A beautiful glossy colour compendium for every family bookcase with gorgeous colour photographs, one or two per page of gardens, parks and trees, farmland, hedgerows and verges, woods and forests, heaths, downs, moors and mountains, rivers, lakes, ponds and marshes, sea and seashore and all the birds and animals and fish and plants and trees to look out for. Spot the difference between the common line and the common yew, the walnut and the Norway maple, the creeping buttercup and the daisy, the biting stone crop and the sun spurge; the song thrush and the mistle thrush, the tit family with their beautiful colourful plumage, the buff-tailed bumble bee and the honey bee, the garden black ant, ladybirds, butterflies and moths, earthworms and slow worms, poppies and cowslips, redwings and quails, snails and snakes, bats to badgers, buzzards and red deer, common cotton grass with its fluffy white clumps of wool to a gallery of fish like the pike, perch, barbel and chub, the mink and the water vole, rock samphire and rock sea rocket on the shoreline and the gannets and kittiwake, limpets and winkles. With an excellent text, the final double page colour photograph is of a seal kissing her pup. A treasure trove of facts, remarkable stories, intriguing folklore and beautiful photographs covering some 500 species and answering such questions as which weed is still used in hand cream and why spiders were fed to the sick in ancient times. 384 very large glossy pages, colour illus.

This special history book describes the importance of music in parks and open spaces, the growth of the brass band movement, the legacy of the pleasure gardens movement, the impact of the great foundries, through to the decline and subsequent revival of the bandstand, and so much more. Packed with hundreds of archive and colour photos, beginning with a general prospect of Vaux Hall Gardens circa 1715 and the crowded opening of the bandstand in Congleton Park, Cheshire 1914, the commentary begins with the Registrar General of Tower Hamlets writing in 1839 'A Park in the East End of London, would probably diminish the annual deaths by several thousands... and add several years to the lives of the entire population.' The early Victorians recognised rapidly industrialising centres across the country and until this book there has been a clear gap in the understanding of the social impact of parks on local communities. Parks were often developed by a combination of local authorities and wealthy benefactors including Nash, Paxton, Gibson, Milner, Kemp and Loudon and great designs were often produced as recreation evolved. With many parks soon seeming to have a bandstand, what defined the role of music in parks and the effect on dissipating social divisions in society, music at seaside resorts, we begin to understand that in their heyday there were over 1500 bandstands in the country attracting the likes of crowds of over 10,000 in the Arboretum in Lincoln, to regular concerts in most of London's parks up until the beginning of WWII. Little is really known about them from their evolution as 'orchestras', the music played, the intricate and ornate ironwork or Art Deco designs and the impact of the great foundries, to the decline during post-Second World War and revival in the late 1990s, the book tells the stories of these pavilions made for music and their history, decline and revival. The brilliant Gazetteer lists town, location, date erected and manufacture or foundry where known and model by existing bandstands from Aberdare Park to the Promenade Youghall, County Cork and then the lost bandstands, covering all 1500 and with dozens of beautiful sepia postcards and images and modern sunny day blue skies colour photos. 236 very large pages in softback published by Historic England.
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Sub-titled 'True Tales From London's Streets', the book is an x-ray of life and stories in their own words of those who live and work in our capital. On the surface, the streets of London in 1861 and in 2019 are entirely different places, but dig just a little and the similarities are striking and in many cases shocking. Taking Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (available product code 56595 to compare) as inspiration, Jennifer Kavanagh explores the changes and continuities by collecting and mapping stories from today's London. Beggars, street entertainers, stalls selling a variety of food, clothes, second-hand goods, and thieves and the sex trade are all still predominant. The rise of the gig economy has brought a multitude of drivers and cyclists, delivering and moving goods, transporting meals, food and people, all organised through smartphones but using the same streets as Mayhew's informants. The precarity faced by this new workforce would also be familiar to the street sellers of his day in terms of resources; gone are the workhouses, alms-houses, pauper's lunatic asylums, and enter day centres, shelters, hostels and food banks. There are still many kinds of market like the privately run farmer's markets which are doing especially well, typically open once a week with a trend towards healthy and organic food. There is a pair of builders pictured in a line art illustration, street food sellers and in local streets shopkeepers and long term residents know each other and the Big Issue seller around the corner. There is getting around, going out in the fresh air, Fitzrovia (a favourite for film and period dramas), Hassene an Algerian street sweeper, Victorian railway stations and parks. According to the 1861 census, the population of inner London was 2,808,494. In 2011 it was 3,231,901 - not such a great difference. In 1851 over 38% of Londoners were born somewhere else and in 2011 37% is made up of different nationalities and now London is rightly proud of its multiculturalism. The changing city as seen from the end of 2018 to spring 2020 which leads us through the streets of London and to places we would never find for ourselves. 395pp, paperback. Illus.

