This giant collection includes a huge range of 20th-century first-hand accounts of hauntings, such as the American troops who repeatedly saw the ghosts of a dead platoon of men while on patrol in Vietnam; and the witnessed haunting of a house near Tintagel in Cornwall that led actress Kate Winslet to pull out of buying the property.It covers the full spectrum of credible hauntings, from poltergeists (the noisy, dangerous and frightening spirits that are usually associated with pube...

'A tour de force of an extraordinary half-century of campaigning for justice' – Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister and United Nations Development ChiefPeter Hain – famous for his commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle – has had a dramatic 50-year political career, both in Britain and in his childhood home of South Africa, in an extraordinary journey from Pretoria to the House of Lords.Hain vividly describes the arrest and harassment of his activist p...

Most of us like to think we'd stand up to fight against evil, and yet the vast majority of white South Africans either stood by and said nothing or actively participated in the oppression and carnage during apartheid. Ad & Wal is the story of two modest people who became notorious, two survivors who did what they thought was right, two parents who rebelled against the apartheid regime knowing they were putting themselves and their family in grave danger. Ad & Wal is the story of an ordinar...

“There will be a black Springbok over my dead body.”— Dr Danie Craven, President of the South African Rugby Board, 1969Just a year after the controversial D’Oliveira affair, the organised disruption of the all-white 1969/70 South African rugby and cricket tours to Britain represented a significant challenge to apartheid politics. Led by future cabinet minister Peter Hain, the ‘Stop the Seventy Tour’ campaign brought about the cancellation of both tours, presaging white South...

Following on from the hilarious collection of typos, gaffes and howlers in Portico’s A Steroid Hit the Earth, comes Wrotten English – a fabulously funny collection of literary blunders from classic, and not-so classic, works of literature. This book is an anthology of side-splitting authors' errors, publishers' boobs, printers' devils, terrible titles, comical clangers and all manner of literary lunacy dating back since the invention of the printing press.Painstak...

Peter Hain’s latest thriller is grounded in real-life experience, and endorsed by global conservationists. From South Africa to Zanzibar, from Kenya to Britain, activists are battling to save lion prides, today more threatened by extinction than rhinos and elephants, as a result of illegal wildlife trading. Having thwarted murderous poachers in The Elephant Conspiracy, the Veteran, Thandi and Mkhize are back battling to save lion prides from being killed for their claws, teeth and bones. A...

Of all the airplanes that defended Britain during World War Two, none inspired as much affection as the Spitfire, the plane that became a symbol of courage and determination during the Battle of Britain. Today, over sixty years later, it is still one of the world's most loved planes. This splendidly illustrated tribute to the fighter and the men who flew her is essential reading. It brings together a fascinating collection of writings from Allied aces such as Air Vice Marshal James Johnson...

South Africa, Zimbabwe, China and Britain - In the shadow of the Cold War, a deadly secret connects three continents - and time is running out.When a mild-mannered scientist accidentally uncovers a web of international espionage during a routine visit to Beijing, he's thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse. His only ally? A magnetic anti-apartheid activist who may have secrets of her own.As they race to expose the truth, a veteran South African intelligence operative move...

In the mafia world of African tobacco and gold trafficking, a Harare-based Smuggler Kingpin rakes it in. Can he be stopped? Or is South African gangsterism and Zimbabwean corruption out of control? Can activist Thandi, her mentor The Veteran and the mysterious Sniper, band together again with SA Security Minister Yasmin to fight back against the looting and the mafiosi? As this pacey plot unfolds to a dramatic climax, fresh characters appear and familiar characters confront a jolting truth...

A unique collection of Dickens stories, rarely seen in print, establishing him as one of the masters of the detective genre Charles Dickens was one of the great pioneers of detective fiction. While the larger-than-life characters in his novels have settled themselves in the public imagination, his detectives have had a profound effect on the development of crime fiction, and Dickens is now seen as the first major publicist for the police detective. Here, Peter Haining has assembled a fasci...

Fergus Hume was renowned as the bestselling mystery writer of Victorian times after his first book, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, broke all records. In 1901 he returned to form with this ingenious tale, selected to represent Hume’s prolific output by Collins’ Detective Club panel in 1930.Cicero Gramp was, according to himself, a ‘professor of elocution and eloquence’ – to anyone else he was no more than an engaging and extremely craft vagabond. Hence it was that he found himself awa...

The use of thermal and calorimetric methods has shown rapid growth over the past few decades, in an increasingly wide range of applications. The original text was published in 2001; since then there have been significant advances in various analytical techniques and their applications. This second edition supplies an up to date, concise and readable account of the principles, experimental apparatus and practical procedures used in thermal analysis and calorimetric methods of analysis. Writ...