroic efforts of the large working class produced a tide of enthusiasm for nationalisation of industry, housing to replace the hundreds of thousands displaced by German bombing, and a broad social welfare plan focusing primarily on health care.

It is not a pretty story. Post-war England was drab, lacking many basics, watching its empire dissolve, and driven by a strong, centralized plan to restore the economy that changed the basic way people looked at business and government. And, with the continuing pressures of rebuilding the rest of Europe, the threat of further communist expansion, and the rise of American power, perhaps Britain went too far in moving towards a benevolent but often clumsy and experimental form of socialism. It would be almost another forty years and the decisions of the Thatcher government, that saw the maturity and, in some cases, the reversal of this social and cultural experiment.

This is a long, dense and colorful book, full of first-person details and observations, many of them from the surveys and observations of the government itself. Chapters focus on various aspects of the cultural and social revolution, in the classroom, on the factory floor, in the (mine) pits, in the shops, in the media, and more. At one bookstore where I looked for the book, they claimed that it was a textbook and not part of their trade book collection. While it is as thorough -- or more -- as any academic textbook, it reads more like a highly detailed, multi-authored journal or catalog of the period. Invest the time.

This volume measures up to the superb standards of the Anatomy of a Ship series, and it is high time we had such a comprehensive and attractive guide to HMS Dreadnought, the prototype for all 20th century battleships. The book includes a narrative history of the ship and description of its features, full technical data, and superb drawings of virtually every detail of the ship's construction and equipment. The one request I would ask only for more interior photos. Highly recommended to historians, naval buffs and serious modellers.

I purchased this book for two reasons. First, I make models of ships. This book is an invaluable reference manual. The detail will actually go into the internal layout of the ship. Crew cabins and sleeping area will show up on the details. The very excellent plans of the ship are worth $30 to $40 dollars at any shop that sells ship plans. That is worth the price of the book.

Conversely, I was a little surprised at the write up of the operation of the ship. Dreadnought had no economical cruise speed. So, unlike other ships of her time period, like the USS Michigan, she was never economical to operate. Dreadnough had no design flaws. Thus, she was the working prototype for all British Great War ships. In design she was perfect.

I was very happy with the pictures of the ship. I had never seen most of the pictures before. The level of detail in these pictures gives a good picture of the set up of the ship.

This book is not a operational history. That is somewhat a regret. However, people wanting an operational history of the ship should read Robert Massey's excellent "Castles of Steel".

This book is total truth in advertising, it is a study of the ship. It is a total look at the Dreadnought. The book is vital for model builders and is a great reference for any student of history.

5 Stars.

The book can be broken into three parts, the first is relatively brief and gives the background to how the ship came about, its costs, major issues etc.
There then follows an extensive collection of photograhs showing the ship during it's construction.
The remainder of the book (probably about 60% of it) consists of plans and construction drawings of the ship. These provide a wealth of detail on all aspects of the ship ranging from construction of the ships boilers to the attachment arrangement of steel girders.
If you want to see how an early dreadnought is put together you'll love this book. However it doesn't give the designers reasoning for the decisions made (or the issues they had to resolve). Therefore if you want to know what was built it's a good chioce; if you want to know why they built it the way they did you'll need to look elsewhere (Battleship Design & Development 1905-1945 by Friedman gives a much more detailed assessment of the conflicting engineering issues facing any battleship designer).

In a nutshell this book is detailed blueprints for the HMS Dreadnought. There is a small amount of text at the beginning, as well as unusually in depth statistical details such as how much the ship cost to be built as well.

The majority of the book after that first chapter are all schematics. You will see deck by deck plans for every toom in the ship, with many rooms even more detailed in their own chapters. Who would have guessed the ship's prison was in the same room as the toilets at the rear of the ship? Did you know that the ammunition bunkers have air conditioning to keep the gunpowder/cordite a consistant temperature for consistant gunnery? Did you know that the boiler rooms have air forced into them in the steam age equivalent of turbo charging?

Where the book does fall flat however is explaining all these details. You had better already have a good idea of what the components of a battleship are, because the schematics do not explain what it is you are looking at.

I still give it a 5 out of 5 because you will not find this level of detail in any other book.

Naval history enthusiasts will be familiar with this series, each book being organized into a written section covering history and design data, then a pictorial, followed by immensely detailed drawings.

The Anatomy series is written to a 5-star standard. However, allow me to suggest this book to be a notch above the Hood, Yamato, and Warspite volumes, into 5 1/2 star territory.

