The Texas Rangers were there to keep people safe. James Gillett joined the rangers in 1875 with the task of repressing domestic foes of this frontier region where banditry flourished and crimes of violence were committed with appalling frequency. He joined Company D of the Texas Rangers at the age of just seventeen. For the next six years he would be combatting horse thieves and murderers, fighting in the Mason County War, capturing vigilantes and providing law and order for the towns. He met and fought against some of the most infamous criminals of his day, from Sam Bass and his train robber gang to the Horrell Brothers and the outlaw Dick Dublin. That is not to say that Gillett only fought against domestic criminals, he was frequently called to combat dangerous Native Americans, particularly the Apaches, who were raiding, threatening or stealing from Texan inhabitants. At points the Rangers would even be drawn across the border into Mexico in order implement justice against those who had attempted to escape. Six Years with the Texas Rangers is a fascinating account of one Ranger’s life attempting to maintain law and order on the Texan frontier. “Combines all the excitement of a Western yellowback with the genuineness of a first-hand document" Saturday Review After James Gillett left the Texan Rangers he worked as a Deputy Marshal, Marshal, and later cattle rancher. This book was published in 1921 and he died in 1937.

    Often obscure, magical and fragmentary, it invites exploration of a strange Nietzschean landscape through what Spare termed ‘the labyrinth of the alphabet.’ But the recent discovery of Spare’s original conceptual folio for the book, once owned by the respected writer E.M. Forster, has revealed an unseen series of powerful magico-erotic drawings – termed by Spare ‘blasphemous Ideographs’ – that provide an important key to understanding the ‘secret ritual of Self-Love’ that underlies this evocative and deeply personal work.

    

    The target for their attack was the Fifth Army commanded by General Sir Hubert Gough; weak in numbers and even weaker in the lack of entrenchments and fortifications in the front line which they had only just taken over from French divisions. The effect was shattering, the ‘hurricane bombardment’ was murderous the Germans fired one million artillery shells at the British lines held by the Fifth Army - over 3000 shells fired every minute. The famous Stormtroopers, specially trained and equipped, attacked with skill and determination, bypassing islands of resistance, sowing terror with flame-throwers rushing towards their objectives. The Fifth army fought valiantly and suffered greatly and no less than 21,000 British soldiers had been captured, many still stupefied by the bombardment, and, much ground that had been bought at huge human cost during the Battle of the Somme, lost. However, the shell-holed ground of the Somme battlefield proved to be the best ally of the British as it slowed the German advance; starving German troops stopped to loot abandoned British supplies. As the Germans slowed the remaining troops of Fifth and the other British Armies stiffened their resistance and eventually the front was knitted back together with the aid of the French and American forces.It was to be the last roll of the dice for the German Army in the First World War, the last real chance of victory, almost a quarter of a million of their best soldiers fell on their side during March and April 1918. The Gamble had failed however and the Allies would turn back the tide a few months later hounding the Germans back to their own borders and final capitulation.