Other kids are into punk or ska, but Una is learning to play "Mull of Kintyre" by Wings on the guitar, and she thinks it’s a really good song. There's another song, chanted on the terraces by Leeds United fans. It might not have made it on to Top of the Pops, but the boys all sing it on the walk home from school: "One Yorkshire Ripper . . . There’s only one Yorkshire Ripper . . . One Yorkshire Ri-pper . . ."  A serial murderer is at large in West Yorkshire and the police—despite spending more than two million man-hours hunting the killer and interviewing the man himself no less than nine times—are struggling to solve the case. As this national news story unfolds around her, Una finds herself on the receiving end of a series of violent acts for which she feels she is to blame. Unbecoming explores gender violence, blame, shame, and social responsibility. Through image and text Una asks what it means to grow up in a culture where male violence goes unpunished and unquestioned. With the benefit of hindsight Una explores her experience, wonders if anything has really changed and challenges a global culture that demands that the victims of violence pay its cost.

    The journals are reproduced just as he wrote them, in his own handwriting, complete with poems, drawings, photo-collages, and song lyrics. In sharp distinction to his tabloid image, this is the candid self-portrait of a young poet with serious artistic ambitions—soon to rise to international fame with his acclaimed bands The Libertines and Babyshambles. An authentic piece of rock history for all of Pete’s fans, and anyone who cares about new directions in today’s music.

    There's been much coverage of punk, postpunk and the acid-house rave era of the early 90s, but the scene surrounding independent guitar-based music of the mid-80s has been largely overlooked. "A Scene In Between" looks at Britain's fashions, personalities and youth cultures from that era. Bands featured include Television Personalities, My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Smiths, The Pastels, The Vaselines and more obscure bands such as The Shop Assistants, The Flatmates and countless others. Author Sam Knee has reconnected with a vast network of people and resources to unearth literally hundreds of previously unpublished photographs of the bands, fans, clubs and street fashion of the time. Taking a sartorial angle, he looks at anoraks, oversized jumpers, leather trousers, bowl-cut hairdos, blouse shirts, stripey tees and box jackets. Dave Conway of My Bloody Valentine and Douglas Hart of The Jesus and Mary Chain contribute reminiscences.

    In this selection of letters and autobiographical fragments we hear the authentic voices of the three novelist sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, their brother, Branwell, and their father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë. We share in their progress over the years: the exuberant childhood, absorbed in wild, imaginative games; the years of struggling to earn a living in uncongenial occupations before Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall took the literary world by storm; the terrible marring of that success as, one by one, Branwell, Emily and Anne died tragically young; the final years as Charlotte, battling against grief, loneliness and ill health, emerged from anonymity to take her place in London literary society and, finally, found an all too brief happiness in marriage to her father's curate.Juliet Barker, author of the highly acclaimed biography The Brontës has used her unrivalled knowledge of the family to select extracts from letters and manuscripts, many of which are appearing here in print for the first time. Charlotte was a letter-writer of supreme ability, ranging from facetious notes and homely gossip to carefully composed pages of literary criticism and, most movingly of all, elegiac tributes to her beloved brother and sisters. Emily and Anne remain tantalizingly evasive. Very few of their letters are extant. Emily's are mere businesslike notes, though these have been supplemented by her more revealing diary papers; Anne's letters are equally frustrating, but only because their quality makes us regret their paucity.Branwell emerges as distinctly as Charlotte from his letters. Whether trying to impress William Wordsworth with his literary abilities, showing off to his artistic friends or finally coming to terms with a life of failed ambition, his character is laid bare on every page. The Reverend Patrick Brontë's devotion to his children and passionate advocacy of liberal causes are equally well illustrated in what can only be a small selection from his voluminous correspondence.The Brontë letters are supplemented by extracts from other contemporary sources, which allow us to see the family as their friends and acquaintances saw them. A brief narrative text guides the reader through the letters and sets them in context. By allowing the Brontës to tell their own story, Juliet Barker has not only produced an innovative form of biography but also given us the unique privilege of participating intimately in the lives of one of the most famous and best-loved families of English literature.

