Friday, 12th February, 1993. Two outwardly unremarkable ten-year-old boys began the day by playing truant and ended it running an errand for the local video shop. In between they abducted and killed a two-year-old boy, James Bulger. In search of an explanation, award-winning journalist David James Smith looks behind the misinformation, misunderstanding and sensational reporting to an exact account of the events of that day. A sensitive and definitive account, The Sleep of Reason a...

Sarajevo, 28 June 1914: The story of the assassination that changed the world.A historical account of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Using newly available sources and older material, David James Smith brilliantly reinvestigates and reconstructs the events which subsequently determined the shape of the twentieth century.Young Gavrilo Princip arrived at the Vlajnic pastry shop in Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the morning of 28 June 1914. H...

Edwardian London in 1910, the notorious tale of Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve re-investigated by a prizewinning journalist.At a time when Edwardian Britain seemed a golden place, basking in its imperial glory, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife Belle lived among the suburban villas of North London, renting a house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. After supper on 31 January 1910, their friends went home and Crippen killed Belle with poison, dismembered her body and buried...

Nelson Mandela is well-known throughout the world as a heroic leader who symbolizes freedom and moral authority. He is fixed in the public mind as the world's elder statesman -- the gray-haired man with a kindly smile who spent 27 years in prison before becoming the first black president in South Africa.But Nelson Mandela was not always elderly or benign. And, in Young Mandela, award-winning journalist and author David James Smith takes us deep into the heart of racist Sout...

Author David Smith’s childhood near London, England, helped pave the way for the young boy to plough his own furrow in life. In Only Fraud and Horses, Smith narrates his story which includes pieces of history, police, and horsemanship. In this memoir, Smith offers a humorous and poetic account of his skills, training, and professional positions from cadet to London policeman and to Scotland Yard detective and specialist. Only Fraud and Horses also shares representative sports details, cont...

Live the Life of a Celt in Caledonia A story of migration to the Scottish Highlands circa AD78. The Roman expansion north was resisted by a Celtic Confederation and by their relatives still in Germania causing a contraction that left a vacuum to be filled by other migrants from Saxony. Angles, Jutes, and more followed.

Mons Graupius. A Roman battle victory or, Only a Celtic Quarrel? Catti resisted, but relatives complied by joining the 9th Legio to retain Celtic land in Europe. Catti left, colonised and held land near the Grampians in Caledonia, resisted the Roman advance, and again quarreled with relatives in the 9th. Calgacus and his speech were invented by a historian with a motive. Historical Notes: Catti origins before building Stonehenge, mining Cornwall, founding Lud (London), Cato Gate (Scandinav...

Have you ever wondered where your horse originated? Author David James Smith provides the answer in an informative world-wide review through the Ice Ages, Breeds, and Uses, for wild pony migrations hunted as food, their domestication, and breeding, to provide so many uses. He draws upon his skills as an investigator turned historian, breeder, and natural horseman with national style and performance competitor success, to propose and then prove it was Only Horses from Wild until horses ente...

Nelson Mandela is well known throughout the world as a heroic leader who symbolizes freedom and moral authority. He is fixed in the public mind as the world’s elder statesman—the gray-haired man with a kindly smile who spent twenty-seven years in prison before becoming the first black president of South Africa.But Nelson Mandela was not always elderly or benign. In Young Mandela, David James Smith takes us deep into the heart of racist South Africa to paint a portrait of t...

Edwardian London in 1910, the notorious tale of Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve re-investigated by a prizewinning journalist.'The definitive account of a crime which still intrigues, and to an extent baffles, aficionados of murder' P D JamesAt a time when Edwardian Britain seemed a golden place, basking in its imperial glory, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife Belle lived among the suburban villas of North London, renting a house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. Af...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, with an updated chapter from Denise.'I was crying so much I couldn't breathe. The thought of leaving the shopping centre without him was crushing. I knew that walking away from the place where he had gone missing, without any idea where he now was, meant that things were really bad. James had been right by my side and then he was gone forever.'On 12th February 1993, Denise Fergus' life changed ...

In December 1968 two girls - Mary Bell, eleven, and Norma Bell, thirteen (neighbours, but not related) - stood before a criminal court in Newcastle, accused of strangling, within a six-week period, Martin Brown, four years old, and Brian Howe, three. Norma was acquitted. Mary Bell, the younger but infinitely more sophisticated and cooler of the two, was found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder because of 'diminished responsibility' and was sentenced to 'detention' for life. Step by ...