310 Blesionwest 5-8 Ouhatachou Nishinomiyashi Hyougoken 662-0836

310 Blesionwest 5-8 Ouhatachou Nishinomiyashi Hyougoken 662-0836

310 Bulesionwest 5-8 Ouhatachou Nishinomiyashi Hyougoken 662-0836

310 Bulesionwest 5-8 Ouhatachou Nishinomiyashi Hyougoken 662-0836

310 Bulesionwest 5-8 Ouhatachou Nishinomiyashi Hyougoken 662-0836

This book is an excellent summary of English sea power. Great life stories of many of the key Naval Officers and Ship captains.

As usual David Howarth has served up a great smorgasbord of English Imperial history, warts and all, and answers the fundamental question on how and why Britain attained rule of the seas to a degree that for 200 yrs she was the unrivalled master of the waves.

Howarth has wonderful flashes of brilliance, and brings together themes that make one think in different terms about the rise of English seamanship.
1) the establishment of a key hierarchy of rules and eventually laws of the sea, leading to people with sea knowledge -- sailors and captains -- commanding at sea, not people of class or priveledge. Eventually all navies copied this, but some of them were relatively later in doing so.
2) the introduction of freedom of the high seas for England's selfish reasons mainly (but not exclusively: Britain put down the slave trade by force almost 60 yrs before the Americans and cleared the sea of pirates).
3) An intrepid spirit for adventure and mapping, unmatched by any other nation. Particularly the English interest in the Northwest and Northeast Passage.
4) A prediliction to be concerned with aggressive combat at sea, steady training and a tradition in line with Nelson to "engage the enemy more closely."
5) The predominance of British Nval and Maritime Power right into the 20th Cen. often with the wrong type of ships -- usually too large when smaller gunboats would have sufficed.
--------------
One of the few areas that Howarth does not shine in his usual sense is his last chapter of the book dedicated solely to the British Navy in the 20th Cen. I was expecting more...but compared to the history of the rise of British sea power, there is only one chapter on the British Navy in the 20th Cen.

Wonderful, but not a classic...

Howarth has achieved the impossible: he has adequately - nay, magnificently - summarized the history of Britannia ruling the waves. Beginning with the Middle Ages, Howarth tracks British naval history through its most stirring days and shows it as it sails from strength to strength. Perhaps its best feature is the way Howarth is able to tell (or retell) the great stories of Britain at sea. For example, I had always known that Admiral George Anson had done something great, but I didn't know just how great his deeds were until Howarth told me of his incredible voyage around the world via Cape Horn - spending weeks in a frightful gale that dispersed his ships and set them hundreds of miles back on their course, and enduring with fortitude many other disasters and crises.

Indeed, Anson and his fellows in the constellation of brilliant British naval heroes did not merely endure but triumph with gallantry going beyond all praise. But Howarth goes a long way toward praising them adequately, pointing out errors, and generally informing while also delighting.

This book is an excellent springboard for future study -- one may simply choose an era, man, or event and delve into it. Howarth certainly inspires one to read more.

This book is an excellent primer on the history of ships and naval warfare from the point of view of the British. In addition to providing some useful technical information, it provides an absolutely engrossing account of the past millenium of exploration and war by the ships of the British Navy. Definitely an indispensable read for any history buff.

When I first scanned through this book I thought it seemed sort of scattered. I bought it anyhow. And I was wrong. It does go on little tangents sometimes but it doesn't detract from the book. It covers the major aspects of improvements and wars that attributed to the advancement of the british navy. I suppose going into too much detail would make the book over a 1000 pages long. At 450 pages the book gives a pretty good overall glimpse of the passing of time and the movements of the naval command. Great read.

Children of the Dead End is as captivating to read as any more respected novel of development. There may be some problems with the formal structures of the novel in regards to the genre, but it is a wonderful read nonetheless. I truly enjoyed reading the book, and it was successful in eliciting my emotions. As a true-to-life account of the hardships that Irish Catholic families dealt with at the turn of the 20th Century, Children of the Dead End deserves to be canonized right along with anything that Joyce had written.

This story is truly autobiographical of my grandfather's early life and is very moving and effective. His early years in Donegal were difficult and fraught with the perils of poverty. Nevertheless, Grandpa overcame is lack of formal education and humble beginnings to be a successful author. His later years were no less difficult as he struggled for decades with the debilitation of MS, but he raised, with my grandmother, three amazingly strong and successful women. This autobiographical novel teaches us all abouth the indomitable strength of the human will and spirit.

