Showing results for "jon sutherland"

'Wonderful...concise, witty, effortlessly learned.' Sunday TimesHow does Magwitch swim to shore with a great iron on his leg? Where does Fanny Hill keep her contraceptives? Whose side is Hawkeye on? And how does Clarissa Dalloway get home so quickly?In this new edition sequel to the enormously successful Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, John Sutherland plays literary detective and investigates 32 literary conundrums, ranging from Daniel Defoe to V...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER IN A BRAND NEW EDITION'Enchanting...the most engagingly boffiny book imaginable.' SpectatorDoes Becky kill Jos at the end of Vanity Fair? Why does no one notice that Hetty is pregnant in Adam Bede? How, exactly, does Victor Frankenstein make his monster?Readers of Victorian fiction often find themselves tripping up on seeming anomalies, enigmas and mysteries in their favourite novels.In

A pictorial history chronicling battle scenes on the Eastern Front during World War II.The photographs in Blitzkrieg Russia are taken from five unpublished albums focusing on the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Operation Barbarossa. Two of the albums contain shots taken by German infantrymen and include shots of combat, vehicles, knocked-out tanks and prisoners of war. Two of the other albums feature artillery and flak units in action, destroyed Russian...

This little known campaign against the Italian invasion of British Somalia was bravely fought by a small force of elderly RAF and Commonwealth aircraft against almost overwhelming odds. This, against a backdrop of Britains meager assets being in demand in the much more prominent and important theatres such as Egypt and, of course, at home during the height of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.The history starts with the Italians use of airpower and gas against the spear-armed Abbysinnian...

Love, sex, death, boredom, ecstasy, existential angst, political upheaval - the history of literature offers a rich and varied exploration of the human condition across the centuries. In this absorbing companion to literature's rich past, arranged by days of the year, acclaimed critics and friends Stephen Fender and John Sutherland turn up the most inspiring, enlightening, surprising or curious artefacts that literature has to offer. Find out why 16 June 1904 mattered so much to Joyce, whi...

A rare collection of personal photographs following Nazi Germany's airborne soldiers on their missions through the Balkans, Crete, and Russia.The photos in this book are taken from an unpublished album that belonged to a member of the elite German Paratroopers. First Sgt Wilhelm Plieschen served with Fallschirmjager Machine Gun Battalion 7, which suffered very heavy losses in the invasion of Crete, then saw bloody conflict as Hitler's "Fire-fighters" on the Russian ...

The Royal Naval Patrol Service, or Harry Tates Navy as it was commonly known, was a unique service with its own rules and regulations. The officers and seamen were mainly ex-fishermen who had manned trawlers in Icelandic waters. The service was armed mostly with obsolete weaponry and suffered heavy casualties in the early stages of the war. The service was not confined to the seas around Britain and their small trawlers, drifters, paddle steamers, yachts and tugs saw service as far away as...

Did Charlotte Brontë take opium? Did the Reverend Brontë carry a loaded pistol? What, precisely, does 'wuthering' mean?Distinguished literary critic John Sutherland takes an idiosyncratic look at the world of the Brontës, from the bumps on Charlotte's head to the nefarious origins of Mr Rochester's fortune, by way of astral telephony, letterwriting dogs, an exploding peat bog, and much, much more.Also features 'Jane Eyre abbreviated' by John Crace, author of the Guardian's ...

For fans new and old, an enjoyable tour through the world of Dickens in the hands of a master critic. Charles Dickens, the 'Great Inimitable', created a riotous fictional world that still lives and breathes for thousands of readers today. But how much do we really know about the dazzling imagination that brought all this into being?For the bicentenary of Dickens' birth, Victorian literature expert John Sutherland has created a gloriously wide-ranging alphabetical companion to Dicken...

The Battle of Jutland was the greatest naval engagement of the First World War, if not any war. Admiral Scheer had adopted a policy of launching attacks against the British coast. What he did not know was that the British had broken his naval codes and that they knew of his plans. Consequently, when Scheer threw his entire fleet in a mission to attack the British mainland in May 1916, he could not know that the Royal Navy at Scapa Flow were underway.This is a fresh account of this greatest...

"These photographs are taken from three unpublished albums featuring the German invasion of Poland in 1939. One set was taken by an SS officer, another by a regular officer and a third by a soldier attached to a medical unit. Included are German units on the move, tanks, artillery and aircraft.There are several shots of recently knocked out Polish vehicles, captured Polish troops and civilians. The shots reflect the rapid pace of the German advance through Poland, some of the cities, towns...

Working with prestigious archives of contemporary photographs, the authors chart the history of Britain's fishing heritage with 120 rarely seen photographs. Fishermen were hardy individuals with a precarious existence dictated by the changing rhythm of the wind and the waves. While at sea, their womenfolk cleaned, salted, pressed and bulked the fish. The fishermen of the East Coast are the last of the hunter gathers, in the later 19th and early 20th century British fishery expanded and exc...