Everyone from schoolboys to socialites knew of these glamorous 'named trains' and aspired to ride aboard them. In Belles and Whistles, Andrew Martin recreates five of these famous train journeys by travelling aboard their nearest modern day equivalents. Sometimes their names have survived, even if only as a footnote on a timetable leaflet, but what has usually - if not always - disappeared is the extravagance and luxury. As Martin explains how we got from there to here, evocations of the golden age contrast with the starker modern reality: from monogrammed cutlery to stirring sticks, from silence on trains to tannoy announcements, from compartments to airline seating. For those who wonder whatever happened to porters, dining cars, mellow lighting, timetables, luggage in advance, trunk murders, the answers are all here. Martin's five journeys add up to an idiosyncratic history of Britain's railways, combining humour, historical anecdote, reportage from the present and romantic evocations of the past.

    From the historic moment in September 1830 when the first train ran between Liverpool and Manchester, to the high speed trains bulleting across Asia and Europe, The Iron Road: An Illustrated History of the Railroad looks at how railroads have changed the world.Photographs, maps, paintings, and illustrations bring events and locations to life, adding a unique visual quality to the stories of great invention, feats of mind-boggling engineering, groundbreaking changes in trade and commerce, and tales of adventurers, visionaries, and rogues.The Iron Road is the third title in DK's successful illustrated histories format, which combines text-rich narratives with beautiful visual design.

    We'll hear of the great love stories ranging from Johnny Cash and June Carter in the 1960s to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, who married in 2005. We'll get the truth of the tragedies that led to the loss of three stars all in the same month, starting the rumor of the "Opry Curse." We'll learn how after being stabbed, shot, and maimed, Trace Adkins calls his early honky-tonk years "combat country," and we'll find inspiration from DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica player in 1927 crippled by childhood polio who rose to fame as one of the first Opry stars. Our hearts will break for Willie Nelson, who lost his only son on Christmas Day, and soar for Amy Grant and Vince Gill, who found true love. Based on over 150 firsthand interviews with the stars of The Grand Ole Opry, these are stories that tell the heart of country--the lives that are lived and inspire the songs we love.

    He survives this perilous wheel of fortune, and thrives in the face of danger! I would like to add to why my book is important, is that we are true authentic Alaskans that live life off of the grid and that we have been entrepreneurs, making our living off of the land and sea. We are wilderness and off the grid consultants if that is important. On our website we have a variety of things we consult on from sport fishing, hunting, adventures, lodges/outfitters, developing or improving remote properties, and much more.

    Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore—yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humor, capacity for suffering, and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has traveled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railway man, and—after a quest lasting decades—an individual pot of strawberry jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

    Perhaps the oddest quirk of Britain's railway network is also one of its least well known: around 150 of the nation's stations are request stops. Take an unassuming station like Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire - the scene of a fatal accident involving thousands of carrots. Or Talsarnau in Wales, which experienced a tsunami. Tiny Stations is the story of the author's journey from the far west of Cornwall to the far north of Scotland, visiting around 40 of the most interesting of these little used and ill-regarded stations. Often a pen-stroke away from closure - kept alive by political expediency, labyrinthine bureaucracy or sheer whimsy - these half-abandoned stops afford a fascinating glimpse of a Britain that has all but disappeared from view. There are stations built to serve once thriving industries - copper mines, smelting works, cotton mills, and china clay quarries where the first trains were pulled by horses; stations erected for the sole convenience of stately home and castle owners through whose land the new iron road cut an unwelcome swathe; stations created for Victorian day-tripping attractions; a station built for a cavalry barracks whose last horse has long since bolted; and many more. Dixe Wills will leave you in no doubt that there's more to tiny stations than you might think.

