This book is a product of the authors' survey of graveyards and cemeteries that began in 2008. The survey began out of an interest in looking for the gravestones of centenarians, but soon expanded to include other gravestones that were of interest for different reasons. All these gravestones were photographed, together with a general view of the church or cemetery and the results are available on a website www.grave-mistakes.info. The authors have not been inside all the churches visited, so this book concentrates on memorials outside the churches. The history of most churches is well...

The authors have viewed millions of gravestones, and are offering readers a selection of the rare and unusual gravestones that they have seen, with full-colour illustrations. Each category of type of gravestone, age of person, cause of death, rare names, and errors found on gravestones are given a points score to indicate rarity.

A variable star is one whose brightness as seen from Earth fluctuates. This variation may be caused by a change in the quantity or wavelength of the emitted light or by something partly blocking the light. Intrinsic variables are stars whose luminosity actually changes. Extrinsic variables are those stars whose apparent changes in brightness are due to changes in the amount of their light that can reach the observer. Discovering a previous unreported variable star would be the highlight of many amateur astronomers time in the hobby

The background to the World of Biggles makes curious reading. Many Biggles enthusiasts talked about compiling a similar book and a few even started working. None got even close to completion and it was left to me to carry out the job - essentially single-handed. Virtually everybody who saw the earlier drafts of the book appeared very supportive and most of the ideas and thoughts they shared with me have been included. If any errors remain the fault lies with me rather than with them. What is contained in the New Biggles Companion? 1) Biggles 1899 to 1945 - Part 1 covers the First World War...

It would be lovely if there was one concise definition of social history that all active social historians would agree to use - sadly there isn't. The attraction of social history to a collector-classifier such as me is that the breath of the subject is so wide and the number of primary sources is so large that it is a simple task to find a topic that hasn't been studied before. What can be more problematic is gaining access to the information required to conduct meaningful research. It is hard to underestimate the impact that the increasing availability of on-line newspaper archives will...

Data mining using the recently published First U.S. Naval Observatory Astrometric Robotic Telescope Catalog (URAT1) has allowed the identification over 9400 common proper motion binary star systems many of which appear to be new discoveries.