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...

Few cars have achieved the iconic status of Volkswagen's classic and much-loved Beetle - yet its origins were intertwined with the dark days of Nazism. This books looks those origins, at the marque's initial post-war rescue by the British and the effect of early VW Director General Heinz Nordhoff's forward-looking desire to perfect one model rather than spread the company's talent over a range of designs, a...

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...

For much of the twentieth century travel by air was a luxury available only to the wealthy, and accordingly the airlines - Pan Am, BOAC, TWA, BEA and many others - offered premium services that connected far-flung parts of the world with con trails of glamour. This book looks back at the golden age, from the 1920s to the 1970s, when well-appointed airliners whisked the rich and famous around the world on ho...

The City of London has one of the strongest unbroken traditions of livery companies in the world. Over one hundred companies, some six centuries old, maintain strong, colourful, beneficial, traditional and independent lives, and many of them have beautiful halls. This book traces the history of the guilds and liveries in various countries and shows their influence on the government of the City, on which the...

Cider has recently seen a surge of popularity both in versions produced by large breweries and by small producers and home cider-makers who value taste and complexity. This book takes us through the history and practicalities, and introduces the concepts and techniques of craft cider production. It looks at the different styles of cider, and the effect of fruit variety, climate and orchard location on the f...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

London is the supreme railway city. In 1900 it had fourteen railway termini, more than any other city in the world. A century later only one of them has disappeared completely, and just three have undergone comprehensive reconstruction. All the others are recognisable products of the Victorian railway age that continue to function daily as busy stations for the travellers of the twenty-first century. This b...

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.

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...

"Sailing Barges".

The railway was one of the main modes of long distance travel for Victorian Britons, and its processes - checking the timetable, buying a ticket, taking a seat - were central to both the industry and leisure of the period. David Turner here tells the story of travelling by rail between 1830 and the First World War: the development of stations, passenger carriages, waiting rooms and tickets; less familiar ph...

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...

In 1914 Great Britain's navy was the largest and most powerful the world had ever seen - but what was the everyday experience of those who served in it? This fully illustrated book looks at the British sailor's life during the First World War, from the Falkland Islands to the East African coast and the North Sea. Meals in the stokers' mess and the admiral's cabin; the claustrophobic terrors of the engine ro...

Steam, and then cumbersome motor, tractors existed in small numbers before 1914, after which the need to produce more foods using less horse and man power saw the origins of the machine we know today. Thanks to mass production, Ford brought the price down to suit average farmers, and in the 1920s to 1940s numerous rivals brought in such novelties as diesel engines, pneumatic tyres, hydraulic implement lifts...

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...