This is one of the most memorable books I have ever read. The writer tells the story of growing up in Donegal and his exit to scotland in search of work. You are drawn into his life and the people he loved. There is an honesty in the writing that moves you to tears.

this book is the most moving book I have ever read. It tells the story of a young man making his way in life. Born in Donegal, Ireland working his way through Scotland and the USA. It will move you to tears and lead you to book after book from this very talented writer.

Having read Children of the Dead End for the first time I was taken over by it.It is a story of extraordinary main characters,humour and the bleak portrayal of life as a near slave,potatoe digger and the harsh life as a navvie. I was amazed at the life that the main character"Dermod" lived.He left home at the age of 12 without an education and he went to the hiring fair and worked to send money back home to his family.He has to face the harsh reality and he gambles his money and becomes a heavy drinker. He experiences life without a roof over his head. This story is said to be Patrick MacGills autobiography. Some of the Characters are fictonal while others are said to be true characters. Mac Gills descriptive power is Compelling and I never wanted to leave the book down. Children of the Dead End is an undiscovered classic of Irish litriture and it should be comended.

For most, Charles Dickens is the only source we've encountered regarding the awful human misery of the early industrial revolution. However, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx reported on it, too. Indeed, most of their criticisms were far more applicable to the raw capitalism of contemporary England than their native Germany.

Engels stayed in Manchester, the premier industrial city of the time, during the early 1840's to research his book. And he produced a devastating indictment of the truly miserable and life-threatening living conditions he found. Unlike Marx, Engels had a pronounced flair for writing; he makes it a fascinating, eye-opening journey back through time.

The topics he includes cover: struggling labor movements, the denigrating effects of immigration on domestic workers (due to competing subsistence-cost labor), the ignorance and crippling of child workers, the sexual exploitation of women workers, the displacement of male heads of household by lower-cost and more pliant women/children, the unbelievable filth and subhuman housing conditions workers endured, the dangerous and unhealthy working conditions of miners/factory workers, rampant substance abuse, doping of children by babysitters, the total lack of legal redress for the poor, the displacement of labor by machinery, and the role of unbridled competition in perpetrating economic distress.

While we all know communism has failed, its rise was due to these very real and serious problems, some of which remain with many Western workers today. And most of these conditions do very much persist in emerging economies right now. So, even though the book is well over 150 years old it is still highly valid!

The main fault of course with Marx/Engels' communist philosophy is that ALL humans are greedy and lazy - it's just that the clever ones (whether they originate from 'bourgeous' or 'working' classes) will always exploit the others. And it doesn't matter whether the system is capitalist or communist - those at the top will always exploit those below for personal advantage. Probably the best response has been the progressive social reform in Western nations over the last 100 years. (Revolutions and dictatorships usually only lead to mass murder.)

This chilling book is the real-life Oliver Twist exposed.I think Fredrick Engels wrote this book,in part to clear his conscious.And largely, to shed light on the fetid ,wretched underbelly of the 19th century industrial-age society.The nameless toilers working ten to twelve hour shifts,in a factory operation they had no vote or control over.Marx and Engels had many valid arguments for improving the workers lives.Did their end-results justify their means of social revolution? Engels would be amazed at the former textile towns,like Manchester,absorbing the large influx of Asians,Moslims and Africans today.It is still being debated,whether history has proven Engels & Marx right.This book is still a historical classic,thats presumptive findings give the modern reader,reason to pause. So,look all around you. -A Great Book !

Fabuous book. Engels wrote this when he was only 24- and what a tour de force.

The work is detailed, beautifully observed and elegantly written. Despite the depressing nature of the subject matter, the tone is always possible about a better world beyond the evils of capitalism.

Unfortunately 150 years after this masterpiece was written things dont seen to have gotten better under capitalism. Rather, the old evils of poverty, infectious diseases, starvation have been replaced by the modern evils of capitalism: obesity, alienation, mass materialism, depression, plunging fertility and marriage rates and so on...

Engels was the engine behind Karl Marx, one that gave him all the support he could, so to permit Marx to dedicate himself almost completely to the completion of his works. Judging himself many degrees bellow Marx in terms of intelect, Engels nonetheless is capable of writting a book such as this which describes all the impoverishment of the working class in the beginning of the industrialization in England, being helped by some well porputed factories labor fiscalization agents who allowed Engels to flip trough their reports. Strong terms like "the dark satanic mills" describe fully what were the working conditions of the time in a so rich country as England. An historical document lest no one forget what can happen again if the free hand of capitalism is allowed to run free of any barriers.

