Of all motor vehicles the farm tractor has proved to be among the most beneficial. It has freed hundreds of thousands of laborers and horses from backbreaking toil on the land in all weathers and it has stabilized the cost of food.
Starting with steam power in the middle of the nineteenth century, the agricultural tractor became motorized in the early years of the twentieth century. From vast prairie types, lighter, one-man machines arrived in time to avert famine in the First World War. Mass production followed, which brought the price of tractors within reach of the average farmer....
Of all motor vehicles the farm tractor has proved to be among the most beneficial. It has freed hundreds of thousands of laborers and horses from b...
After VE Day in 1945 the British population returned enthusiastically to the road. But the cost and availability of both vehicles and fuel led to the post-war scene being dominated by motorcycles, most of them ex-military machines, eagerly snapped up for everyday use in an age when a family car remained just a dream for many. The British industry, meanwhile, was exhorted to 'export or die', and until well into the 1950s the majority of new British bikes were sold abroad. During this period, the industry - the largest and most important in the world - continued to develop new and exciting...
After VE Day in 1945 the British population returned enthusiastically to the road. But the cost and availability of both vehicles and fuel led to t...
When the winds of war blew for a second time the women of Britain answered the call. Many of the first to volunteer had served in World War I, and now they offered their services again, bringing their daughters with them. During World War II, women proved themselves indispensable to the war effort, serving in both military uniformed units abroad and in home front organizations through the darkest hours of the Blitz. Illustrated with contemporary black and white and some rare color photographs, documents and ephemera, this poignant and moving book tells the stories of these women in their own...
When the winds of war blew for a second time the women of Britain answered the call. Many of the first to volunteer had served in World War I, and now...
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 trees, undulating lakes and enclosing belts of woodland on the estate's perimeter. With this standard park formula Brown and his followers held the commercial monopoly on garden design well...
The name Lancelot 'Capability' Brown has become synonymous with the eighteenth-century English landscape garden: between 1751 and 1783 his consultancy...
For the first half of the 20th century Great Britain led the world in motorcycle design and production, exporting its products to countries in every section of the globe. However, as the second half of the century began in 1960 this once great industry commenced what was to be a terminal decline. During the 1960s and '70s Britain still manufactured a wide range of machines, but a combination of poor management, lack of investment, foreign competition (notably from Japan), and the arrival of the small, affordable car transpired to effectively sound the death knell of the British motorcycle by...
For the first half of the 20th century Great Britain led the world in motorcycle design and production, exporting its products to countries in every s...
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 executed largely by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, the movement arose from nineteenth-century settlements like Port Sunlight (and, earlier, Saltaire and Akroyden), and also from the City...
Garden Cities: the phrase is redolent of Arts and Crafts values and nineteenth-century utopianism. But despite being the culmination of a range of inf...
More than a footnote to the Second World War, or a foreword to the youth-obsessed exhilaration of the Sixties, the Fifties was a thrilling decade devoted to newness and freshness. The British people, rebuilding their lives and wardrobes, demanded modern materials, vibrant patterns and exciting prints inspired by scientific discoveries and modern art. Despite the influence of glamorous Paris couture led by Dior, home-grown fashion labels including Horrockses and the young Queen Elizabeth's couturier Norman Hartnell had an equally great, if not greater impact on British style. This book,...
More than a footnote to the Second World War, or a foreword to the youth-obsessed exhilaration of the Sixties, the Fifties was a thrilling decade devo...
This title explores what life was like in the 1950s American home. An age of optimism, it is about living the American Dream and how this was achieved, changes in the home, new convenience technology, new ways of living. From Ranch House to American Modernism to affordable homes in the suburbs, this was how to live the good life in an era of unprecedented prosperity and opportunity.
This title explores what life was like in the 1950s American home. An age of optimism, it is about living the American Dream and how this was achieved...
The generation who grew up in Britain immediately after the Second World War are popularly called 'The Baby Boomers'. As children, they experienced life in Britain from wartime austerity to the relative affluence of the late 1950s. Uniquely healthier and wealthier than previous generations, this first welfare state generation received free orange juice, milk and cod liver oil to safeguard their health. However, their overall diet was restricted until rationing fully ended in 1954 - and the permissive society had yet to arrive. Janet and John Shepherd explore how the Baby Boomers grew up...
The generation who grew up in Britain immediately after the Second World War are popularly called 'The Baby Boomers'. As children, they experienced li...
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, entire communities, particularly in central Europe were gripped by a fear of witches and witchcraft, and pursued witches in order to bring them to justice. Professor David Nash unlocks the sometimes opaque history of the phenomenon of witchcraft in Britain, Europe and America. The book explores the development of witchcraft and belief in witches, the obsession with witches and witchcraft that spawned witch-hunting, the hey-day and decline of witch-hunting, and the fascinating 'afterlife' of witchcraft: covering not only the survival of some beliefs...
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, entire communities, particularly in central Europe were gripped by a fear of witches and witchcraft, and p...