A historian examines a disastrous, Victorian-era expedition in the Canadian Arctic, a shocking revelation, and the celebrity fallout that followed.The fate of the lost Franklin Expedition of 1847 is an enigma that has tantalized generations of historians, archaeologists, and adventurers. The expedition was lost without a trace, and all 129 men died in what is arguably the worst disaster in Britain's history of polar exploration.In the aftermath of the crew'...

A celebration of three decades of cricket and a unique insight into the world of radio and broadcasting. Test Match Special is both a sporting and broadcasting institution that has become synonymous with the British summertime. Since its first live broadcast back in 1957 it has proudly lived up to its original slogan 'Don't miss a Ball, we broadcast them all'. During much of this time the man behind the scenes was Peter Baxter and here, in this wonderful memoir, he recalls the best moments...

Towards the end of 1906, a meeting took place between two emerging giants of the age, Mohandas K. Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts. United under the same empire, but separated by distance and culture, Smuts was born in the Cape Colony, and Gandhi in Porbandar, a duchy of the Indian province of Gujarat. Both, however, went on to study law in Britain, and while developing a great admiration for the institutions of empire, each man also suffered his own particular crisis of faith. From ...

For 34 years from 1973 Peter Baxter was BBC producer of the hugely popular Test Match Special, and during that time he reported on Test matches from around the world. This funny and revealing book takes us behind the scenes as Baxter and his much-loved TMS colleagues do battle with local conditions and sometimes bizarre red tape to bring back home the latest news of England's progress (or otherwise) on the field. It should have been straightforward, but somehow it rarely was...

It is 25 years since the end of the Cold War, now a generation old. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europewith the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Iraq, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was the Middle East On the afternoon of 6 October, 1973, the ...

This military history of French Equatorial Africa examines the key players and operations from WWII to post-colonial conflicts.France in Centrafrique explores the history of French Equatorial Africa with a particular emphasis on the role of the Central African Republic in the Second World War and the Free French Movement. One of the key figures to emerge from this period was Jean-Bédel Bokassa, a man who would shape the destiny of the Central African Republ...

It has been over three decades since the Union Jack was lowered on the colony of Rhodesia, but the bitter and divisive civil war that preceded it has continued to endure as a textbook counterinsurgency campaign fought between a mobile, motivated and highly trained Rhodesian security establishment and two constituted liberations movements motivated, resourced and inspired by the ideals of communist revolution in the third world.A complicated historical process of occupation and colo...

In 1957 a whole day's play of a Test Match was broadcast on BBC Radio for the first time with the slogan 'Don't miss a ball, we broadcast them all'.This book celebrates 50 years of Test Match Special with anecdotes, behind-the-scenes stories, photos, reminiscences and champagne moments from five decades of top-quality cricket commentary. Sprinkled throughout are 'My First TMS Match' articles by a number of the programme's main contributors, including Jonathan Agne...

The end of the Cold War introduced an altered global dynamic. The old bond of East/West patronage in Africa was broken, weakening the first crop of independent revolutionary leadership on the continent who no longer had the support of one or other of the superpowers. With collapse of the Soviet Union, all this changed. The question of global/strategic security devolved into regional peacekeeping and peace enforcement, characterized primarily by the Balkans War, but also many other minor re...

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity.Whether it’s coming up hard against the speed of light – and, with it, the enormity of the universe – realising that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you’d ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes...

From the producers of the Number One bestselling CD 'The Wit of Cricket', here is their latest collection of the funniest cricket stories at home and abroad, recorded live at Great Brickhill Cricket Club in Bedfordshire.Featuring a rare live recording by the late cricket commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who was a brilliant after-dinner speaker, here are dozens of hilarious anecdotes about the Ashes, overseas tours, sledging, Test Match Special, and much more!Christop...

How would first contact—on earth, in space, on another planet—transform our understandings of technology, philosophy, and what it means to be human? What kind of cognitive dissonance would society experience, if we discovered a previously unrecognized sentience on Earth?What would life be like if it originated in a frigid ocean beneath an impenetrable shell of ice? Or on a world whose haze obscures any view of the universe beyond? Or on an unfathomable scale in the...