Looks at what it was really like in the first cafes, as coffee drinking became more popular. This book also deals with such questions as: what else did the shops sell? How did coffee shop life influence politics, the media and everyday life? We have all seen the hilarious depiction of Mrs Miggins' coffee shop in 'Blackadder', but what was it really like in the first cafes, as coffee drinking became more popular?

Explores how London's railways transformed the city into a global hub, impacting everything from suburbia to crime and culture.London has always been a major transport hub. Indeed, it owes its origins to being the location in ancient times of what was then the lowest bridging point of the River Thames. From the 1830s to 1914 it became the focal point of Britain's railway system. In that time a railway network of extraordinary complexity developed, serving the needs...

The railways changed the world. They initiated a revolution in communications which continues to this day, ever more profoundly influencing our lives. They had an enormous economic and social impact in Britain, not least with its demography. Before 1914 places on the railway system felt they were connected to the wider world. Those left off the system often feared for their future. It was never actually as simple as that. Some places well served by railways prospered, other did not. Some w...

The General Strike was one of the most significant events in twentieth century Britain. The miners were locked out and the mass of rank-and-file trade unionists then came out on strike in their support. With their families and some middle-class sympathizers, the miners and the labor and trade union movement found itself pitched against the political establishment, the apparatus of the state, the powerful mineowners backed by the Conservative Government and most of the media of the time in ...

Why is the highwayman largely perceived as a romantic, glamorous and gallant figure? How is it that men who were really nothing more than bandits, who were often gratuitously violent, sometimes murderers and rapists as well, have become the swashbuckling heroes of history? To put their roles in context, the book probles into the economic, social and technological factors that at certain times made highway robbery highly lucrative and which help to explain why some of its exponents eventual...

London owes its origins to being a suitable site for settlement close to what was then the lowest bridging point of the Thames. There have been many factors that have caused it to become such a vast, diverse and dynamic organism. Transport and the railways in particular have played a vital part in making London what it is today. This book does not pretend to be a chronological or comprehensive history of the railways of London because this has been done elsewhere. Instead this book acts as...

A succinct, uncompromising study of what it means to help other people, this book, first published in 1978, examines the helping process in the light of the principles of Zen Buddhism. Emphasizing the Zen precepts of true compassion, newness and Taoistic change, it explains how a helper can break down the artificial barriers that serve to separate people and hinder the helping process. As the teachings of Zen demonstrate, real compassion involves a selflessness and respect that can bring h...

The adventure begins in 2008 with Dan Russell, the protagonist, who has served as a United States Air Force F-16 pilot for ten years. He is offered a position in the top-secret space command and given one week to decide whether to accept this three-year commitment. Due to its highly classified nature, he has little information on which to base his decision. Despite his concerns, he accepts the offer, drawn by the chance to fly a technologically advanced spacecraft.When Dan arrives ...

The East Anglian Coast is a place of diversity: it has sandy beaches, shingle and pebble beaches and it has mud. There are crumbling cliffs, striped cliffs and places where sea and sand seem simply to run into each other. It has towns as different as workaday King's Lynn, Lowestoft or Harwich. David Brandon takes you on an entertaining and informative journey, visiting a wide variety of places of historical interest and talking about industries, local heroes and scallywags, battles and dis...

London's pubs and other drinking places, just like its people, its history, traditions and institutions, are fascinating and extraordinarily diverse. This book provides a readable introduction to aspects of the role they have played in the history of the metropolis. What were the differences between taverns and alehouses? What was a 'gin palace'? Where do coffee-houses fit into London's liquid history? Have any of London's great coaching inns survived? Who was 'Polly' and why did she draw ...

Edinburgh is now and indeed has for long been a city of stark juxtapositions and piquant contrasts. Historically it is a place of outstanding learning and culture, and yet it has on occasions witnessed uncontrolled mob violence and savagery and the commission of crimes of exceptional brutality, or of such a bizarre nature that they pushed back the boundaries of what was known or thought possible. Even today, the largely sanitised and grossly commercialised Old Town somehow manages to retai...

London's Underground is associated with a multitude of ghostly stories and sightings, particular stations and abandoned lines, many of which are in close proximity to burial sites from centuries ago. This chilling book reveals well-known and hitherto unpublished tales of spirits, spectres and other spooky occurrences on one of the oldest railway networks in the world. The stories of sightings include the ghost of an actress regularly witnessed on Aldywch Station a...