Conceived as a showcase for Britain's burgeoning manufacturing industries and the exotic products of its Empire, the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace was Britain's first truly national spectacle. Michael Leapman explores how the exhibition came into being; the key characters who made it happen (from Prince Albert, who was credited with the idea, to Thomas Cook, whose cheap railway trips ensured its accessibility to all); and the fascinating tales behind the exhibits that fired the im...

Writer of The Times Diary, Michael Leapman, became a tenant of an allotment next to Brixton Prison for 35p a year in 1974 when food and energy shortages inspired many people to attempt self-sufficiency. This book tells the story of the plot and the author's first year of cultivating it, written with humour and wit while providing a wealth of information for the would-be urban horticulturalist."It is splendid stuff and if your husband is a gardening bore and you want to shu...

By the early eighteenth century botanists were inching towards the shocking truth that plants had male and female organs and reproduced sexually. The first person to realize the practical implications of this was London nurseryman and author Thomas Fairchild. By transferring the pollen of a sweet William into the pistil of a carnation, he created a new plant that became known as 'Fairchild's Mule': the first man-made hybrid in Europe. But this primitive form of genetic engineering aroused ...

Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from Kings Cross to Kings Cross on the Circle line? The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs and improvisations.Yet it transports over one billion passengers every year - and this figure is rising. It is iconic, recognised the world over, and loved and despised by Londoners in equal mea...

PACKED WITH ASTONISHING FACTS AND WONDERFUL STORIES ON WHAT MAKES THE ENGLISH TICKQ. Why are English train seats so narrow?A. It's all the Romans' fault. The first Victorian trains were built to the same width as horse-drawn wagons; and they were designed to fit the ruts left in the roads by Roman chariots.This intriguing and witty book explains how our national characteristics - our sense of humour, hobbies and favourite foods - a...

Geoffrey Fletcher's off-beat portrayal of London does not focus on the big landmarks, but rather 'the tawdry, extravagant and eccentric'. His descriptions will transport you to an art nouveau pub, a Victorian music hall, a Hawksmoor church and even a public toilet in Holborn in which the attendant kept goldfish in the cisterns. Drawn to the corners where 'the kids swarm like ants and there are dogs everywhere', Fletcher will take you to parts of the city where few outsider...

**'A magnificent, rollicking narrative' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'Top 25 Non-Fiction Books of the 21st Century'Sunday Times History Book of the Year 2015Britain's railways have been a vital part of national life for nearly 200 years. Transforming lives and landscapes, they have left their mark on everything from timekeeping to tourism. As a self-contained world governed by distinctive rules and traditions, the network also exert...

Since the Victorian era, London's Underground has had played a vital role in the daily life of generations of Londoners. In The Subterranean Railway, Christian Wolmar celebrates the vision and determination of the nineteenth-century pioneers who made the world's first, and still the largest, underground passenger railway: one of the most impressive engineering achievements in history.From the early days of steam to electrification, via the Underground's contribution to twe...

The Victorian era has dominated the popular imagination like no other period, but these myths and stories also give a very distorted view of the 19th century.The early Victorians were much stranger that we usually imagine, and their world would have felt very different from our own and it was only during the long reign of the Queen that a modern society emerged in unexpected ways.Using character portraits, events, and key moments Paterson brings the real life of Victorian B...

A fascinating tour of London's strangest and most intriguing locations. Ranging from architectural evidence of past incidents and stories of life beneath the city, to anecdotes of magic, mystery and murder, this is a perfect companion for the curious Londoner.It includes:A Museum of Magical Curiosities; The City's Lost Tunnels and Citadels; The Ghost of a "She-Wolf; The Bawdy House Riots; The Story of 'Jack the Stripper'; The Atmospheric Railway; The Thames Ringway Bicycle ...

SOMETIMES you come across a lofty railway viaduct, marooned in the middle of a remote country landscape. Or a crumbling platform from some once-bustling junction buried under the buddleia. If you are lucky you might be able to follow some rusting tracks, or explore an old tunnel leading to…well, who knows where? Listen hard. Is that the wind in the undergrowth? Or the spectre of a train from a golden era of the past panting up the embankment?These are the ghosts of The Trai...

'Roy Porter, a historian of formidable range, turns to urban history in this marvellously lucid, informative and passionate book... Porter's facts are always at the service of the narrative, which has a finely maintained momentum, balancing statistics with the words of historians, diarists and novelists, poets and churchmen: Pepys, Boswell, Fielding, Walpole, Blake, Mayhew, Wells, Woolf, Spark, ... a timely and brilliant book.' CLAIRE TOMALIN, EVENING STANDARD 'A vivid celebration of the c...