Shire Publications

London's many cemeteries, churches and graveyards are the last resting places of a multitude of important people from many different walks of life. Politicians, writers and military heroes rub shoulders with engineers, courtesans, artists and musicians, along with quite a few eccentric characters. Arranged geographically, this comprehensive guide describes famous graves in all the major cemeteries and churc...

Sheep have been farmed in Britain for hundreds of years and more than thirty million sheep now inhabit these islands. The many breeds developed over this time have been carefully matched to their surroundings - from the hardy, seaweed-eating North Ronaldsay to the tough hill-dwelling Swaledale and the docile Dorset Down of the lowlands. Susannah Robin Parkin here explains the main differences between the va...

Half-timbered houses, cottages and barnes are a familiar feature of the landscape, but only rarely do we have an opportunity to see below the surface and understand how they were planned and constructed. Timber-framed buildings catch the imagination of those who work with them because of their beauty, their strength and the quality of the material of which they were made: English oak. Many thousands of buil...

Nobody built sports cars like British manufacturers in the 1950s and 1960s. There was something very special about the combination of low-slung open two-seater bodywork with a spartan interior, a slick sporting gearchange and a rorty exhaust note. This was wind-in-the-hair motoring, and it was affordable by the average young man - at least, until he got married and had a family. The names of MG and Triumph ...

From prize-winning historical novelist Louise Allen, this book presents nine walks through both the London Jane Austen knew and the London of her novels! Follow in Jane's footsteps to her publisher's doorstep and the Prince Regent's vanished palace, see where she stayed when she was correcting proofs of Sense and Sensibility and accompany her on a shopping expedition - and afterwards to the theatre. In mode...

With the end of the Second World War it was not long before increasing wealth, cheaper cars, and social pressures made a family car the aspiration of thousands. Ford, Hillman, Standard, Morris and Vauxhall became household names, and the streets of Britain's suburbs began to fill with modern-looking saloon cars, designed to transport mother, father and 2.4 children with ease, if not speed. This highly-illus...

London Transport was created in 1933 to coordinate the shambolic, overlapping transport systems of the capital, and for decades has striven to meet the challenges of organising London travel. Now operating as Transport for London (TfL), it continues this demanding work. In this fully illustrated volume, Michael H. C. Baker presents the complete story of the organisation from its origins, through the upheava...

With over two-thirds of the globe covered by water, the ability to navigate safely and quickly across the oceans has been crucial throughout human history. As seafarers attempted longer and longer voyages from the sixteenth century onwards in search of profit and new lands, the tools of navigation became ever more sophisticated. The development of instruments over the last five hundred years has seen some r...

Oft-overshadowed by the imposing buildings that line the River Thames, the bridges of London are an intriguing part of the capital, past and present. This book traces the history of all 33 Thames bridges within Greater London, exploring the fascinating architecture and unique stories from Hampton Court Bridge in the west to the iconic Tower Bridge in the east. Accompanied throughout by colour photographs of...

From the original horse-drawn caravan to the sophisticated and well-appointed luxury leisure vehicle we know today, this book follows the dynamic evolution of the touring caravan from the 1900s to the present day. Using a selection of images from his archive library, expert Andrew Jenkinson reveals how technical advances as well as interior design revolutionised the touring caravan in the United Kingdom, an...

The name Lancelot 'Capability' Brown has become synonymous with the eighteenth-century English landscape garden: between 1751 and 1783 his consultancy handled over 170 major commissions. Ruthlessly efficient, he could stake out the 'capabilities' of a particular terrain within an hour on horseback. Rising to the position of Master Gardener to George III, his trademark features included bald lawns, clumped t...

At the end of the Second World War Winston Churchill promised to manufacture half a million prefabricated bungalows to ease the housing shortage; in the end more than 156,000 temporary 'prefabs' were delivered. Nicknamed 'Palaces for the People', and with convenient kitchens, bathrooms and heating systems, they proved popular and instead of being demolished as intended they were defended by residents who ca...

The business of sex was a significant aspect of urban culture in Georgian England, and a visible one. Despite the rise of the 'polite society' of Jane Austen's novels, England was also at the time rife with vice and debauchery: in the shadows of the fashionable public parks and gardens, in alleyways and taverns, even at church doors, there lurked a world of criminality and prostitution of which the bawdyhou...

Tartan is an enormously popular pattern in modern fashion. Beginning as Highland dress, it was originally peculiar to certain areas of Scotland, but is now generally accepted as its national costume: what was once ordinary working clothing of a distinctive local style has been formalised into a ceremonial dress, with tartans once woven according to the fancy of those who wore them becoming fixed with certai...

Gypsies have been a part of the British and European social fabric for centuries - and have faced prejudice and oppression for nearly as long, since at least the time of Henry VIII. Theirs is a peripatetic existence, dwelling in tents and in caravans and living often precariously at the edges of towns and villages, moving on in search of opportunities or as mainstream society drives them away. Gypsies of Br...

Piccadilly, Pall Mall, Old Bailey, Houndsditch and Crutched Friars are some of the unusual London street names that must puzzle those who use them daily as much as they puzzle the tourist. How did they arise, and what do they mean? This book explains these and over seven hundred and fifty other sin London. The origin of a stret name often reveals unsuspected facts about the history of the area. Many names d...

Garden Cities: the phrase is redolent of Arts and Crafts values and nineteenth-century utopianism. But despite being the culmination of a range of influential movements, and having global influence themselves, in fact there were only ever two true, self-contained Garden Cities in England - far more numerous were Garden Suburbs and Villages. Crystallised in England by planning visionary Ebenezer Howard and e...

No building type arouses more nostalgic affection than the traditional high street cinema, not only because of the impression made by the films on the screen and the havent if offered to courting couples, but also because of its own special atomosphere of expectations, relaxation and escape, usually enhanced by the decorative surroundings. Many picture huses were unremarkable, and some had decline to uncom...

Tube: Station to Station on the London Underground, written by Oliver Green and published by Shire Publications, provides historical background to London’s present day Underground network and then takes you on seven guided tours to observe the influence of architects such as Charles Holden, designer of many stations built in 1920s and 1930s, or Sir Norman Foster.

The London Underground is a pioneer and an institution. The first underground railway in the world, and incorporating the first ever deep tunnel 'tube' lines too, it is at the heart of London life, with millions of commuters and tourists using it every year and its tentacles extending into the suburbs it helped to create. Its turbulent history reflects the trials and tribulations of London itself: it provid...