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77121 COUTURE OR TRADE: An Early Pictorial Record of the London College of Fashion by Helen Reynolds


Until the end of the 19th century, London’s fashion industry had produced luxurious hand-made clothing for women of the leisured classes. At that time, however,


the West End was suffering from a shortage of skilled employees, and trade was being lost to Paris. The response to this challenge was the founding in 1906 of women’s trade schools, with a needle-trade curriculum devised in close co-operation with leading dressmakers and the exclusive London stores. The London School of Fashion had its origin in three of those schools, in Barrett Street, Shoreditch and Clapham respectively, which supplied much of the skilled labour for London’s clothing trade in the first half of the 20th century. They were not intended as preparation for university, higher technical education or commercial training. The curricula were set up in consultation with local industry to meet its requirements. In this extensively researched, lavishly illustrated volume, an acknowledged authority reveals the full and fascinating history of these schools. The informative account is drawn from original archival material as well as oral recollections, and provides a vivid insight into the training of the girls, life in the


workrooms, the fashion industry’s evolution and, of course, its social history. Approx 124 pages of b/w archive photos with detailed captions.


£14.99 NOW £6


order that was ushered in following WWII took away the last of the Empire from the bankrupted nation, as India and other overseas “possessions” took back their independence, leaving the Commonwealth as a reminder of what had been. Jan Morris not only chronicles the end of empire in incredible detail, but writing with the gusto and erudition of a traveller and journalist as well as the knowledge of a formidable historian carries this book effortlessly into the realms of great literature. A classic work at a bargain price. Faber 2012 paperback edition, 572pp. £12.99 NOW £6


76925 THREE FAMINES:


Starvation and Politics by Thomas Keneally Tragically, famine is rarely out of the news. Taking three of the most devastating food crises in modern history - the Great Hunger of British- ruled Ireland in the 1840s, the great famine of British Bengal in 1943 and the string of famines which plagued Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s - the Booker-Prizewinning author


evokes the terrible cost of mass starvation from the viewpoints of the individual who starves, the government of the countries that suffer and the other nations that watch. Keneally examines, then compares and contrasts how each of the causal factors combined in each case, from a botanical blight complicated by religious divides and the hierarchy of Victorian society, natural disasters made worse by imminent invasion and colonial mismanagement in WWII and crop shortages presided over by corrupt and genocidal leaders. His account is a sharp and timely warning to the authorities in charge of vulnerable regions today of the dangers of making choices which feed the famine itself rather than those who starve. With a millions-strong cast of villains, heroes and victims. 323pp paperback. £11.99 NOW £5


76931 CHURCHILL’S COLD WAR: How the Iron Curtain Speech Shaped the Post War


World by Philip White Based on extensive original research, this important book is the story of the pivotal speech that defined the ‘Iron Curtain’ as the new threat to world peace, and inspired a belief in political freedom that would one day see the Berlin Wall pulled down. It reiterates its author’s strong


conviction that, having saved the free world once, Churchill’s vision helped to save it a second time. It is also a personal portrait of the irrepressible man whose words changed history at a moment when many had prematurely marked a plot for him in the political graveyard. In fervent terms, the author describes how the great man’s image of a curtain of iron, and the power of his language in what became known as The Sinews of Peace address, brought home the divide between Communism and democracy, and provided a template for understanding the new dangers of the post- war world. Perhaps the most striking chapter of this provocative volume is the one on reactions to the speech around the world. Pravda issued a blistering denunciation of Churchill as a warmonger. Stalin evidently put no credence in the British politician’s assertion that he was speaking in America as a ‘private citizen’, comparing him with Adolf Hitler. The latter’s warped mind may have devised the Holocaust, he said, but Churchill had an equally dangerous ‘racial theory’ - that English-speaking peoples ‘are… called upon to decide the destinies of the entire world’. Many Americans had equally negative reactions. Walter Lippmann, one of America’s most-read syndicated columnists, called the speech ‘an almost catastrophic blunder’. When Stalin died, Churchill believed that the Russians might be more amenable to a meeting, and redoubled his efforts to


organise it but, despite his best efforts, he failed to achieve the defining post-war summit that he pushed so hard for. Sadly, although he did experience incremental progress, he also did not live to see his primary goal of lasting peace between the powers that had once been divided by the ‘Iron Curtain’. 289 pages illus in b/w. £20 NOW £7


