Showing results for "benjamin seet"

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Benjamin Seet, Dominic Tan

For 3 years, 6 months, and 29 days, the colony of Singapore fell under the dark shadow of Japanese wartime imperialism. Singapore was renamed Syonan-to or 'Light of the South' — for those who lived through it, this was a gruelling test of survival, a descent into bleakness and repression, and for some, a labyrinth of impossible moral choices.Today, the memories of Syonan have faded. The voices have grown far fewer and quieter, their stories forgotten, and many of the original place...

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Tim Bryars, Tom Harper

This beautifully illustrated history of twentieth century cartography charts a century of social and political change through 100 fascinating maps.The twentieth century was a golden age of mapmaking. Maps were employed not only to chart geography and history but also myriad political and social agendas. Here Tim Bryars and Tom Harper select one hundred maps from the twentieth century that reveal the profound changes that took place—from two world wars and the Great...

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James Leasor

When Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, it was a devastating blow to the Allies, the British Empire and signalled a significant turning point in history. James Leasors story begins as far back as the early nineteenth century, with imperialism and the settlement founded by Sir Stamford Raffles. He charts the years leading up to Singapores defeat and the realisation that the West was not invincible. It includes direct, personal input from some of the main players involved in...

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Tan Siok Sun

Dr. Goh Keng Swee's public career spanned two eventful decades. He was a founding and key member of Singapore's ruling political party, and played a significant role in creating and shaping the destiny of Singapore today. This is an anecdotal account of Dr Goh's life-story told by the author, his daughter-in-law. Tan Siok Sun traces Dr Goh's footsteps from his humble beginnings in Melaka, to his days at Raffles College and the London School of Economics, to his service in the Singapore Gov...

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John Curtis Perry

Singapore has gained a reputation for being one of the wealthiest and best-educated countries in the world and one of the brightest success stories for a colony-turned-sovereign state, but the country's path to success was anything but assured. Its strategic location and natural resources both allowed Singapore to profit from global commerce and also made the island an attractive conquest for the world's naval powers, resulting in centuries of stunting colonialization. In Singapore: Un...

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Christopher Bayly, Tim Harper

The vast crescent of British-ruled territories from India down to Singapore appeared in the early stages of the Second World War a massive asset in the war with Germany, providing huge quantities of soldiers and raw materials and key part of an impregnable global network denied to the Nazis. Within a few weeks in 1941-2 a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, almost effortlessly taking the 'impregnable fortress' of Singapore with its 80,000 strong garrison, and sweeping through South a...

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Bertha Henson

The story of George Bogaars, a civil servant who played a key role in Singapore’s political history.Do civil servants make a difference? Can they shape history? In 1985 when John Drysdale published one of the first books on the political history of independent Singapore, George E. Bogaars wrote to his daughter with typical understatement, “I feature in it a bit.” Bogaars headed the special branch at the time of Operation Cold Store. He reported directly to pioneer ...

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Clare Hammond

'On the Shadow Tracks harnesses the railway lines of Myanmar’s complicated past to its turbulent present, and the result is part travelogue, part history and completely absorbing. An astonishing achievement’Joanna LumleyIn 2016, while working as a journalist in Yangon, Clare Hammond discovered an obscure map that showed a web of new railways spanning the length and breadth of the country - railways not shown on any other publicly av...

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Mark Felton

The author of Guarding Hitler tells the truly heart-rending stories of Caucasian and Eurasian children held captive inside Japanese internment camps.The Japanese treatment of Allied children was as harsh and murderous as that of their parents and military POWs, but this whole episode has been overlooked. Children were plucked from comfortable colonial lives and forced to mature hastily in terrible circumstances, where survival became a dai...

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Professor Peter Doyle

Book 14 -

Shire Living Histories

The First World War profoundly changed British society. The armed forces' need for mass recruitment saw the workforce severely depleted, with women stepping up to shoulder the burden; but nobody could ignore the social upheaval or the strains put upon daily life. With poverty a major issue at the outbreak of war, the extra wages put more food on the table for many families, in spite of rationing and shortages, and away from the front the nation prospered. The war intervened in all aspects ...

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Thomas Keneally

In the third volume of Thomas Keneally's unique history of Australia - where he shines a light on the lives and deeds of our countrymen and women, both known and unknown - he takes up the story at the end of the Great War and explores our development as a nation during the tumultuous 20th century.Australia emerged from World War I into a decade of profound change, characterised by a revolution in behaviour amongst the young; by the first great age of consumerism; a...

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Jeevan Vasagar

Lion City tells the extraordinary story of Singapore - the world's most successful city state.In 1965, Singapore's GDP per capita was on a par with Jordan. Now it has outstripped Japan. After the Second World War and a sudden rupture with newly formed Malaysia, Singapore found itself independent - and facing a crisis. It took the bloody-minded determination and vision of Lee Kuan Yew, its founding premier, to take a small island of diverse ethnic groups wi...