    The Wright Brothers is an historical narrative that draws on extensive archival materials, personal journals, and public records to tell the story of the Wright brothers as men of incredible character and determination along the road towards their significant contributions to aviation history. The summary parallels the structure of the book which is divided into three parts. The first part explores the period of the boys’ childhood through their work on flight testing various models of gliders. The second part picks up with the addition of the engine to the Wright planes and traces the brother’s work through the early stages of powered flight, roughly 1903 to 1908. Part three follows the brothers, now globally famous, through the years when they captured the most attention for their accomplishments. A central aspect of this historical account is the development of Orville and Wilbur Wright as individuals who showed fierce determination in the face of relentless setbacks. It also sheds light on their private nature and their deep bond as brothers. McCullough is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for other historical works, Truman and John Adams. He also won the National Book Award twice and is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His educational background includes a degree in English Literature from Yale University. He is also a well-known narrator, as well as previous host of American Experience. Read more....

    The dos and don'ts of travelling and staying in Iceland. Five chapters with multiple tips in each one explain what is expected of you as a traveller - as well as some bonus tips on what you can do.

    This volume delivers an eye-popping backstage peek into the lusty private lives and cutthroat careers of Hollywood’s most memorable bad girls over the decades. The iconoclastic Hollywood Divas presented are: Jean Arthur, Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Theda Bara, Drew Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Kim Basinger, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Brett Butler, Mariah Carey, Cher, Joan Collins, Joan Crawford, Dorothy Dandridge, Bette Davis, Dolores Del Rio, Marlene Dietrich, Shannen Doherty, Patty Duke, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Kay Francis, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Greta Garbo, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Paulette Goddard, Melanie Griffith, Jean Harlow, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Sonja Henie, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, Whitney Houston, Betty Hutton, Janet Jackson, Grace Kelly, Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr, Jennifer Lopez, Jeanette MacDonald, Madonna, Jayne Mansfield, Liza Minnelli, Marilyn Monroe, Maria Montez, Demi Moore, Mae Murray, Vera Ralston, Joan Rivers, Julia Roberts, Roseanne, Diane Ross, Meg Ryan, Norma Shearer, Cybill Shepherd, Britney Spears, Sharon Stone, Barbra Streisand, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner, Lupe Velez, Mae West, Shelley Winters, Natalie Wood, and Loretta Young.A must-have volume for every pop-culture fanatic, Hollywood Divas promises to tantalize you with juicy tidbits and saucy scandals that earned each of these devilish darlings the title of diva.

    Transforming lives and landscapes, they have left their mark on everything from timekeeping to tourism. As a self-contained world governed by distinctive rules and traditions, the network also exerts a fascination all its own.From the classical grandeur of Newcastle station to the ceaseless traffic of Clapham Junction, from the mysteries of Brunel's atmospheric railway to the lost routines of the great marshalling yards, Simon Bradley explores the world of Britain's railways, the evolution of the trains, and the changing experiences of passengers and workers. The Victorians' private compartments, railway rugs and footwarmers have made way for air-conditioned carriages with airline-type seating, but the railways remain a giant and diverse anthology of structures from every period, and parts of the system are the oldest in the world.Using fresh research, keen observation and a wealth of cultural references, Bradley weaves from this network a remarkable story of technological achievement, of architecture and engineering, of shifting social classes and gender relations, of safety and crime, of tourism and the changing world of work. The Railways shows us that to travel through Britain by train is to journey through time as well as space.

    From France (dogged by rail worker strikes), through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland he goes, travelling as far east as Odessa by the Black Sea in Ukraine. With no set plans, simply a desire to let the trains lead the way, his trip takes him onwards via Hungary, the Balkans and Austria. Along the way he enjoys many an encounter, befriending fellow travellers as well as a conductor or two.This is a love letter to Europe, written from the trackside.