''Has anybody in here got a degree?' demanded the examiner as he opened his introductory talk on the Knowledge of London at the Old Public Carriage Office in October 2008. One or two of us in the room sheepishly raised our hands 'Well, this is harder,' he boomed in his stern cockney accent.' Welcome to a London quiz book like no other, written by a licensed London taxi driver who spent more than four years of intensive study on top of a full time job and countless hours riding around London on a moped learning 320 set routes around a 9km (six mile) radius of Charing Cross, memorising thousands of points of interest from a nondescript Balham boozer to Buckingham Palace. Five sets of quizzes are based on actual set routes beginning with the first they all learn ? Manor House Station to Gibson Square and ending with the last, Copenhagen Street to Charing Cross Station. The book deliberately captures as many of the big sights as possible and the routes get harder. The eagle-eyed reader might spot one or two which might not have scored full marks for being the most direct routes in an actual Knowledge appearance. Here is all the slang and lingo like ten o'clock known in the trade as 'burst time' because the double doors of theatres and concerts are flung open and every back seat of every black cab is quickly filled. Ian Beetlestone takes us on a guided tour around London's 40,000 plus streets with 500 head scratching questions from easy to mind-bendingly difficult. What is Walthamstow's postcode, and what's it got to do with Christmas 1994? Holland Park is home to annual summer season performances of what? Which club, just east of Putney Bridge Station, was the site of the first match in which sport in 1874? Who, reportedly, had notorious premises at 186 Fleet Street in the 18th century? From the Royal College of Music SW7 to Crouch Hill Station N4, London City Airport to Hornchurch or Consort Road SE15 to the Ministry of Defence SW1, for each there is a full page A-Z style colour map and bullet point details and facts throughout these big colourful pages. 184pp, softback.

From the alchemical experiments practised by Queen Elizabeth I's favoured scientist Dr Dee to the arcane rituals of magicians like Aleister Crowley in the 20th century, this book uncovers ritual and magic in London in a study of occultism in its widest sense. Starting with a prevailing fear of witchcraft in the Elizabethan era, the author follows a chronological account of the major occult figures in the capital's history. The architects of the Restoration, including Wren and in particular Nicholas Hawksmoor, have been studied for the underlying principles in their designs which are believed to derive from the Cabbala and the "sacred measurements" of the biblical Temple, with Wren's pupil Hawksmoor suspected of incorporating a mesh of occult symbolism into his churches. Swedenborg, William Blake, Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley all left their mark on London, together with secret societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Legends such as Spring-Heeled Jack and the Vampire of Highgate Cemetery are examined, and the book concludes with a gazetteer of notable occult sites. Bloomsbury, described by Peter Ackroyd as a nexus of occultism and marginal spiritualism, is home to the British Museum whose Egyptian holdings inspired the founders of the Golden Dawn. Caxton Hall in Bow is where Crowley performed his rites of Eleusis. Other landmarks are Freemasons' Hall in Covent Garden, the Warburg Institute housing the Crowley archive, and outlying sites such as the Black Madonnas of Willesden. 192pp, paperback.

From the Pen & Sword Military Books (Your Towns and Cities in World War Two) series the book does in fact cover the Tower of London which not technically in the City but within Tower Hamlets, and we take a brief look inside its walls and read about the story of the last person to be executed there. The book looks at different areas of the City such as Guildhall, St Paul's Cathedral, St Bartholomew's Hospital, the Blitz and the devastating effect of that eight month period of time between 7th September 1940 and 21st May 1941. The worst raid took place on 29th December 1941 when the German Luftwaffe dropped hundreds of incendiary devices on the historic buildings and homes of the nation's capital. The book also looks at the London Underground and why initially the government refused to allow these train stations to be used as air raid shelters, and the devastating effect a direct hit had on one of them. The City of London was always going to be an obvious target for German bombers and a way to spread fear and panic among the British people. Although not vastly populated, there would still be enough people working there during the day for attacks on it to take their toll. The City's ancient and iconic buildings also bore the brunt of the German bombs including churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire in 1666. Read about the bravery of the staff at St Barts which was one of the medical facilities that remained open during the course of the war, and the sterling work carried out by the City's civilian population and the different voluntary roles including the Home Guard, and the Fire Watchers who spent their nights on the city's rooftops looking out for incendiary devices dropped by the German Luftwaffe. The book covers the regiments of the City of London, memorials and the London Clearing Banks. 170 large page paperback, well illus.

