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Books
Tales from the Tower of London
Daniel Diehl, Mark Donnelly
The brooding grey walls of the Tower of London circumscribe one of the most recognisable buildings on the planet. Over its thousand-year history the Tower stood as a symbol of the English monarchy and served as both a palace and a prison. It is a place where court intrigues, clandestine liaisons, unimaginable tortures and grisly executions took place with frightening regularity.
Tales from the Tower of London is the factual history of the great building itself told through the true stories of the people, royal and common, good and bad, heroes and villains, who lived and died there. Including characters such as William the Conqueror, the Princes in the Tower, Jane Grey, Guy Fawkes, Colonel Blood and Rudolf Hess, the broad range of stories encompassed in Tales from the Tower of London present a microcosm of all human experience, from love and death to greed and betrayal, all played out against romantic period settings ranging from medieval knights in shining armour to the darkest days of World War II. Anyone who loves history and adventure will find Tales from the Tower of London a classic page turner.
Great Train Robbery Confidential
Graham Satchwell
In 1981, Detective Inspector Satchwell was the officer in charge of the case against Train Robber Tom Wisbey and twenty others. The case involved massive thefts from mail trains – similar to the Great Train Robbery of 1963 where £2.6 million was taken and only £400,000 ever recovered. Thirty years later their paths crossed again and an unlikely partnership was formed, with the aim of revealing the truth about the Great Train Robbery. This book reassesses the known facts about one of the most infamous crimes in modern history from the uniquely qualified insight of an experienced railway detective, presenting new theories alongside compelling evidence and correcting the widely accepted lies and half-truths surrounding this story.
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
From Wikipedia:
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and economically important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition.
Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and "savages." Heart of Darkness implicitly comments on imperialism and racism. The novella's setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his fascination for the prolific ivory trader Kurtz. Conrad draws parallels between London ("the greatest town on earth") and Africa as places of darkness.
Originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the 1000th edition of the magazine, Heart of Darkness has been widely republished and translated in many languages. It provided the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness 67th on their list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century.
John Lennon: Pocket Giants
John Lennon
John Lennon is a giant of popular music and culture. As one-quarter of the Beatles, he was in the vanguard of music, art, fashion and popular culture during the sixties. His music, humour and outspoken calls for peace inspired a generation. He stands as an iconic figure for those who lived through the sixties and seventies, as well as for those who grew up long after his untimely death in 1980. Above all, Lennon was one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most important songwriters. Songs he wrote with Paul McCartney, such as ‘She Loves You’ and ‘A Day in the Life’, define an era. Others he wrote alone, such as ‘God’, ‘Help!’ and ‘Revolution’, betray an often complex, contradictory and troubled character. Lennon was never one to hide his love away, nor his anger, nor his convictions. In 2000 his anthem ‘Imagine’ was voted the song of the millennium.
Jane Austen: Pocket Giants
Caroline Sanderson
Sigmund Freud is rightly called the godfather of psychoanalysis. He forever changed the way we view ourselves and developed our understanding of human nature. His concepts have become part of our psychological vocabulary: unconscious thoughts and feelings, conflict, the meaning of dreams, the sensuality of childhood. He dared to try new methods and treatments. Everyone knows the term Freudian slip and has a basic understanding of his theories, however, Freud gave us a great deal more. From education to critical theory he changed the way we think. His ideas and clinical practices offer psychological insights that bring help and healing. Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. He is the epitome of a pocket GIANT.
Sigmund Freud: Pocket Giants
Alistair Ross
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King Arthur: Pocket Giants
Nick Higham
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Napoleon Bonaparte: Pocket Giants
William Doyle
In the space of less than 20 years, Napoleon turned Europe upside down. Rising from obscure origins to supreme power by a mixture of luck, audacity and military genius, he was able to harness the energies released by the French Revolution to resolve the internal problems which it had created, before turning his restless ambition to remodeling the political structure of the whole continent in a series of brilliant military victories. He was never able to finally subdue all his foreign enemies, and in the end they came together to bring him down; but by then it was impossible to restore what he had destroyed, or, in France, to destroy much of what he had created. The memory of his epic exploits, carefully refashioned during his last years in exile, haunted Europe for over a century, while the more distant effects of his career changed the whole destiny of the Americas and of the world.
Henry Ford Pocket GIANTS
David Long
Why is Henry Ford a giant? Because he put the world on wheels. Henry Ford did not invent the motor car, nor for all the claims did he invent the assembly line or mass production. But more than anyone before or since he is remembered as the man who almost singlehandedly took an expensive contraption of doubtful utility and recast it as a machine which in a real and profound sense changed the world forever. In an industry with many giants –André Citroen, Louis Renault and Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat – Henry Ford stands tallest as the greatest ever motor mogul. A Michigan farmer’s son who became a dollar billionaire, a ruthlessly single-minded autocrat who became a folk hero, a pacifist who went on to inspire Adolf Hitler - he was a boss who paid his workers twice as much as his competitors yet waged an unrelenting war on unions and badly abused the power he had worked so hard to attain. David Long has been an author and journalist for thirty years, and has regularly appeared in The Times, Sunday Times and many magazines, here and abroad. He is a celebrated author of over twenty titles and has ghostwritten many more.
Isaac Newton: Pocket Giants
Andrew May
Isaac Newton believed everything in the physical universe could be described using mathematical relationships. His law of gravity explained why objects fall downwards, how the moon causes the tides, and why planets and comets orbit the sun. While his work has been added to over the years, his basic approach remains at the heart of the scientific worldview. Yet Newton also believed the universe was created to a precise and rational design—a design that was fully understood by the earliest people. Newton considered it his life’s work to rediscover this knowledge. In chasing his impossible goal, Newton managed to contribute more to our understanding of the universe than anyone else in history.
Hannibal and Scipio: Pocket Giants
Greg Fisher
In 218, Hannibal Barca, desperate to avenge the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War, launched an ambitious ground invasion of Italy. With just a small force, he crossed the Alps – a feat reckoned to be impossible – and pitted his polyglot army against Rome’s elite citizen infantry. At Cannae, in 216, Hannibal destroyed an 80,000-strong Roman force in one afternoon, delivering a blow unequalled in Roman history for half a millennium to come.The Romans had no answer to Hannibal until the young Scipio volunteered to take over Rome’s armies in Spain, which were close to defeat, and left leaderless by the death of Scipio’s own father and uncle. In the decade which followed, Scipio turned Rome’s desperate fortunes into a stunning victory over Carthage. The portrait of Hannibal and Scipio takes the reader through one of the greatest military campaigns in history, driven by two remarkable and fascinating men.
Albert Einstein: Pocket Giants
Andrew May
Everyone has heard of Albert Einstein and everyone knows that he was a genius. Yet only a few people understand his work. In fact, he was just one of many brilliant scientists grappling with the deepest problems of theoretical physics during the first half of the twentieth century. He may not have been the most important or influential of them – the point is arguable – but there is no doubt he was the most revolutionary. Almost single-handed, he transformed the way the world thinks about light, matter, space and time.
In the sixty years since his death Einstein has become a legend. The profound obscurity of his theories has contributed to this, as has his archetypal "mad scientist" appearance. His philosophical and political utterances – both real and imagined – are regularly used to clinch arguments online or in the pub. So how can a modern reader separate myth from reality? This short book attempts to do just that!
ANDREW MAY has a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in astrophysics from Manchester University. He went on to work in the shadowy world of defence science and now earns his living as a freelance writer and defence consultant. He is author of Isaac Newton pocket giant (2015).