Modern History 27 MODERN HISTORY


My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. - Charles Franklin Kettering


73429 THE CONSERVATIVES: A History by Robin Harris


Robin Harris had almost completed his magisterial account of the life of Margaret Thatcher when she died last April, necessitating rapid completion, editing and printing of the book. This, his previous book, required no such indecent haste. The Conservative Party has been at the heart of British politics for over 200 years, and Harris has been at the party’s heart since 1978, having been director of research, government political advisor and a member of Mrs Thatcher’s policy unit. When she was ousted from Number 10, he stayed with her, assisting her with her books and writing her speeches. Surprisingly, given the influence of the Conservative Party and its members, there has not yet been a single volume history as authoritative as this. In a lively style, Harris takes as his starting point the larger-than-life personalities who have led the party, analysing in forensic details the careers of Peel, Disraeli, Salisbury, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Hague and Cameron and the political ideas that formed them. These superb pen portraits of some of the most powerful men - and one woman - in British history form the foundation stones of a vibrant, compelling narrative which shines a new light upon British history since the early 19th century. A landmark book. A door-stopping 632pp with 32 pages of colour and b/w plates, first edition of 2011. £30 NOW £14


73053 LONDON CALLING: A Countercultural History of


London Since 1945 by Barry Miles


Soho and Fitzrovia are still a magnet for writers and artists eager for altered states and social freedoms. This superbly entertaining account of London’s Bohemia in its postwar heyday, the people, pubs and parties, starts with the romantic figure of Tambimuttu, the editor of


Poetry London who gave the name Fitzrovia to the area round Fitzroy Square. Tambi claimed that he judged poems by the quality of the paper they were written on, and the author remembers Lucian Freud and Henry Moore as his regular illustrators. Their usual pub crawl started at the Hog in the Pound and ended at Soho’s Swiss Tavern. Nina Hamnett, who modelled for and had affairs with most of the artists, favoured the Fitzroy Tavern, though its clientèle from the art world was gradually being superseded by gay servicemen. In the 50s the scene changed with the advent of the Angry Young Men and the Beat generation, and in the 60s the Beatles and their entourage adopted the short-lived Ad- Lib club. In the 90s the performance artist Leigh Bowery, immortalised by Lucian Freud, was a major figure, but the magic was evaporating. 468pp, paperback, notes, photos in b/w and colour. £12.99 NOW £4.50


72849 VINTAGE FASHION: Classic 20th Century Styles


and Designs by Ottilie Godfrey Vintage clothes are big business and this gallery of 20th century fashion illustrates how to get the authentic look. The 1920s Jazz Age Flappers cast off their mothers’ whalebone corsets and appeared in knee-length sheath dresses worn with cloche


hats and feather boas, with hair cropped short in the style of fashion icon Louise Brooks. A couture landmark was Chanel’s Little Black Dress of 1926, but when stocks and shares crashed on Wall Street, hemlines followed suit, and the Thirties featured more flowing lines. A superb shot of Marlene Dietrich in 1933 shows her wearing a tailored tweed trouser suit and a sultry half- smile, and tweed remained popular in the war years with austerity suits made from sturdier cloth. The New Look of the 1950s with its cinched-in waist and wide skirts reintroduced post-war femininity, encouraging women to give up their wartime independence. The swinging sixties would change all that, with London leading the world in fashion with names like Mary Quant, Jean Muir and Biba, and seventies Retro picked up themes from everywhere, with glam rock and the white suits of Saturday Night Fever being particularly memorable. Eighties power-dressing was more severe, though style icons such as Madonna and Princess Diana were not afraid to go their own way. 128pp, softback, fully illustrated in colour and archive black and white. £9.99 NOW £5.50


73010 THE NEXT 100 YEARS: A Forecast for the 21st Century


by George Friedman The author admits that he has no crystal ball and that forecasting 100 years ahead may appear to be a frivolous activity, but he insists that - although he will get many details wrong - his goal is to identify the major tendencies, geopolitical,


technological, demographic, cultural and military, in their broadest sense, and to define the major events that might take place. So, if you think that predictions of Mexico making a bid for global supremacy, or Poland becoming America’s closest ally, or World War III taking place in space are slightly farfetched, then read these forecasts with an open mind. The author brings to his subject a unique combination of lucid, cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling and… you never know! 350 paperback pages illus in b/w, with maps. £8.99 NOW £4