    This newest biography from a well known historian is justified and distinguished by the incorporation of recent research on often-neglected aspects of her life and reign, as well as its relative brevity. Including much of Victoria's own writings from journals and letters, Arnstein takes a thorough look at her personal life and religious views, but also investigates her public role such as her involvement with Britain's army, her political initiatives and her connections with Ireland. The author's solid understanding of Victorian society and its relationship to the queen gives this book a solidarity missing in other biographies of the queen. The book provides enough economic, social, cultural and political background knowledge to make this book accessible even to readers unfamiliar with her now distant world.

    Theirs is an almost forgotten chapter of British history, preserved largely in folktales and ballads. It is the story of the notorious raiding families - Armstrongs, Elliots, Grahams, Johnstones, Maxwells, Scotts, Kerrs, Nixons, and others--of the outlaw bands and broken men, and the fierce battles of English and Scottish armies across the Marches. The Steel Bonnets tells their true story in its historical context - how the reivers ran their raids and operated their system of blackmail and terrorism, and how the March Wardens, enforcing the unique Border law, fought the great lawless community. A superb work of scholarship and a spellbinding narrative. George MacDonald Fraser is the celebrated author of the Flashman novels, The Candlemass Road, The Pyrates, and the Private McAuslan stories.

    Visiting European royalty as well as American women returning from the International Exhibition in Paris in 1867 stimulated fashion awareness — and it was in this climate that the magazine Harper's Bazar flowered. Dedicated to being "A repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction," it brought to American women inside glimpses of the very latest European and American fashions, all in carefully detailed engravings. It was much the finest source for high fashion for this period.This book consists of the finest illustrations from Harper's Bazar between the years 1867 and 1898, the period of its peak importance. These illustrations not only show you what apparel appealed to our Victorian ancestors, but give you an idea of the evolutionary nature of fashion as well. You will see bustles come and go, natural forms become the vogue only to be superseded by the constricting hourglass figure. Each look is illustrated with a number of different garments. There are gowns for the morning hours, dinner dresses, sporting costumes, traveling clothes and apparel for special occasions: weddings, communions, funerals, etc. Since no costume was complete without accessories, a full line of hats, fans, parasols, muffs, gloves, handkerchiefs, jewelry, shoes and hair styles is shown as well. A selection of children's attire is also included. An introduction by Stella Blum covers the history of Harper's Bazar and examines the various phases fashion went through between 1867 and 1898.

    This is where such legendary outlaws as Robin Hood and Captain Kidd met their fates, where the rapier-wielding playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe sharpened their quills, and where flamboyant highwaymen like Claude Duval and James Maclaine made legions of women swoon. While London's theatres came and went, the gaol endured as Londons unofficial stage. From the Peasants Revolt to the Great Fire, it was at Newgate that England's greatest dramas unfolded. By piecing together the lives of forgotten figures as well as re-examining the prison's links with more famous individuals, from Dick Whittington to Charles Dickens, this thrilling history goes in search of a ghostly place, erased by time, which has inspired more poems and plays, paintings and novels, than any other structure in British history.

    Told through a variety of shifting perspectives- wives and husbands, friends and lovers, masters and their servants, and a gravedigger's son-Falling Angels follows the fortunes of two families in the emerging years of the twentieth century.

    The authors' accompanying history of both societal and psychiatric standards for women reveals the degree to which the prevailing societal conventions could reinforce the perception that these women were mad.

    Under the influence of the obese, loose-moraled Prince of Wales (to whom Jane Austen dedicated Emma), the Regency was the apex of British decadence, an era of lavish parties and relentless bed-hopping that set a standard for elegance and vulgarity. With wit and lively style, Venetia Murray chronicles the scandals, courtships, and daily life of these aristocrats, and evokes the tempestuous times of the early industrial and French revolutions. Sumptuously illustrated with rare contemporary cartoons, prints, diaries, and caricatures, An Elegant Madness is a book readers of social history and historical romance alike will devour.

    He visits the Roman role in the way our roads are numbered, the ancient sat-nav systems of China of 2600BC and the unknown demonstrations against by-passes in the 1920s, and ends up at the roots of today's arguments about road pricing and road rage.Full of quirky nuggets of history, On Roads also celebrates the often overlooked people whose work we take for granted, such as Percy Shaw, the inventor of the catseye, Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, the designers of the road sign system, and Charles Forte, the entrepreneur behind the service station.These stories of our past shed light on hidden changes in our society, the relation between people and nature and the invisibility of the mundane.And - on subjects ranging from speed limits to driving on the left, and the "non-places" where we stop to the unwritten laws of traffic jams - they have never been told together, until now.