Friedrich Engels' classic "The Condition of the Working Class in England" was written when he was only twenty-four, and had but recently abandoned his Calvinist upbringing for a more critical, socialist, point of view. Yet this book reads as if it were written by an experienced political commentator or a radical sociologist, without actually at any point becoming melodramatic or dense.

Engels' main purpose is to confront the bourgeoisie with the reality of their mode of production and to contrast this with the rhetoric of "free choice" and "civil liberties", as well as the capitalist apologia of the political economists of his day, in particular Andrew Ure. With great insight into both the causes and effects of the capitalist system, Engels catalogues the endless want, filth, despair and misery experienced by millions of labourers every day in 19th century England. He pays attention to housing, to factory safety, to unionism, to the physical condition of the workers, to alcoholism, the state of the Irish underclass, to prostitution and disease; in short, all the ills attendant on industrialization.

What gives this book such power is that Engels on the one hand proceeds in an analytical manner, making use above all of sources from the bourgeoisie itself and from Parliamentary reports, in explaining the functioning of the capitalist system and the competition between capitalists and between labourers. On the other hand, he writes in a particularly readable manner and at no point bores the reader with the mere summing-up of statistics. On the contrary, every analytical truth is accompanied by a vivid description, taken from Engels' excursions into working-class neighbourhoods, of the terrible state of humanity that the economic laws of capitalism cause for a great number of people.

For those interested in political economy, it may come as a surprise to see how much of the functioning of capitalism Engels already understood at such an early point in the development of theory. This gives the lie to the many theorists who would later claim that it was Marx only who worked on economics and that Engels was a mere epigone; this book should be a vindication of Engels. His later sketches of the political economy and of the historical development of capitalism would lay the foundation for both the Communist Manifesto and Marx' economic works. But the core insights that would create the modern theory of socialism are for the first time fully expressed here, and in a most appealing and shockingly effective manner.

In other words, an absolute must read for every person of intelligence.

My interest in this book was triggered by an encounter with a brother-in-law who denied any blood-atonment incidents in the early Basin Kingdom. I knew otherwise from reading Mike Quinn and Mountain Meadows history. Forgotten Kingdom was a good dispassionate source confimring the rough-and-tumble times of early Utah. Full-fledged democratic institutions hadn't yet taken shape in the US generally, much less on the frontier, much less in a territory dominated by a theocratic kingdom not yet ready to accommodate outsiders. Violence was a part of life, just as it is now (only more institutionalized now).

I didn't sense any particular ideology or ax to grind. You don't get that voyeuristic feel of sensationalism that you might with a less sympathetic view. Biglet lets the story tell itself. He doesn't pull punches or whitewash, but neither does he judge from a 21st century view how these frontiersmen made do in their lives. The most important thing I look for when I read a history is a sympathetic storyteller - someone who doesn't judge participants from a narrow point of view. Bigler's history is sympathetic and compassionate.

I have ancestors who settled in southern Utah, and Bigler helps me understand better what they went through. The vision of an independent kingdom of God was doomed from the start, for the same reasons that it failed in Ohio, Missour, and Illinois, You can't help but admire the audacity and tenacity of these early settlers, though. Forgotten Kingdom does a useful services by shedding light on these times.

If you are looking for a comprehensive and accurate history (1847-1896) of the Mormons this book is the one to buy. David Bigler's ability to accurately research and write about Mormon history is second to none. From the discovery of gold at John Sutter and James Marshall's lumber mill to the Mountain Meadows Massacre this book covers some of the most important events in the history of the United States.

This important and seminal work should be required for those interested in or those currently studying Mormonism and its forgotten legacy to western America.

Beggining with the Arrival of the Mormons in 1847 and the creation of the state of Deseret we are taken through the many twists and turns of the Mormon effort to establish a country west of the mississippi. Truly a tale of endurance and originality. This was the only state ever created in the americas not relying on colinialism to create it. Here the 'Saints' built schools, railroads and an army. The settled the land from California to Nevada to Arizona and beyond. The almost came to war with the American government in 1858. Some mormons massacred a group of Gentiles traveling through Utah(but gee history seems to have forgotten the massacres of mormons back east). We learn of the regime of Young.

