Do you remember collecting shrapnel and listening to Children's Hour? Carrying gas masks or sharing your school with evacuees from the city? The 1940s was a decade of great challenge for everyone who lived through it. The hardships and fear created by a world war were immense. Britain's towns and cities were being bombed on an almost nightly basis, and many children faced the trauma of being parted from their parents and sent away to the country to live with complete strangers. For just ov...

This is a story spanning some of the most turbulent decades in recent world history. James Marsh was born during the first year of the Second World War and many of his infant years were spent in air-raid shelters outside his home. Bombs rained down from the German Luftwaffe as they tried to destroy the city of Southampton, which has now been James' home for more than sixty years. The gritty determination, community spirit and, above all, the humour, with which the local co...

Do you remember collecting shrapnel and listening to Children's Hour? Carrying gas masks or sharing your school with evacuees from the city? The 1940s was a decade of great challenge for everyone who lived through it. The hardships and fear created by a world war were immense. Britain's towns and cities were being bombed on an almost nightly basis, and many children faced the trauma of being parted from their parents and sent away to the country to live with complete stran...

In his philosophical classic Insight, Catholic philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan introduced the concept of self-appropriation – the personal search for knowledge of the self, and through that of the world – as the basis for systematic philosophical investigation.In Lonergan in the World, James L. Marsh argues, clearly and passionately, that self-appropriation can serve as the basis for philosophical, ethical, and even political and economic thought. Comp...

Water Covers All Sins James Marsh Banksiadale was an idyllic timber mill town, near Dwellingup and Pinjarra, in the south-west of Western Australia. In its heyday and climaxing in the early 1960s, it was the gem of all mill towns with its own electricity supply, piped fresh water to all houses and a peaceful, well-behaved community, not even needing a resident policeman. Today, it does not exist. Everything changed in 1963 when the mill mysteriously burnt down, all workers had to leave, an...

Card play at bridge embraces both declarer play and defense. Hundreds of books have been written about it. Our approach here, as in our previous books, is to focus on a particular deal type. Repeated experience with a theme makes it easier to recognize deal types and employ the appropriate techniques for each. A common and important line of play is elimination play, eliminating the side suits to removes an opponent’s safe exit cards before throwing him in to make a fatal lead. More than mo...

SUIT PREFERENCE SIGNALS If there was ever an area in bridge that resembles walking thru a mine field this is it. No topic causes more confusion and arguments than suit preference signals. “Partner, I played a deuce. Why didn’t you switch to a club?” is heard everywhere all the time. Most signals in bridge are attitude and some are count. At the end of the line are suit preference signals. And yet, they can be found in the most unusual and useful opportunities, often overlooked. The authors...

Bridge is a game of mistakes.The best players make fewer mistakes. It’s not a matter of being brilliant The real expert players never make basic mistakes,they keep the ball in the court, in the fairway. Sure there is an occasional hand where they make a brilliant play but that’s not what distinguishes the true expert from the good player. One often hears an expert say I’ve seen this hand before”. What does he mean? No,he hasn’t seen the hand record;he recognizes the hand type. After all, t...

“Second hand low” and “third hand high” are adages we learned in Bridge 101 along with others like “cover an honor with an honor” and “always return your partner’s suit.” These so-called rules will get you by, but they won’t see you very far. Second hand must become familiar with certain basic positions to try to foil declarer’s plans, often by playing second hand high. Likewise, many contracts are decided by the play of third hand at trick one. While your play may at first seem so obvious...

Innumerable books have been written on declarer play. Far less attention has been paid by bridge writers to defense, which is the weakest part of most players’ game. This book presents a series of problems in defensive play, the central theme being active versus passive defense. This problem may start with the opening lead, arise at Trick Two, or be a decision later during the play of the hand. Going ‘active’ when one should have remained ‘passive’ and vice versa is probably the most commo...

How do defender’s win trump tricks? Other than having high honors, natural winners, it’s by getting an early ruff of a short suit. Far more fulfilling and intriguing possibilities arise in poking away at declarer’s trump suit and plucking out an unexpected trick. Trump promotion has been described as the magic of creating trump tricks that didn’t exist at the beginning of the deal. The basis for this is simple. By putting declarer in a position where to win the trick he must ruff high, he ...

In the earlier days of bridge, a direct cue bid of the opponent’s opening bid was traditionally played as a ‘strong cue bid’, a hand too strong for an ordinary take-out double, and forcing to game. A typical hand was any 4-4-4-1 hand with 18 – 19+ HCP. These occurred so seldom and players found they could be handled by starting with a take-out double anyhow that the direct cue bid was finally put to better use. The most popular use is to show some form of a two-suited hand. The Michaels cu...