77167 50 PEOPLE WHO


SCREWED UP SCOTLAND by Allan Brown with a foreword by A. A. Gill Published in the year of the independence referendum 2014, and incorporating musicians, actors, politicians, restaurateurs, theologians, sportspersons, psychotherapists and a Gaelic activist in a pricey suit, here are comic portraits of - according to the author, of course - 50 of the most


malignant numpties in the history of the land north of the border. Sifting the haggis from the neeps, or swede if you are not conversant with the Scottish tongue, here are those who perpetuate the half-truths, such as: Scotland invented the telephone, Robert Burns was not a morally bankrupt pedlar of indecipherable gibberish, the nation’s most zealous advocate, Sean Connery, will one day bother to live there. Is Scotland, as its nationalist cheer-leaders insist, truly the greatest small nation on earth? Or is it a cursed realm peopled with drunks, of public buildings that resemble architectural suicide notes, of sporting catastrophe and political low- comedy? Readers, especially Scots, may not agree that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a ‘blithering populariser of spiritualism’ or that Billy Connolly is a ‘punchable faux- prole’, but they will have to admit that this rude book is very funny. 266 pages. £12.99 NOW £5


76749 THE WEIMAR YEARS: A Culture Cut Short by John Willett


The graphic design of this book is a photomontage with accompanying text to this exhilarating, maddening and finally, terrible age. The Weimar Republic established a distinctive new culture that sprang from the roots of the Modern Movement. Tragically cut short by the rise of Hitler in 1933, it was a unique effort to bring into common use technical and artistic discoveries of the great pre-war pioneers, from the Cubists to Le Corbusier. This unprecedented ferment was closely related to the political currents of the time, and the strains of revolutionary and communist art that developed had a great influence on artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, photographers and designers. Many photographs, paintings, drawings and collages, books and film stills are here presented in an entirely novel way, as a cinematic montage of images. For those interested in Brecht, Piscator, Grosz and others from the 1930s. 160pp in outsize softback published by Thames & Hudson. £16.95 NOW £7


71747 JFK IN IRELAND: Four Days that


Changed a President by Ryan Tubridy The idolised, handsome and glamorous John Fitzgerald Kennedy, great-grandson of Irish immigrants, was the first and only Irish-Catholic American to be elected President of the USA. Here is the story of JFK’s memorable four day trip to his homeland in June 1963, five months before he was tragically assassinated. Tubridy captures the affection Kennedy felt for his fellow Irishmen and his Irish heritage and portrays how these sentiments were reciprocated by a nation enchanted by the young President. There was his much-vaunted visit for lunch with distant family in Dunganstown, the garden party that descended into chaos, formal speeches to the Dáil, and the casual encounters as he stopped to shake the hands with the waiting public. 302pp paperback, colour illus.


£12.99 NOW £3.50 74682 BURNED BRIDGE: How East and West


Germans Made the Iron Curtain by Edith Sheffer


Both East and West Germans became part of and helped to perpetuate the barriers that divided them. The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 shocked the world. Professor Sheffer focuses on Burned Bridge, the intersection between two sister cities, Sonneberg and Neustadt bei Coburg, Germany’s largest divided population outside Berlin. She demonstrates that, as Soviet and American forces occupied each city after the Second World War, townspeople who historically had much in common quickly formed opposing interests and identities. She describes how smuggling, kidnapping, rape and killing during the early post-war years led citizens to demand greater border control on both sides, long before East Germany fortified its 1,393 km border with West Germany. 357 pages, illus, maps. £18.99 NOW £4


74697 AN EDIBLE HISTORY OF HUMANITY by Tom Standage


Encompassing many fields from genetics and archaeology to anthropology and economics, and invoking food as a special form of technology. Trade in exotic spices spawned the age of exploration and the colonization of the New World. Food also helped to determine the outcome of wars. In the 20th century, Communist leaders employed food as an ideological weapon, which resulted in the death by starvation of millions in the Soviet Union and China. Today, the foods we choose in the supermarket connect us to global debates about trade, development, the environment and the adoption of new technologies. 269 pages, illus. $26 NOW £3.50


74698 BERLIN 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Frederick Kempe


Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis was more decisive and more perilous in shaping the Cold War. American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. On one side was a young untested US president still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster and a humiliating summit meeting that left him grasping for ways to respond. On the other, a Soviet


premier hemmed in by the Chinese, East Germans and hard-liners in his own government. With an all-important Party Congress approaching, he knew Berlin meant the difference not only for the Kremlin’s hold on its empire, but for his own hold on the Kremlin. Both tried cynically to manipulate events. And so, week by week, they crept closer to the brink. 579 pages, photos and coloured maps.