72776 PORTRAIT OF AN ERA: An Illustrated History of Britain 1900-1945


by Juliet Gardiner et al A weighty publication from Reader’s Digest that is absolutely brimming over with some 650 b/w photos from the world famous Getty archive, this is an absolutely jaw- dropping portrait of what were


probably the most incident-packed 45 years of our nation’s history. Not only did the nation see technological and social change like never before, but out of these 45 years over ten of them were spent fighting in the two biggest armed conflicts the world had ever witnessed. We begin with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, and a rather splendid formal portrait of the next queen, Alexandra, consort of Edward VII, with her compliment of six pageboys on the day of her husband’s coronation in 1902. The Edwardian era was the last grand flourish of British imperialism, brought to a shuddering halt with the outbreak of the Great War, as Europe tore itself apart. The interwar period brought the Jazz Age when “flappers” Charlestoned the night away, and back in the real world we had the General Strike, the Depression, the abdication of Edward VIII and the rumblings of another war. The ensuing destruction of WWII and ultimate victory all came at a terrible cost, then the General Election of 1945 saw war-winning Churchill become an election loser, and the beginnings of the welfare state and NHS. We did not know that the first man to cross the Atlantic to the USA from Britain (one Major


Pritchard, who was first off the R34 at Long Island in 1919) had extra company - there was a stowaway hiding among the ship’s hydrogen gas bags! Quality photos and expert analysis. 559pp, 9½” × 11½”.


£25 NOW £12.50


73018 A POINT OF VIEW: The Book of the Radio Series by Clive James


The BBC series A Point of View has been on the air since 2007. From 2007 to 2009, Clive James was one of the favourite presenters and now, for the first time, his original pieces, 60 in total, as well as all-new postscripts, are collected together in one volume. He reflects on everything from wheelie bins to plastic surgery, sports commentators to corporate art, global warming, politicians’ gaffes, Harry Potter, the self- marketing courtesan and the inevitability of chaos - you name it. 358 pages. £16.99 NOW £6


71123 CHILDREN OF LIGHT: How Electricity


Changed Britain Forever by Gavin Weightman Faraday demonstrated a prototype generator in 1831 and in 1878 the first floodlit football match was staged. The author describes the development of electric power chronologically. Godalming was the first town to turn off its gas lamps and inaugurate electric street lighting in 1881. When the National Grid was established, local protests about pylons and health issues were swept aside. The author’s summary of Thatcher’s confrontation with the miners and the outlook for power supplies in the 21st century makes a readable end. 282pp, photos. £25 NOW £3


71826 LISTENING TO BRITAIN edited by Paul


Addison and Jeremy Crang Subtitled ‘Home Intelligence Reports on Britain’s Finest Hour May to September 1940' this is a period that saw the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the opening stages of the Blitz. The Ministry of Information compiled daily reports on the morale of the nation for circulation within Whitehall. From


the Mass-Observation Social Survey Organisation through a network of contacts including chief constables, postal censors, doctors, parsons, publicans and trade unionists, the reports about German spies dressed as ‘hairy-handed nuns’ and concerns about anti-Semitism in the heavily-bombed East End. Complete and unabridged sequence. 492pp. £18.99 NOW £5


72634 SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE: Writings on Politics, Ice Cream, Churchill and My Mother by Simon Schama


Professor Simon Schama CBE is an Edward Gibbon for our times. His review of Roy Jenkins’s biography of Churchill gives Schama the opportunity to look at the whole Churchill myth, both the adulation and the sly deflation. His article on Ruskin’s hatred of Dutch painting is a superb aesthetic meditation, and Martin Scorsese, Charlotte Rampling, Isaiah Berlin all get the Schama treatment. Two articles on the significance of 9/11, a few days and a year afterwards, are both equally thought-provoking. Food is another passion, and memories of his mother’s Jewish kitchen are intensely evocative. 405pp, photos. £20 NOW £8


