A classic book of jokes with funny drawings by Mic Looby.Why do bulldogs have such flat noses? Because they keep chasing parked cars. What is a twip? A twip is what a wabbit takes when it wides on twains. What must you be careful not to do when it's raining cats and dogs? Step in a poodle.A laugh-out-loud collection of jokes, riddles, rhymes and sayings from kids around Australia, first issued as June Factor's Juicy Jumping Jo...

Four thousand Australian soldiers in World War II who signed up for service were never to fire a weapon. Their work was essential for the war effort, but they were 'aliens' - non-British subjects - many born in other countries. Scholars and peasants, musicians and factory workers, communists and royalists, Jews and Catholics, animists and atheists, they all laboured under standard strict Army regulations, living in tents and huts, loading and unloading trains, working the wharves, cutting ...

Iona and Peter Opie were twentieth-century pioneers. Their research and writing focused on the folklore of British children – their games, rhymes, riddles, secret languages and every variety of the traditions and inventions of the children’s collective physical and verbal play. Such closely observed, respectful, good-humoured and historically attuned writing about the traditions of childhood was a revelation to English-language readers around the world. Their numerous books were a rare phe...

**Winner of the 2014 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for the Best Work of History"Brilliant…the most challenging and intelligent book on the Great War and our perceptions of it that any of us will read." —John Charley, The Times [London]**One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War...

A sweeping, groundbreaking epic that combines military with social history, to illuminate the ways in which Great Britain and its people were permanently transformed by the Second World War.Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict's first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles questions such as: Could the war have been avoided? Could it have been lost? ...

1942 was a key year in Australia's history. As its people had so long feared, White Australia, an outpost of empire, seemed about to be invaded by the Japanese. In that one year, Darwin was bombed, submarines torpedoed ships in Sydney Harbour and Australian Militiamen died on the Kokoda Trail.Each year, more and more Australians celebrate Anzac Day and honour the lives of those who fought for their country. There is even a push to create a new public holiday, in remembranc...

From Simpson’s donkey and the Emu War to Vietnam and Ben Roberts-Smith, Australian military history is full of events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did. In his inimitable style, award-winning author Mark Dapin sets the record straight.Australia has many stories and statues ‘lest we forget’ our military past. But from Simpson’s donkey to Ben Roberts-Smith, our history is fullof events that didn’t happen the way most people think they did.

In the third volume of Thomas Keneally's unique history of Australia - where he shines a light on the lives and deeds of our countrymen and women, both known and unknown - he takes up the story at the end of the Great War and explores our development as a nation during the tumultuous 20th century.Australia emerged from World War I into a decade of profound change, characterised by a revolution in behaviour amongst the young; by the first great age of consumerism; a...

The terrible truth behind Nazi Germany's plans for Great Britain, after WWIIIn July 1940, Walter Schellenberg of the German Secret Service drew up a list of 2,694 people believed to be living in Britain, who were known enemies of the Reich. In that month, the Wehrmacht was poised across the Channel ready to hit Britain with blitzkrieg, the terrible and hugely successful tactic that had already overwhelmed Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and Fra...

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Peter Hennessy's Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties captures Britain in an extraordinary decade, emerging from the shadow of war into growing affluence.The 1950s was the decade in which Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile, Bill Haley released 'Rock Around the Clock', rationing ended and Britain embarked on the traumatic, disastrous Suez War.In this highly enjoyable, original book, Peter ...

In November 2023, the Dublin riots shocked Ireland and the wider world. They were sparked by a knife attack by an immigrant on three children. Inflammatory online rumours spread in minutes. Part of the north inner city were wrecked, cars and buses torched, and protestors wreaked havoc on the streets for hours.Until very recently, Ireland had prided itself on having escaped the wave of far-right, xenophobic populism now rampant throughout Europe. That complacency has been rudely cha...

Statesman, pre-eminent leader and founder of the free world's then largest and most formidable trade union, Ernest Bevin was one of the most rousing figures of the twentieth century. Minister of Labour in the wartime coalition during the Second World War, he was Churchill's right-hand man, masterminding the home front while the war supremo commanded the battle front. Afterwards, he was Foreign Secretary at one of the most critical moments in international history, responsible for keeping S...