In July 1940, Desmond Ibbotson joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve hoping to fly Spitfires. He achieved his dream aged just 19, eventually completing 650 flying hours in seven types of Spitfire. He did two tours of operations with three of the RAF's elite squadrons in the skies over France, North Africa and Italy, was credited with eleven confirmed victories and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar.After a dramatic active service that saw him shot down durin...

Visit any settlement in the land and there will be ancient buildings hidden in plain sight. Behind a Victorian façade is a Tudor house. Underneath a Georgian frontage is a mediaeval cottage. What is now a modern farm may once have been a castle. We know relatively little about the ancient buildings that surround us, yet buildings archaeology can offer us so many clues for discovering secret hidden historic houses. This book looks at the ways in which ancient buildings have...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.This supportive and grounded collection of addiction recovery meditation scripts is here to help you pause, breathe, and reconnect with yourself — no matter where you are on your healing path.Part of the acclaimed stillness, this volume is crafted specifically for individuals navigating sobriety, early recovery, relapse, or long-term emotional maintenance. Whether you’re following a 12-step program, a harm-reduc...

'Funny, occasionally filthy and ultimately fascinating.' - Richard Herring, comedianGo to any ancient building in the land and there will be interesting and exciting stories presented to the visitor. Tales of secret passages and hidden tunnels, strange marks and carvings left by stonemasons – all commonly believed and widely repeated, but are they really true?From ship timbers being repurposed on dry land to spiral staircases giving advanta...

A Young Girl Tries to Buy a Bible!This is a true story of a girl called Mary Jones. As soon as she can read the large Bible at the Evans’ old farmhouse, Mary makes up her mind to buy a copy for herself.After six years she has saved enough money, but there is the long journey over the Welsh mountains to Bala. And then she hears that there are no Bibles for sale!As the story unfolds you will see how a girl, a preacher, a school master who couldn’t rea...

At the heart of the story of America's wars are our "citizen soldiers" -- those hometown heroes who fought and sacrificed from Bunker Hill at Charlestown to Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, and beyond, without expectation of recognition or recompense. Americans like to think that the service of its citizen volunteers is, and always has been, of momentous importance in our politics and society. But though this has made for good storytelling, the reality of America's relationship to its veterans i...

The RYA Yachtmaster examination is the gold-standard qualification for sail and power boaters the world over.This audiobook is the RYA's official and definitive guide to the Coastal and Offshore exams. It offers a unique insight into what you need to know, how the exams will be conducted, and the skills required. Whether you are going to take either of the exams, or are thinking of it and want to find out what you will face on the day, this is the audiobook that you must have....

These new poems by the author of Saint Judas and The Green Wall embody a sharp break with his earlier work. Their impact is well described by the British critic Michael Hamburger: "He has absorbed the work of modern Spanish and other continental poets and evolved a medium of his own. This medium dispenses with argument and rhetoric, and presents the pure substance of poetry, images which are 'the objective correlatives' of emotion and feeling. It is only in the new collection that Wright h...

"Matt Wright has crafted an expansive universe in his Sun Maker saga. Mirroring the struggles we face in our culture today, Matt has carved his path of truth through adversity—with a resonant paradigm of the importance of the choices his characters make! This epic could not have come to us at a better time." —Dominician Gennari, author of The War for AscensionEmbark on an Epic Galactic AdventureExplore the entirety of the Sun Maker...

Toward a Theory of Administrative Tethering is the culmination of a seven-year commitment to investigate and explore the highly complex and chaotic nature of collaboration, specifically in child protective services (CPS). This journey began with an atypical relationship between a doctoral student practicing in CPS and an academic mentor. Examination of the CPS system in North Carolina necessitated more in-depth study to foster change relevant to improve service delivery for front-line staf...

A new book of poetry from a Pulitzer Prize-winning master poetThese new poems by the author of Saint Judas and The Green Wall embody a sharp break with his earlier work. Their impact is well described by the British critic Michael Hamburger: "He has absorbed the work of modern Spanish and other continental poets and evolved a medium of his own. This medium dispenses with argument and rhetoric, and presents the pure substance of poetry, images which are 'the objecti...

"Wasted Youth is James Wright's vivid and emphatically unromantic memoir of his late teens and early twenties, when his life derived its meager meaning from consuming drugs and alcohol, dodging authority, and simply staying alive day to day. Relentlessly self-critical, Wright is not looking for pity or even sympathy from his reader. But the reader can't help but extend it anyway, knowing from the evidence of this beautifully written book the great potential that was once in danger...