$29.95 NOW £5


76558 FRACTURED TIMES: Culture and Society in the


Twentieth Century by Eric Hobsbawm


Fractured Times is the last book from one of our foremost modern- day thinkers. It examines the conditions that both created the flowering of the belle époque and held the seeds of its disintegration. These included paternalistic capitalism, globalisation and the


arrival of a mass consumer society. From communism and extreme nationalism to Dadaism and the emergence of information technology, Hobsbawm explores the lives of forgotten greats, analyses the relationship between art and totalitarianism, and dissects phenomena as diverse as surrealism, the emancipation of women and the myth of the American cowboy. From Al Qaeda to Frank Zappa and the Amish to Z-Cars, his scope is breathtaking. 319 pages. £25 NOW £7


74806 THE SWEETHEARTS by Lynn Russell and Neil Hanson This is the true story of The Sweethearts, the women who roasted the cocoa beans, piped the icing and packed the boxes that became gifts for lovers, snacks for workers and treats for children. More often than not, their working days provided welcome relief from bad husbands and bad housing and, when the supervisor wasn’t looking, the occasional chocolate was popped in their mouth! Warmly nostalgic social history. 296pp, paperback. £6.99 NOW £2.75


75091 PATRIOT OF PERSIA: Muhammad


Mossadegh and a Very British Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue


Muhammad Mossadegh was an upper-class Persian politician who became prime minister after a series of confrontations with the Shah, who had a deal to give the western powers the major part of Iran’s rich oil revenues. Iranian oil had fuelled the Allied victory in World War II, and public resentment of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company came to a head in 1951 when Mossadegh nationalised the AOIC and went on to lead the most enlightened government the country had ever known. Using the Iranian communist party, the Tudeh as a pretext, Britain enlisted the support of the US in mounting a coup to topple Mossadegh, and his removal in August 1953 was orchestrated by the British intelligence services and the CIA. Years later the US would recognise publicly that they had made a mistake. 310pp, photos. £20 NOW £3.50


75939 IMMIGRANTS: Your Country Needs Them by Philippe Legrain


Why are ever-rising numbers of people from poor countries arriving in Europe, North America and Australasia? Can we keep them out? Should we even be trying to? The award-winning author of this controversial book makes a convincing case for proving that migration can benefit the migrants and the country they leave as well as the country they move to. Incisive socio-economic analysis and a broad understanding of what is at stake politically and culturally, to posit the theory that - in our open world - more people will inevitably move across borders and that, generally, we should welcome them. Free- marketeers, campaigners for global justice and enlightened patriots alike, all of us, the author insists, should rally behind the cause of freer migration, because They need Us and We need Them. 374 paperback pages.


£12.99 NOW £4.50 75965 TIME TO START THINKING: America


and the Spectre of Decline by Edward Luce It may surprise and shock readers to read that America is in long-term economic and geopolitical decline. Covering areas from education and health-care to politics and innovation, Luce compares America to Britain as it was in the early 20th century, and argues that the same situation is evolving today in America. In scientific research, Chinese and Korean innovators are increasingly competing with American scientists. In business, giant companies like IBM and General Electric now employ more people abroad than in the US. In domestic politics Republicans and Democrats conduct sterile debates in Washington, while lobbyists and campaign-finance lead the agenda, and bureaucracy cripples the education system. 292 pages. £20 NOW £5


76224 MAFIA STATE: How One Reporter


Became an Enemy of The Brutal New Russia by Luke Harding


Soon after the start of Luke Harding’s posting as The Guardian’s man in Moscow, an article criticising Putin appeared in the paper under Harding’s name. Harding was summoned for interrogation by the F.S.B., the Russian security service, and his own security services gave him lessons in counter-surveillance. His four years of being treated as an enemy of Russia had begun. Chechnya under Kadyrov was a particular location of brutality against dissidents and when Harding attends the funeral of the murdered dissident lawyer Markelov he meets Natasha Estemirova, head of the human rights group in Grozny. Subject to constant harassment, Harding nevertheless keeps up the mockery of Moscow in The Guardian. When Wikileaks promises evidence about corruption at the top of the Kremlin, Harding is on the case and he trawls the documents for material, finally discovering damning evidence about Litvinenko and the F.S.B.’s intimidating home visits. Finally he is expelled, but not before he has shaken up the Russian propaganda machine. 310pp, colour photos. £20 NOW £6


