Starting out as a small but energetic and, above all, committed group of parents in County Down in the early 1970s, All Children Together (ACT) believed that, as long as children continued to be educated separately, there was little hope of healing the festering wounds in a society blighted by bitter division. This is the story of the pioneers of the integrated education movement in Northern Ireland.The book chronicles how ACT faced powerful establishment resistance – both clerical...

Jonathan Bardon's A History of Ulster is widely regarded as the definitive text on the region. Updated with a more recent preface from the author, this illustrated, abridged version offers a comprehensive but accessible overview of life in the province for anyone seeking to understand the roots of its troubled history.The Vikings, the Norman invasions, the plantations, the Penal Laws, the rise of the United Irishmen and Orangeism, the Act of Union, the linen and shipbuildi...

This authoritative and comprehensive history of Ireland covers the entire history of the island from the Ice Age to the peace process in 100 short episodes. In this thoughtful analysis of Irish society, Bardon integrates the significant cultural and literary history of Ireland with its political and social past.Based on the hugely popular BBC radio series A Short History of Ireland, each episode stands alone, providing a snippet of Irish history in five minutes' reading. I...

THE ONLY BOOK ON IRISH HISTORY YOU'LL EVER NEED!From invasions to rebellions, heroic martyrs to pragmatic politicians, industrial development to mass emigration, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes by renowned Irish historian Jonathan Bardon will take you on a sweeping journey through Irish history, getting behind the historical headlines to reveal the lived experience of Irish people.Written in easy-to-read bitesize episodes, Bardon's original and engaging style will make you feel as tho...

Based on the popular BBC Radio Ulster series of the same name, A Narrow Sea traces the epic sweep of Ireland's relationship with Scotland, exploring the myriad connections, correlations, personalities and antagonisms that have, over the years, defined the relationship between these two spirited neighbours.Roving freely across the centuries, from the first migrations of the regions' intrepid Mesolithic pioneers, to the grand colonial projects of the Vikings, Normans and Stuarts, this is the...

In this vivid account, the author punctures some generally held assumptions: despite slaughter and famine, the province on the eve of the Plantation was not completely depopulated as was often asserted at the time; the native Irish were not deliberately given the most infertile land; some of the most energetic planters were Catholic; and the Catholic Church there emerged stronger than before. Above all, natives and newcomers fused to a greater degree than is widely believed: apart from rec...

18 November, 1741. George Frideric Handel, one of the world's greatest composers, arrives in Dublin – the second city of the Empire – to prepare his masterpiece, Messiah, for its maiden performance the following spring …In Hallelujah, Jonathan Bardon, one of Ireland's leading historians, explores the remarkable circumstances surrounding the first performance of Handel's now iconic oratorio in Dublin, providing a panoramic view of a city in flux – at once struggling to contain the chaos unl...

From The Ice Age to Northern Ireland's Peace Settlement and everything in between, the acclaimed academic Dr Jonathan Bardon presents a history of Ireland spanning 10,000 years.Beginning with the Ice Age and Ireland's first plants and wildlife, this history encompasses the arrival of Christianity, the age of the Celts, the Viking era, Brian Boru, the Norman invasion, the plantation and the famine through to rebellion, partition and the creation of the Irish Free St...

A new edition to celebrate Alan Turing's centenary, includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter.Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer....

Travel to space and back with astronaut Chris Hadfield's enthralling bestseller as your eye-opening guide."Hadfield proves himself to be not only a fierce explorer of the universe, but also a deeply thoughtful explorer of the human condition." —Maria Popova, Brain PickingsColonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into ...

Edge of Eternity is the epic, final novel in Ken Follett’s captivating and hugely ambitious Century trilogy. On its own or read in sequence with Fall of Giants and Winter of the World, this is a compulsive, gripping blockbuster about the fight for personal freedom set during the Cold War.A FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE1961, and in the United States George Jakes, a bright young lawyer in the Kennedy administration and fi...

#1 New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls is a sophisticated and chilling psychological thriller of dangerous secrets, cold vengeance, and unexpected absolution, in which two estranged sisters must come together to find truth about two harrowing tragedies, twenty years apart, that devastate their lives.Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.CLAIRE: A glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta mil...