The book details the indian wars and immigration. Like estbalishing the state of Israel by the Jews, these pioneers esablished their own Zion which in many ways parrallels the creatiion of the Jewish state a 100 years later.

This bridges the gap between the mormon histories of Nauvoo, the hero making of Orrin Port Rockwell, and the modern mormon books that detail the power and secrecy of the chruch. This book also goes beyond the sensationalistic accounts of the Mountain Meadows Massacre(titled 'American Massacre' it would have been more aptly named for the Waco massacre in 93.)

An important book, well written and structured so as to make it easy for the reader to grasp.

Westerners International gave David L. Bigler's Forgotten Kingdom its Best Book award for 1998.

Will Bagley, Series Editor

I agreed with the previous reviewers in saying that this is one of the best books regarding the theocratic state that the Mormons tried to create during their early territorial years. The book does a wonderful job contrasting the theocratic values of the Mormon's ideal world to the republican ideology of the United States at that time.

The key figure of this book proves to be the theocratic dictator of Utah Territory, Brigham Young, prophet and president of the LDS. Its pretty clear by the book that Young saved his church from destruction and with his single-minded clarity of mission, managed to saved Utah for the Mormons. But in doing so, he committed himself to unforgivable sins, worst being the cover-up of the Mountain Meadow Massacre. But it was also interesting how he created a shadow government to off set the loss of formal position. But to paraphase one of the quotes from the book, "I may be the governor of the territory but Young is the govenor of the people" (close?). His defense of polygamy aided the enemies of his church and his willingness to over looked the misdeeds of his underlings marked him as a great but deeply flawed man. The book covered this struggled between Young and all his foes who stood against his theocratic dictatorship.

The book appears to be very well researched, clearly written and easy to read. Its an interesting read of Utah's politics, wars and religious conflicts as the Mormons slowly but surely, began to assimulated into the American society.

A Walk Through LifeThe Guv'nor is a great autobiography about a tough man who comes from the East end of London and gives you some good insight into the underworld of unlicensed boxing. One of the stories inside is how Lenny Mclean was flown to new york to fight the mafias top man, he beat him in the less than three minutes! if you like your tough men like Kimbo Slice, Mike Tyson and many others this book is for you to read!.

I always wondered who played the role of "John the Baptist" in the movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The name Lenny Mclean kept popping up in books on British gangsters. He is Lenny McLean. A man who grew up tough under hard circumstances. Showing a talent for fighting, he starts doing enforcer and door man work for the local mobs. Later, he fights for money. Totally fearless, he takes on all comers "I'll even fight King Kong," he states. "And I'll beat the hairy b....ard!" Some of his exploits and boldness had me laughing. Like when a group of tough guys approached him at a bar that he was managing and asked for his job. After soundly beating the lot, he tosses them out of the club. There is another incident where he beats up an opponent before getting into the ring.

There is no bragging or nonsense in this well-written biography. It is an honest, straight-forward story about one hard guy.

Doug Setter, author of Stomach Flattening

one of the best books i have ever read

a must buy

What an amazing book. The story of a kid, horribly beaten by his step father, who grows into the hardest bare knuckle boxer in the world. But what makes the story so great is McLean's ethic's and moral's. He clearly draws a line in the sand and if crossed there's trouble. Not just a hard man but a real character. This is a great read.

If you ever saw the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , you probably noticed the mob enforcer character, "Barry the Baptist", who "baptized" his victims in trash-bins filled with water. While reading an article about the movie, a mention was made of the real mobsters and hard-edged sorts that were used in bit parts. One such role was played by Lenny McLean, who portrayed Barry, and was called out as "in real life, the hardest man in England".

As an American fight fan, I'd never heard of Lenny McLean. So I did a bit of Internet research and happened upon his autobiography -- this book -- over at Amazon.co.uk. I bundled it with a few other UK-only purchases (at the time, certain AJ Quinnell books were only available there, too) and received it days later. It was a captivating, compelling read -- the working-class, Cockney nomenclature notwithstanding -- that details McLean's rise from an abused child to the top of England's unlicensed fight game.

An unlicensed fight can take place anywhere: a warehouse, tavern, gym... wherever there's enough room for two willing fighters and a plethora of bettors. The rules? Let's just say there aren't many. Head butts, hair-pulling, elbows, knees, and the like are all part of the game. One might consider UK's unlicensed fights as the logical ancestor to today's UFC or mixed martial arts.