Merseyside was hammered during the war, being a major port and distribution centre, and this fascinating book uses a technique of blending old photos from the blitz with modern ones from the same angle showing the streets and locations in a then-and-now depiction of how things have changed. It was not until mid-1940 that bombs began to fall with regularity on Merseyside, by which time many of the children who had been evacuated had returned home again. Starting in early July the Luftwaffe pounded the area, and in September there was a raid somewhere on Merseyside for 26 out of 30 nights. On 28 November 250 people lost their lives in Liverpool alone. The pictorial records are arranged chronologically, though some are difficult to date, starting with a photo of Liverpool's famous Town Hall with sandbags piled high across the frontage. Children and adults are pictured congregating round a blown-out window in Wallasey, probably because at the time it was a novel sight. Dockland suffered particularly, and incendiary bombs one October night hit a railway siding at Speke, a match factory at Garston and two warehouses. On 25 April 1941 the Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid a visit to Birkenhead, Wallasey and Liverpool, captured on newsreel footage. In August 1941 the country's many fire brigades were nationalised, leading to a more co-ordinated response, and emergency water supplies were widely established. The final chapter of the book features signs of the blitz that can still be seen nowadays, including a faint Emergency Water Supply notice below a fascinating modern advertisement for "Reptile live foods at only £1.50 a tub". 175pp, softback, glossary, colour photos on every page.

Cornwall has had a rich history from the prehistoric period, the Norman Conquest and the turbulent Tudor age, to the Civil War and the First and Second World Wars. The chapters of the book look at different parts of Cornwall: Saltash to Fowey, the Rame Peninsula, Truro, St Austell to Falmouth, Rock to Bude, Hayle to Padstow, Helston to St Ives, and St Keverne to Porthleven. Start your journey at Saltash, the first place people arrive at in Cornwall after crossing a bridge from Devon. Learn how the town grew around its waterfront where the ferry service operated and how, during Henry II's reign, a port was set up at Saltash for the export of tin from local mines. Travel around the coast to Polperro which is a popular holiday spot with original fishermen's houses dating back hundreds of years with a Royal document first recorded in 1303. Find your way to Penzance, the most westerly major town in Cornwall in Mount's Bay, and uncover the earliest signs of a settlement in the area (dating back to the Bronze age) including a spear head, a knife, pins and pottery. Discover Helston where Flora Day takes place annually on 8th May and visitors can take part in the Furry Dance whose origin goes back for hundreds of years. The book celebrates Cornwall's place in literary history from Daphne Du Maurier's books such as Jamaica Inn and Frenchman's Creek to Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. Places for visitors to see in the region are celebrated, such as the Eden Project, the Tate Gallery in St Ives and Rick Stein's restaurant in Padstow. There are brilliant images included to bring Cornwall to life, from an early view of Porthtowan showing a tin mine on the horizon and a photo of Porth Bridge at Newquay where several prehistoric burial mounds exist in the area, to Marazion Causeway leading to St Michael's Mount and Marazion is one of the oldest chartered towns in Britain. Paperback, black and white images, 152pp.

In the South Transept of Westminster Abbey are interred the bodies of over 70 men and women, primarily writers, poets and playwrights, and many more are memorialised. Ever since the reburial of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1556, this space has become a sanctuary where some of the most revered figures of English letters are remembered and celebrated and is an attraction visited by thousands of tourists every year. Analysing almost a millennium of political and literary history, Thomas Prendergast examines the chaotic, fitful and frequently politically influenced process by which Britain has consecrated its poetry and poets, beginning with the deaths of Edward the Confessor and Thomas Becket, the various burials of Chaucer, the politicking of Alexander Pope, the absence of William Shakespeare to the present day. Are the notable absences more telling than those who rest here? To what do the many amendments to graves and memorials attest? Full of fascinating vignettes of the writers' lives, quotations and with a full rollcall of residents and memorials, plus floorplans and a great many b/w photos, drawing and other illus, this is a brilliantly crafted rumination on a British institution which would be the ideal read prior to a visit to Westminster Abbey. 235pp.

Ever since the first horse drawn trams wobbled onto the road in the 1870s, the status of these useful vehicles has been debated. Did they represent an outdated concept, or might they hold the key to a flexible future? The tram's Edwardian heyday was followed by a mid-20th century decline, but in the 21st century a number of Britain's major cities, including Sheffield, Manchester, Nottingham and Edinburgh, not to mention London's pioneering Docklands Light Railway, have reinstated a fixed-rail model of public transport. This comprehensive book tells the detailed story of Britain's tram systems, with fascinating archive photos on every page. The first horsedrawn street tramways opened in London and Liverpool in 1870, and in Dublin, Belfast and Cork two years later. Glasgow was the first city to embrace steam trams, and a few years later, in 1883, a battery tram was trialled in London, with an overhead trolley wire service being introduced in Leeds in 1891. Although a cable tram was in use on Highgate Hill for a time, by the end of the century electric trams with a pantograph had become the norm. An archive photo in Clapham High Street suggests that, although the buses of the time were also horse-drawn, a tram's rail tracks enabled them to carry far greater loads. Women tram conductors were employed for the first time in Glasgow during World War I, and the last horse-drawn tram ran in Morecambe in 1926. In the 1930s Britain's major cities started replacing trams with trolley or motor buses, and during the 1950s trams virtually disappeared. Then in the 1980s new light rail systems began to spring up, with cities like Nottingham and Manchester integrating them closely with other form of public transport. Who knows what the future will bring? 269pp, archive photos.