The whole of its previous history - two decades of educating, entertaining and supporting women and campaigning on women's issues - culminated in the enormous collective responsibility felt by the members to 'do their bit' for Britain. With all the vigour, energy and enthusiasm at their disposal, a third of a million country women set out to make their lives and the lives of those around them more bearable in what they described as 'a period of insanity'. Jambusters tells the story of the minute and idiosyncratic details of everyday life during the Second World War for the 5,546 Women's Institutes and how they helped to improve the lot of millions of their fellow Britons. Big pictures and bravery are fashionable and exciting but it was the behind-the-scenes, nitty-gritty approach to the daily problems presented by the war that were at the heart of what the WI did to make a difference. Making jam, making do and mending, gathering rosehips, keeping pigs and rabbits, housing evacuees, setting up canteens for the troops, knitting, singing and campaigning for a better Britain after the war: all these activities played a crucial role in war time.

    This is a remarkably honest and moving account of fatherhood as seen through the eyes of four generations of fathers and sons.

    This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.

    At the dawn of the twenty-first century, he was a leader to millions of Catholics at a time of tremendous change. Promising a renewed church, he was the first media Pope and travelled around the world to preach his message. It is said that he was central in the fall of Soviet Eastern Europe, in particular his own homeland of Poland. Now, one year after his death, there are already calls for his sainthood. But is this the whole truth? David Yallop explores the myths and half truths of John Paul II's long reign and asks some difficult questions ranging from the role of the Vatican in the momentous events in 1989, and the continued mismanagement of Vatican finance which allowed Calvi and others to continue to use the Vatican banks for money laundering to the failure to address the child sexual abuse crisis and the rise of the Opus Dei. Including explosive revelations from the CIA, the KGB, and the Vatican itself, it is a bold and unflinching look at a man who soon stands to become a saint.

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    I try to tell what it was like for me and my brother Marines without fanfare or bravado and give the reader a vivid description of my 13 months.

    No two bucket lists are the same, but each list has the same ultimate goal—to make the list maker feel like they are doing something useful with their life instead of just sitting around, writing lists, and watching Morgan Freeman movies. Dom had seen some of those lists and they looked so difficult that he wondered whether dying would be a better option than actually ticking off the items. "I am a paid-up life-member of a place called the comfort zone. People always go on about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone. Not me. Any day I can stay inside it is a good day. All of which makes it a bit odd that I decided to complete a bucket list of my own. Not just any bucket list though. This is a reverse bucket list—a bunch of stuff that I could have happily passed away without ever doing—stuff like getting a tattoo I'd instantly regret, arm wrestling a professional rugby player, and being the model for a life drawing class—and I recruited some of my closest family and friends to compile it for me. In hindsight, this was a bad idea. But here it is—my pain, discomfort, and humiliation for your pleasure."

    Winston Churchill left his regiment the 4th Hussars, in the spring of that year, but was eager to be back in action. He wasted no time getting hired as a war correspondent for The Morning Post, and sailed from Southampton aboard the Dunottar Castle on October 14, reaching Cape Town by October 31st.For the next eight months he filed regular despatches to The Morning Post. His articles were later printed as two comparatively short books -- London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton's March. They have since been published together as one book under the title, The Boer War.Churchill's unique style paints a vivid and dramatic picture of the conflict, and the problems confronting the long untried British Army in their fight against the Boers' determined resistance.

    From childhood in the Great Depression to opening esteemed eateries, it’s quite a story to tell. When she and her family launched Commander’s Palace, it became the city’s most popular restaurant, where famous chefs such as Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse, and James Beard Award winner Troy McPhail got their start.Miss Ella of Commander’s Palace describes the drama, the disasters, and the abundance of love, sweat, and grit it takes to become the matriarch of New Orleans’ finest restaurant empire.

    The depth below is hot, much warmer than the surface and this book tunnels down through the geological layers, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness, real and fictional -- rats and eels, monsters and ghosts. There is a bronze-age trackway under the Isle of Dogs, Wren found Anglo-Saxon graves under St Paul's, and the monastery of Whitefriars lies beneath Fleet Street. In Kensal Green cemetery there was a hydraulic device to lower bodies into the catacombs below -- "Welcome to the lower depths". A door in the plinth of statue of Boadicea on Westminster Bridge leads to a huge tunnel, packed with cables -- gas, water, telephone. When the Metropolitan Line was opened in 1864 the guards asked for permission to grow beards to protect themselves against the sulphurous fumes, and called their engines by the names of tyrants -- Czar, Kaiser, Mogul -- and even Pluto, god of the underworld.Going under London is to penetrate history, to enter a hidden world. "The vastness of the space, a second earth," writes Peter Ackroyd, "elicits sensations of wonder and of terror. It partakes of myth and dream in equal measure."

    Apart from Richards, 'all of us were eighteen years old, though Botham seemed to have lived a bit longer - or at least more vigorously - than the rest.'In this irresistible memoir of a life lived in cricket, Vic Marks returns to the heady days when Richards and Botham were young men yet to unleash their talents on the world stage while he and Roebuck looked on in awe. After the high-octane dramas of Somerset, playing for England was almost an anti-climax for Marks, who became an unlikely all-rounder in the mercurial side of the 1980s. Moving from the dressing room to the press box, with trenchant observations about the modern game along the way, Original Spin is a charmingly wry, shrewdly observed account of a golden age in cricket.

    A gripping love declaration to Africa with the troubles of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe as background, the real protagonist of this book is Africa with all her wonders and horrors. "Highly recommended for lovers of the continent, especially those longing for a well-balanced and honest insider’s account of recent African history (B. Pataki 2013) "

    The original 51st had gotten separated from the main British army before Dunkirk in 1940 and had been captured at St. Vale'ry, the surrender being taken by Irwin Rome in person. The reconstituted 51st had fought Rome in the desert and knew that 10,000 Scotsmen were now entering their fourth year in German prison camps.The original edition of So Few Got Through appeared just after the war and chronicles the campaigns of the 1st Gordon Highlanders from Normandy to V-E Day. Martin Lindsay was the Gordons' commander and his book has long been considered the best account of a British battalion in the war.

    Ben Stein acquired the manuscript and edited it to tell Garcia's story of the 1877 war between the U.S. government and the Nez Perce people, the end of the buffalo herds and other historic events in western life.

    The unmarried, and childless Briggs is the object of mirth and pity of the Sinhalese,she journeys around the Teardrop Island, inadvisably for her, but entertainingly for us on public transport. With the civil war recently ended and the effects of the devastating tsunami as ever present context Briggs entertains and educates. Her hapless inability to select decent guides or drivers results in her taking us vicariously to places we would never reach otherwise.Not to be read if your offspring are contemplating a gap year in Ceylon.