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Giles and Esmond Romilly were the nephews of Winston Churchill and Giles Romilly married Jessica (Decca) Mitford, one of the notorious Mitford girls. They both attended traditional Wellington College, where they rebelled against the military and disciplinary traditions of the time. There was fear that this august school was subject to the corrupting influence of Moscow, as the Romilly brothers produced a left-wing magazine entitled Out of Bounds: Public Schools' Journal Against Fascism, Militarism and Reaction. Several issues appeared and then Esmond ran away from school to work in a Communist bookshop, causing sensational headlines and adverse publicity. Giles, although a rebel, stayed on. ...
From piracy on the high seas to the recent Securitas depot robbery in Kent, Britain has a long and inglorious tradition of armed robbery as a way of life. In this uniquely compelling history, reformed career criminal Terry Smith brings the benefit of hard-won wisdom to his analysis of all the major cases. Casting a sharp eye over both the dangerously devil-may-care 'blagger' and the more organised professional 'villain', he brings an insider's point of view to the most high-profile armed robberies of the past 50 years. Each chapter has a full and comprehensive account of the robbery in the words of those who participated in it (including some exclusive interview material), the media, police and court records - starting from the initial spark through to the planning, organisation and execution of the crime, and how it came to be solved by law enforcement.
This volume is a biography of British physician, natural theologian and lexicographer, Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869). He is best known for publishing, in 1852, the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (Roget's Thesaurus), a classified collection of related words. As a young man, Roget compiled linguistic notes to improve the quality of his own lectures and writings. His life was marked by several incidents of sadness. His father and his wife died young. Roget's beloved uncle committed suicide in his presence. Roget struggled with depression for most of his life. His work on the thesaurus arose partly from an effort to battle depression. His catalog of words organized by their meanings, had been a vocation since his teens.
Churchill's Rebels is a heart-braking story of two young people madly in love and in open rebellion against their up-bringing and a way of life. Esmond Romilly was the nephew of Winston Churchill, a rebel against his family and public school who left England to fight for the rebels in the Spanish Civil War. Jessica Mitford, was one of the notorious Mitford girls – always known as Decca – and grew up in a life of Downton Abbey aristocratic privilege. Her sister Unity went to Germany and became very close to Hitler, while Diana married Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. In 1937, when Esmond was 18 and Jessica 19 they met and fell madly in love and, scandalously, ran away together to the Communist Front in Spain. After three months of family opposition, they were finally married. With war ever approaching, Esmond trained to fly and was killed in active service with Bomber Command. They had only had four brief, tempestuous and loving years together. Meredith Whitford's ground-breaking book uses previous unpublished documents and family sources and is essential reading. A distinguished author, she tells the story of a remarkable era...
Patrick Gordon Walker was born in 1907 with a conservative background: his father was a Judge in India. He went to prep school (St Ronan's), public school (Wellington) and Christ Church, Oxford as an undergraduate and then as a don. In Oxford he cut his political teeth, suffering some of the pitfalls that dogged his later time in office. He spent a year in Germany in the thirties, becoming fluent in the language and saw the beginnings of totalitarian rule. In the war he joined the BBC German service broadcasting to Germany. In 1945 he went with a radio car and recorded the first radio broadcasts from Belsen, published as The Lid Lifts. An extract from this book, long out of print, appears as...
A fascinating and dramatic investigation into the events that led to Winston Churchill becoming Prime Minister against the odds. ‘A gripping story of Churchill’s unlikely rise to power’ Observer London, May 1940. Britain is under threat of invasion and Neville Chamberlain’s government is about to fall. It is hard for us to imagine the Second World War without Winston Churchill taking the helm, but in Six Minutes in May Nicholas Shakespeare shows how easily events could have gone in a different direction. It took just six minutes for MPs to cast the votes that brought down Chamberlain. Shakespeare moves from Britain’s disastrous battle in Norway, for which many blamed Churchill, on ...
'These letters are a treat ... as an example of what a woman can do once she has rid herself of, or at least decided to ignore, the expectations of others - family, men, society - Jessica Mitford will always take some beating' OBSERVER 'Captures history's most charming muckraker, from her friendships with Katharine Graham and Maya Angelou to her devotion to civil rights' VOGUE 'Jessica Mitford is a sister of mine. If I had to go into a room with a leopard, I wouldn't hesitate to ask for her' Maya Angelou Over her 78 years, Decca's letters reveal a remarkable life - from her childhood as the daughter of a British peer to her scandalous elopement to the Spanish Civil War with her cousin, to he...
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