Over time, McLean proved himself the most dangerous man in the fight game. He participated in thousands of these no-holds-barred bouts, and it can be argued he lost only once. And in a rematch of that fight, he handily won. McLean doesn't shy away from describing his experiences on the seamy side of things. He details his role as a real-life mob enforcer willing to do anything -- except kill -- to collect or intimidate. Even his tangles with the law -- including a murder charge for which he was found innocent -- are fully described in colloquial, yet entirely satisfying, prose.

The book's ending is filled with promise for a new life as an actor: McLean appeared in several TV and film roles. But during the filming of LS&2SB, McLean was stricken by a bout with the flu. Subsequent testing showed that he was suffering from advanced lung and brain cancer and he passed away in July 1998, just days before the release of the film. The book is a fascinating testament to a hard man who lived a hard life, but was equally dedicated to his family and destined for great things no matter the odds.

This was an excellent, intense account of a unique king's biography. I read this book to get more info on William the Conqueror, but now I'm obsessed with Harold II. A must-read for history buffs.

In terms of English history,not much is ever really said about Harold. Those who are looking for an informative and surprisingly entertaining work on the Monarch should look no further.

Ian Walker has left no stone unturned in the telling of Harold Godwineson and his family. Starting from his grandfather and father and ending with his grandson becoming the prince of Kiev.
After reading the book, you come away with a sense of the time that he lived in and more importantly a sense of the man. Walker is also very good at surmising how certain decisions and choices that were made having an effect on the people at the time. Case in point the effect of how Harold's contemporaries veiwed his oath breaking to William. Few historians are able to do this.

The author does love his dates and locations, but he is very thorough when it comes to extended family. Also and most importantly, he writes with a point. Instead of going off on a half page tangent, Walker writes in brief and consise paragraphs. When a major player such as William, Tosti or Harald Hardrada comes along, he writes a full chapter.

I have been looking for a book on this king for long time and this has surpassed my expectations. A definite "must-have" for English Monarch and Anglo-Saxon enthusiasts.

Everyone who takes English history probably remembers 1066, William of Normandy, the Battle of Hastings, and King Harold; essentially the date, the location and the leaders of the combatant armies. Some may remember that the fight was over the right of succession to the throne of England after the heirless death of King Edward the Confessor. A few may even remember that Edmond Halley's famous comet made an appearance just beforehand, creating great consternation that was immortalized in the Bayeux tapestry. For most, Harold's reign seems almost a foot note, hardly more than an intermission before the main event of the Norman conquest. With William and his successors come castle building, classic knighthood, feudal society, all the "romance" of the middle ages. Harold is so often treated as a cipher to all of this that the true drama of this transitional age is often lost on the student. Harold is just "the loser."

Ian Walker's book brings this period more into focus. He approaches his subject by examining, not only Harold's own life and career, but that of his grandfather and father, creating a sense of the venue for the events of the Conquest. Harold is no longer just "the loser." He is a powerful and intelligent warrior, dealing as often in diplomacy as in bloodshed, able to play the chess game of power politics in a very turbulent time. He was in fact "the last Anglo Saxon king," and his time, like the withdrawal of the elves from Tolkien's Middle Earth, is the end of an era. His predecessor Edward was the last of the line of Alfred the Great, the king who had wielded the tiny Anglo Saxon kingdoms into the one kingdom of England. William and his successors would turn the island into a developing nation state striving for a place in a world among other rising nation states.

I found particularly interesting the author's approach to the period as one of a family biography. Harold was not just a famous figure in history, he was a member of an ambitious extended family. Like the Borgias in a later time and place, Harold's father and his grandfather played major roles in English political life during the years preceding the Conquest, as did he and his brothers in their own time. Walker follows these careers, because it is the net created by their liaisons that defined the period. Pull out any of these lynch pins, and the history of the era would have been vastly different. Interesting too were the careers of Harold's children, who went on to carry the family into succeeding generations of international leaders. I have often wondered what the fates of descendants of famous people have been. What did happen to Cleopatra's surviving children for instance? At least in this instance, more is documented about Harold's children which gives a sense of closure to Walker's book.

Thoroughly enjoyable and informative study.

This book has enough detail and judicious use of sources to be of great use to the academic historian, while the author's lucid writing style and the sensible structure of the book will no doubt make it accesible to the interested layperson. Well done!

This is a great book for anyone interested in the mysterious and obscure events of England in the year 1066. Walker does a great job, trying to bring Harold Godwinson to life.