72366 THE EXPO FILES by Stieg Larsson Along with the creation of Salander and the Millennium Trilogy, professional journalist Stieg Larsson was an untiring crusader for democracy and equality. As a reporter and Editor-in-Chief on the journal Expo he researched the extreme right both in Sweden and at an international level. The articles are on right-wing extremism, racism, violence against women and women’s rights, on homophobia and honour killings. Despite death threats and financial difficulties, Larsson never ceased to fight for and write about his firmly held principles. 186pp in paperback. £12.99 NOW £4


72608 FROST/NIXON: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interview


by Sir David Frost and Bob Zelnick Sir David Frost was the only person to have interviewed the last seven Presidents of the United States and the last six Prime Ministers of Great Britain and was famous for ‘That Was the Week That Was’. This book provides the authoritative account of the only public trial that Richard Nixon would ever have and is a revelation of the man’s character as it appeared in the stress of 11 gruelling sessions before the cameras. Frost’s encounters with such figures as Swifty Lazar, Ron Ziegler, potential sponsors and Nixon as negotiator are nothing short of hilarious. 368pp in paperback. $14.95 NOW £3.50


72538 ORDER! ORDER! A Parliamentary Miscellany by Robert Rogers


Here are all the famous clashes, rivalries and great events of parliamentary history, such as the fire in 1834 that destroyed the medieval buildings, the dramatic attempts to blow up and bomb Parliament and the Prime Minister who was assassinated while he walked along its corridors. No, we did not know that one either! As entertaining as it is informative, and written with the intimate knowledge of an insider, this is altogether a fascinating collection. 243 pages, b/w illus. £14.99 NOW £5


71269 LONDON’S SECRET TUBES by Andrew Emmerson and Tony Beard There are numerous conspiracy theories regarding London’s vast network of underground passageways. This book covers the period from 1915 to 1980, using only material in the public domain. During World War I there was extensive tunnelling for the Post Office tube link which was designed to transfer mail safely and speedily. Completed in 1917, the immediate use for these tunnels was to store works of art from the British Museum, Wallace Collection and Royal galleries, a function they again assumed in World War II. The Cabinet and Chiefs of staff were assigned to a citadel in Dollis Hill, where unassuming buildings concealed the bunker below, but it was soon decided that the centres of government would be evacuated to the west country in the event of the capital’s complete devastation. The Bankside Grid Control centre suffered several near misses before finding an eight-storey home in disused Post Office lift shafts at St Paul’s. Archive photos. 192pp. £25 NOW £13


! 71426 PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE: One Man’s


Journey from Repression to Freedom by Charles Yeats


The author was brought up in Basutoland at a time when it was part of Britain’s Empire and he spent a term at Harrow School. He writes trenchantly of his concern that maybe we, in the West, have not fully realized the reality of a post-9/11 world, and of our social, environmental and moral responsibilities. As a conscientious objector, he endured several periods of solitary confinement at the infamous Detention Barracks. A touching plea that love and friendship offer the only way forward to a lasting peace. 210 pages, illus and map.


£12.99 NOW £2 71539 VISHNU’S CROWDED TEMPLE: India


Since the Great Rebellion by Maria Misra The author covers the British Raj before World War I, the inter-war years when the imperial system came under question, and the final section tells the story of the Nehruvian and Hindu nationalist projects to create a more integrated India. Partition resulted in one of the great mass migrations in history, accompanied by horrifying brutality as officials failed to consider the extent of the administrative and security operation. The book concludes with the significant contemporary displacement of Vishnu by the popular shape-changing monkey-god Hanuman. 536pp, glossary, maps, b/w photos. Paperback. ONLY £4


71803 LIFE BELOW STAIRS: True Lives of


Edwardian Servants by Alison Maloney Here is the lively and colourful vanished world of the Edwardian servant, revealing the real experience with historical accuracy. Taking in the household structure, pay and conditions, special duties, rules and regulations, as well as what happened to servants in old age, we learn about food and beer allowances, uniform, high days and holidays, Mop fairs in the market places and dismissal. 192pp, illus. £9.99 NOW £4.75


71960 CHINA WITNESS: Voices from a Silent Generation by Xinran translated from the Chinese by Esther Tyldesley, Nicky Harman and Julia Lovell