    Pablo Escobar lay dead, the Cali Cartel had taken over much of the global supply, and an avalanche of coke was poised to hit Europe. Now the British government wanted Chandler and his team to do the impossible: infiltrate the most powerful crime syndicates on earth and stop their drug shipments. It was a perilous assignment. The cartel bosses operated like a lethal multi-national, with armies of hitmen and myriad spies in ports, airports, police stations and government offices. Their intelligence systems flushed out turncoats and traitors, and they ruthlessly exterminated their enemies. Yet Chandler, an HM Customs investigator fluent in Spanish, knew he could only succeed by recruiting local informants, and went out into the field to find them. Within four years he had a network of fifty agents buried deep inside the trafficking organisations. The result was unprecedented. Their intel led to the arrest of hundreds of narcos and to the seizure of 300 tonnes of drugs, worth a staggering $3 billion. Chandler's web disrupted the Bogotá mafia, who controlled the main airport and boasted they could put anything on a plane, from drugs to bombs; penetrated the go-fast crews who raced coke-laden speedboats to the transit station of Jamaica; dismantled the 'rip-on' teams who smuggled through the coastal ports; and identified the so-called motherships, the largest method of bulk transit ever discovered. He faced appalling risks. Treacherous stool pigeons worked for both sides, and some of his Colombian law-enforcement colleagues were abducted, tortured and killed. Chandler too faced a grave threat when the crime lords learned he was responsible for a string of interdictions. Yet he persisted, driven to continue with the greatest series of sustained seizures ever made, until he finally burned out and his tour of duty came to an end. Two of his best sources were subsequently murdered, and his bosses dropped the entire overseas informant programme, with dire consequences. Narco Wars is an unflinching story of danger fear and stress, and of the tradecraft and unsung heroism of the agents and their handlers.

    While The Damned United was a fictional account of Clough’s short-lived but controversial reign at the club, this book reveals the true story, as told by the players he managed at the time. Vividly recreating the atmosphere of the era, the book features candid contributions from legendary names such as Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray, and Norman Hunter. They reveal what it was like to make the transition from the relatively smooth management style of former manager Don Revie, who helped the club achieve success in Europe, to a constant crossing of swords with the outspoken Brian Clough, who left the club flailing at the foot of the league upon his premature departure. This explosive account covers all the drama that ensued from the moment Clough was earmarked by the club directors as the favorite to succeed Revie to his exit less than two months later, saddled with the knowledge that he had been the club’s most unsuccessful manager ever. Told from the perspective of those who experienced Clough’s dictatorial managerial methods at Leeds at first hand, We are the Damned United tells it how it really was rather than how it might have been.

    Then the love affair turned sour - strikes, bad food, delays, disasters...Parallel Lines tells the story of these two railways: the real railway and the railway of our dreams. Travelling all over Britain, Ian Marchant examines the history of the British railway and meets those who still hold the railways close to their hearts - the model railway enthusiasts, the train-spotters and bashers (a hybrid of train-spotting where the individual - usually male - has to travel behind a certain locomotive in order to catalogue it), the steam enthusiasts. He swaps stories with commuters at the far reaches of London suburbia, he travels to deserted railway museums, and smokes cigarettes on remote, windswept stations in the furthest corners of Scotland, turning his characteristic eye for character, humour and surprise to one of the great shared experiences of the British nation.

    She remains the head of state of the United Kingdom, and a group of 16 nations including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand call her queen, and she is the head of the British Commonwealth which includes another 37 countries, including India and South Africa. Throughout her life, she has enjoyed much happiness including a long and happy marriage to Prince Philip, four children, and Silver, Golden, and Diamond Jubilees. Her reign has also been marked by much sadness, including the failed marriages of three of her children, the deaths of close family members and friends, and the markedly difficult death of Princess Diana, which took a toll on both the Royal Family and the nation.Now Life, in a new special edition, takes a nuanced and thoughtful look at the reign of Elizabeth at 90 and what her over-63 years on the throne have meant for her subjects and the world at large, including her early life, the years of World War Ii, her marriage and family, life ruling Great Britain, Windsor family values and much more.With dozens of stunning photos, stories, and analysis, Queen Elizabeth at 90 is a keepsake of both a life well-lived and an historical time on the throne, as well as a captivating collection for any royal watcher.