Modern History


9


76296 SPICER DIARIES by Michael Spicer Entering Parliament as an MP in the turbulent mid-70s, Michael Spicer held office under Margaret Thatcher, then became chairman of the 1922 Committee where he refereed an accident-prone series of leadership bids by Michael Howard, Iain Duncan Smith and finally David Cameron, who elevated him to the Lords. Spicer is a politician to whom the Conservative agenda is self- evidently the right one, especially on Europe. At the end of 1990 he was rewarded by being appointed Minister of State for the Environment, where he immediately moved in on the problem of homelessness, announcing the first ever big grant to help rough sleepers by creating hostels. Thatcher was doomed but Spicer was no fan of Major and when the time came he supported Michael Howard’s unsuccessful bid to succeed him, though Ann Widdecombe put paid to Howard’s chances by characterising him as a vampire. When Hague resigned, the supporters of Ken Clarke and the ‘Portillistas’ tore each other to shreds and Iain Duncan Smith won by default. On 10 October 2001 Spicer made the best of it by observing that “IDS makes an adequate speech” but worse was to come when Thatcher told a startled Spicer that Railtrack should have been kept in the public sector. Absorbing. 638pp, photos. £30 NOW £6


76341 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SINCE 1945: A Global History


by Professor John W. Young and Dr John Kent In one accessible and authoritative volume, the authors provide, for all undergraduate students of international relations and world history since 1945, the absolutely essential text. They explore the impact of the Cold War on world politics and look in particular at the role of the United States, the important regional problems such as the Middle East wars, the development of European integration, and the end of the European empires in Africa and Asia. Invaluable features of the book are: (a) its simple, easy-to-navigate structure in six chronological sections - each beginning with a chronological overview (b) the useful reference material, including chronologies of events, crucial documents, biographies of major figures and an extensive bibliography (c) its organisation by both region and subject. The Online Resource Centre includes interactive timeline, maps of key regions, important international relations documents and self-test multiple-choice questions. 743 paperback. $64.95 NOW £13


76619 MERCHANT, SOLDIER, SAGE: A


History of the World in Three Castes by David Priestland


A noted Oxford scholar proposes a radical new approach to understanding the modern balance of power, focusing on the rise of the merchant, and the resulting threat to the global, political and economic order. The merchant, is commercial and competitive, the soldier is aristocratic and militaristic and the sage is bureaucratic and an expert. These ‘castes’ struggle for power and, when one of them achieves control over the economic or political system (as the soldier did in Europe prior to the First World War or the merchant did in the Anglo-American world of the 1920s) it can have such a powerful hold over us that it is almost impossible to imagine life outside its grip. The result is economic crisis, war or revolution and, eventually, a new alliance of castes takes over. According to the author, we are now in the midst of a period with all the classic signs of imminent change. A thought-provoking 343 pages. $27.95 NOW £6


WAR AND MILITARIA


You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time. - Albert Einstein


77153 INSIDE ROOM 40: The Codebreakers of World


War I by Paul Gannon A vibrant account, based on previously secret files, brings to life hidden stories of British


codebreakers in World War I who worked inside Room 40 and its military equivalent MI1(b). It also vividly portrays the brilliant eccentrics who broke tens of thousands of German naval,


military and diplomatic messages. For instance, when the German cruiser Magdeburg ran aground in August 1914, little did the British Admiralty realise that what was on board the vessel would hand them a decisive advantage in the battle for North Sea supremacy and subsequently lead to the birth of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). They found a collection of clandestine codebooks which revealed invaluable clues as to the plans and movements of the German High Seas Fleet. Before long, the codes used by German warships, U-Boats and naval Zeppelins, as well as the ciphers used to communicate with their naval attachés and embassies, had been broken. Intercept Intelligence ensured British dominance of the seas, brought the US into the war, won the ‘First Battle of Britain’, changed the military balance in the Middle East and neutered Germany’s international espionage and sabotage operations. The book also reveals how extensively Britain listened in to the diplomatic communications of neutrals, and how codebreaking machinery was first used more than 20 years before its appearance at Bletchley Park during World War II. This utterly compelling, ground-breaking account will change readers’ understanding of how World War I was fought and won. 287 pages with b/w archive photos. £19.99 NOW £6.50


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