This groundbreaking work of oral history gives a voice to a forgotten generation, and reveals the secret history of 20th century China. It is at once a journey by the author through time and place, and a memorial to those who have lived through war and civil war, persecution, invasion, revolution, famine, modernisation and Westernisation, and have survived into the 21st century. To obtain these stories, the author travelled from the cities to the remote countryside. She met retired teachers, a herb woman at a market, Red Guards, a female general, a shoe mender, taxi drivers, and many more. They spoke to her about everything from the Long March to oil pipelines, land reform to folk medicine, Mao to marriage. 435 paperback pages, colour and b/w photos, map of China. £12.99 NOW £5


71689 AMERICAN FUTURE: A History by Simon Schama


This is a book published to accompany one of Schama’s TV series. Schama has spent half his life in the US and here takes an anguished moment to study the truth about the country’s identity as a nation and its place in the world. Cumulatively the chapters build into a history of American exceptionalism - the ‘American difference’ that means so much to its people but which has led it into calamities as well as triumphs. Historically the country has managed to renew and rebuild itself when overwhelmed by financial disaster such as in 1932 and 1976. 2008 is another disaster and its future hangs in the balance. 392pp, colour and b/w photos. £20 NOW £5


BOOKAZINES WITH 10" x 8" PRINTS


73217 CLASSIC BRITISH MOVIES: Bookazine and Six Replica Postcards


by Compendium Publishing Beginning with The Lady Vanishes, The Third Man and Henry V, Brief Encounter, Lawrence of Arabia, James Bond, The Italian Job, Kes, The Wicker Man, Gandhi and ending with Mamma Mia!, Slumdog Millionaire


and In the Loop, this 64 page very large colourful softback gives a description of the main characters and actors from dozens of classic films, where it was filmed, running time, release date, screenplay writer and a brief précis. Also slotted inside the attractive card wallet are six oversized postcards ready for framing or giving of Trainspotting, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Clockwork Orange, Daniel Craig as James Bond, Christopher Lee as Dracula and Julie Christie and Terence Stamp in Far From the Madding Crowd. Apologies for WH Smith Sticker - our price is better anyway.


£9.99 NOW £4


73235 ONE DIRECTION: The Story So Far: Six Free Colour Prints by Holly French


Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan were five young men who became One (Direction) under the guidance of Simon Cowell who has taken them on the road to stardom, fame and success, touring the world and attracting millions of admirers. They all auditioned as individual competitors for the X Factor in 2010 and now have an impressive devoted fan base of Directioners and a number one debut single and fast selling debut album of 2011. With quotes and trivia, biographies of each, a quick quiz and tons of colour photos, the huge 64 page book


slots into a glamorous colour folder alongside the six 8" x 10" colour prints, ready for framing. They are very stylish looking young men! £9.99 NOW £6


Movie out now... Be a favourite grandparent and buy this!


73241 SPITFIRE IN PICTURES: Bookazine and Six Free Prints by Les Perera


This is the story of how R. J. Mitchell’s design for a single- engine fighter became the legend that is the Spitfire. This amazing aeroplane went on become a versatile and adaptable asset and the best fighter aircraft of WWII.


Aesthetically pleasing, it received plaudits for its capabilities as both a fighter-bomber and a fast, high- flying reconnaissance aircraft. The 64 page huge booklet is very well illustrated in colour throughout, gives statistical information and development, history and includes archive photographs from the 1940s, even one of a Spitfire being serviced in the mud of Belgium, 1944. Presented in a large card folder, the six free prints each measure 8" x 10" of these beautiful aircraft in flight plus one of the RAF boys running towards a Spitfire in an airfield during wartime in mono. £9.99 NOW £6


73224 ELVIS IN WORDS AND PICTURES: Book and Six Free Prints by Adam Powley


If you get All Shook Up by Elvis, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, you will not be able to resist this super history charting his meteoric rise, his spell in the army and his success in the


1960s. Take a front seat for Elvis’s movie career and his Las Vegas heyday and mourn the King’s end on that sad and unforgettable day in 1977. A big picture book, 64pp in glamorous softback packed with colour photos and information and in addition there are two mono and four colour prints each measuring 8" x 10" and ready for framing of this stunningly handsome man, one taken in his army uniform and another wearing a Stetson. £9.99 NOW £6


GREAT GIFT IDEAS


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