You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
None
A breathtaking history of Britain’s executioners—from the seventeenth court of King Charles II to the UK’s last official hangman of the twentieth century. In 1663, Jack Ketch delighted in his profession and gained notoriety not only because of those he executed—dukes and lords—but for how often he botched the job. Centuries later, in 1965, after nearly six hundred trips to the gallows, Albert Pierrepoint retired as Britain’s longest-running executioner. Between them are three hundred years in a fascinating history of crime, and the “turn-off men” who handled the penalties—many of them criminals themselves, doing the grim work to save their own necks. Britain’s Most Notori...
Rooted in the creative success of over 30 years of supermarket tabloid publishing, the Weekly World News has been the world's only reliable news source since 1979. The online hub www.weeklyworldnews.com is a leading entertainment news site.
"The Executioner's Bible" tells the story of these working-class men who carried out this gruesome profession until its abolition in the late 1960's. Despite often being unassuming and quiet professionals, men like Albert Pierrepoint, William Billington and many other Chief and Assistant executioners made a name for themselves in a world hungry for salacious and gruesome news. Read about the bungling hangmen sacked for incompetence; drunken executioners dismissed for brawling; one hangman driven to suicide and another who 'got out just in time', to the last men to pull the lever at the height of the swinging sixties. They were the last of their kind: the hangmen of the 20th Century. And this is their fascinating sometimes repugnant, always enthralling story. The secrets of over six controversial decades of capital punishment are finally revealed.
A revealing look at history’s most important also-rans, bit-players, and might-have-beens Most people know that Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, but who shot John Wilkes Booth? The answer: Thomas Boston Corbett, who went mad instead of finding fame and fortune. We know about the great men whose actions changed the course of history, but what about the men whose actions affected those men? This is their book. Offbeat and engaging, The Man Who Shot the Man Who Shot Lincoln reveals the stories of forty-five of history’s most significant but little-known game-changers, including: - Pierre Basile, the crossbowman whose arrow hit Richard I - John Barry, the confederate who mistakenly shot Stonewall Jackson - Lee Duncan, the serviceman who rescued a puppy from the trenches of World War I and brought him home to America, where he became famous as Rin Tin Tin - Hanna Reitsch, Hitler’s personal pilot If you think you know your history, think again.
Already part of a genre known for generating controversy, some true crime and scandal books have wielded a particular power to unsettle readers, provoke authorities and renew interest in a case. The reactions to such literature have been as contentious as the books themselves, clouding the "truth" with myths and inaccuracies. From high-profile publishing sensations such as Ten Rillington Place, Fatal Vision and Mommie Dearest to the wealth of writing on the JFK assassination, the death of Marilyn Monroe and the Black Dahlia murder, this book delves into that hard copy era when crime and scandal books had a cultural impact beyond the genre's film and TV documentaries, fueling outcries that sometimes matched the notoriety of the cases they discussed and leaving legacies that still resonate today.
Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most notorious murders in Norfolk's history. The cases covered here record the county's most fascinating but least known crimes as well as famous murders that gripped not just Norfolk but the whole nation. From the Burnham Poisoners of 1835 to the Yarmouth Beach Murders, from the Costessey Horror to the 'last judicial beheading in England', this is a collection of the county's most dramatic and interesting criminal cases.
New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police, houses the notorious Black Museum, a unique collection of exhibits, photographs and other items connected with some of the most famous crimes of the last century. Fifty of those crimes were murders and they are explored in detail in this compelling book. Recently renamed The Crime Museum the author Gordon Honeycombe was given privileged access to its darkest secrets. His book spans a hundred years of murder, manslaughter and attempted assassinations and reveals the true facts behind some of the country's most notorious murder cases, including Jack the Ripper, Dr Crippen and the Krays. This is the ultimate guide to the most incredible crimes ever committed, featuring contemporary photographs never seen outside Scotland Yard. • Closely researched and objective, this book is a fascinating guide to murder and a grim insight into the minds of those who practice it. Honeycombe takes an unflinching look at why people murder and asks important questions about this most appalling of crimes, execution and the law itself.
Rooted in the creative success of over 30 years of supermarket tabloid publishing, the Weekly World News has been the world's only reliable news source since 1979. The online hub www.weeklyworldnews.com is a leading entertainment news site.
An Audience with an Elephant is a compendium of the oddest and most eccentric travels—a travel book to set alongside Norman Lewis and Eric Newby for the sheer unpredictability of its encounters and its surreal comedy. But Bryon Rogers didn’t venture to the ends of the earth to find singular custom and heroic idiosyncrasy: he had no need to. These are journeys to the heart of the strange and distant land of Britain. On his travels he meets the Turkish POW in British hands—an ancient tortoise captured at Gallipoli and now resident in Great Yarmouth—and the teenaged elephant who has opened more fetes and supermarkets than any TV celebrity. Here, too, are such bizarre figures as the octogenarian triathlete, the man who (before such things were banned) held every world eating record, and the last hangman in his untroubled retirement. Whether exploring the middle of England in the forgotten county of Northamptonshire or accompanying the last tramp through the wilder reaches of Wales, Byron Rogers chronicles a secret history of Britain that is touching, hilarious, magical and the extraordinary lives or ordinary people.