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The competition held by the Department for Transport to award a new InterCity West Coast franchise in 2012 was intended to be the first in the most extensive programme of franchising since privatisation. Significant errors were made by the Department during the competition, which not only caused the cancellation of that franchise award at considerable public expense but also called into question the remaining franchising programme. This report is the second of two independent reviews commissioned by the Government, by Richard Brown, the Chairman of Eurostar. It concludes that franchising is a fundamentally sound approach for securing the passenger railway services on which so many people rel...
Travel literature has been described by Jonathan Raban as "literature's red-light district". It defies peoples' beliefs, confuses expectations, crosses disciplinary boundaries and is linked to ethnography, journalism and biography. Yet for all that has managed to remain not only a visible but also an increasingly popular literary genre. This anthology makes an entertaining and insightful contribution to this engaging field. It includes extracts from well known writers, such as Thackeray, Boll and Chesterton, but also presents less familiar figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The seventy pieces collected here both offer sharp observations of the country and are equally reveal...
"Arranged chronologically by decade, from the 1890s to the 1990s, each decade is divided into two different types of writing: critical/documentary and imaginative writing, and is accompanied by a headnote which situates it thematically and chronologically. The Reader is also structured for thematic study by listing all the pieces included under a series of topic headings. The wide range of material encompasses writings of well-known figures in the Irish canon and neglected writers alike. This will appeal to the general reader, but also makes Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century ideal as a core text, providing a unique focus for detailed study in a single volume."--BOOK JACKET.
As one of the most enigmatic and most reviled kings in English history, the man who will become Richard III emerges from the pages of The Protector as a loyal brother, a fearless soldier, and an able administrator of the north of England. Neither saint nor villain, he is thrust unwillingly into power by the untimely death of his elder brother, King Edward IV, who leaves the crown to his son, a twelve-year-old boy. On his deathbed, the dying king names Richard protector of the new king and of the realm, but the youth is wholly under the influence of the Woodvilles, his mother’s family and Richard’s sworn enemies. The result is a power struggle in which Richard must fight to gain not only ...
Irish history sounds a long litany of grievance and vengeance—lost battles, escaped earls, and institutionalized injustice. The gun, certainly in this century, has played a prominent part. In The Gun in Politics, J. Bowyer Bell presents the story of one Ireland—the Ireland of the Troubles—and about an approach to understanding political violence. In particular, he examines the Irish Republic Army, the longest-enduring unsuccessful revolutionary organization. He de-scribes the covert world of gunmen and the great game they play in the street. His is a lively, telling account of sophisticated weapons transfer, of the impact of civil war on society, and of appropriate democratic responses to terrorism. Bell's association with active Republicans, his endless tea seminars at the United Irishman, drinks at Hennessy's, and constant conversation throughout Ireland on political matters over a period of twenty years has provided the author with unique background for this guide to a fascinating, though brutal, undercurrent of Irish history.
In this sweeping historical series debut, a fallen French aristocrat must prove himself in the furnace of Napoleon’s army. France, 1795: Confusion and fear reign in the Republic. With her troops facing starvation and annihilation on three fronts, France is killing her patriots. Alain Lausard, an aristocrat whose family were massacred in The Terror, now rots in prison. His one chance at freedom is to serve in the faltering Italian campaign, now commanded by a young Napoleon Bonaparte. Trained as a soldier, Lausard commands respect for turning his ragged miscreants into ruthless cavalry. Yet tensions remain. As the unit falls under the command of the despotic Cezar, a hazardous mission behind enemy lines threatens everything . . .