Sir John Betjeman was born at the start of the twentieth century, and lived to become Poet Laureate, an accomplished writer and campaigner, and something of a national treasure. All his life he loved churches, which are woven into his poetic output. He wrote extensively about churches and architecture, telling a journalist in 1955 ‘If I have a mission, it is to show people things which are beautiful so that they will very soon realise what is ugly. When you look at things, instead of just ...

Oxfordshire is rich in many things: fine agricultural land and areas of dense woodland; delightful towns like Burford, Woodstock, Dorchester and Henley; the stately River Thames that bisects the county; the ironstone villages of the northern border; the Oxford Canal meandering its way through remote countryside; and splendid country houses at Blenheim, Chastleton and Rousham. The jewel in the crown is the city of Oxford itself, with its ancient honey-coloured buildings and dreaming spires....

Winner of the 2009 Lampman-Scott Award (for the best book of poetry in the National Capital Region) and shortlisted for the 2009 ReLit Award Lucid accurate detail and music at every turn.Many of the poems in Noble Gas, Penny Black explore the subject of departure and arrival, an ongoing theme in David O’Meara’s work. Travel – being between places, in stations and airports and unfamiliar cities – creates a psychological, emotional space rife with reassessment, where the individual dwells si...

Thoroughly absurd and yet all-too-real, My Way to Canossa follows four journeys that re-imagine the Middle Ages amid the political and technological changes of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.This isn't an historical novel. It's an exploration of how the present uses the past.

After the German surrender in November 1918, the German High Seas Fleet was interned at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, the anchorage for the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet throughout the First World War. Determined not to see his ships fall into the hands of the Allied Powers as the protracted peace negotiations at Versailles dragged on, the German commander, Admiral Von Reuter, decided to scuttle his fleet and secretly passed orders between his ships for their skeleton crews to open the seac...

Lucid accurate detail and music at every turn.Many of the poems in Noble Gas, Penny Black explore the subject of departure and arrival, an ongoing theme in David OMearas work. Travel-being between places, in stations and airports and unfamiliar cities-creates a psychological, emotional space rife with reassessment, where the individual dwells simultaneously in the future and in the past. At the same time, OMeara imbues the domestic with a similar compelling transience, in poems on love ...

For over a hundred years there have been sleeper trains running to a variety of destinations around the British Isles. The longest running services are those between England and Scotland, which started in 1873. The Scottish sleeper services, now branded as the Caledonian Sleeper and currently operated by Serco, are due to have seventy-five brand new Mk 5 carriages introduced into service in the spring of 2018 that will create a new level of hotel-style service. In this book, illustrated th...

Nicholas Hawksmoor is one of a number of distinguished architects who worked in the seventeenth century. Others included Sir Christopher Wren, Inigo Jones, and Sir John Vanbrugh. But while we remember Wren for St Paul’s Cathedral, Inigo Jones for the Banqueting House in Whitehall, and Vanbrugh for Blenheim Palace, Hawksmoor has no major work associated with him, and remains relatively unknown in comparison with his contemporaries. This lavishly illustrated guide to his London churches, inc...

Captain John Alexander served in the Royal Engineers and was posted to the 17th Indian Division, known as the Black Cats, which was sent into Burma against the Japanese as part of the 14th Army. John’s unit was 60 Indian Field Company. After the capture of Hong Kong and the fall of Singapore in February 1942 the Japanese army advanced into Burma, catching the Allies ill-equipped and unprepared. Rangoon fellin March, thus beginning a long fighting retreat by the Allies through thick jungle ...

Oxford’s history begins with the story of a king’s daughter, Frideswide, who founded a nunnery in the meadows where the River Thames and River Cherwell meet. A settlement grew up around her shrine, which was built on the site of the present cathedral and it was also a good place for cattle to cross, hence the name ‘Ox-Ford’. A Norman castle was built after the Conquest, and students were first attracted there in the reign of Henry I. The town and university continued to grow through the ra...

Of all the environments most conducive to a little murder and intrigue, the overnight sleeper train is the best. The combination of a private sleeping compartment, a journey through the hours of darkness to a far-flung destination and a closed environment isolated from the outside world offers an ideal opportunity for committing a crime and unravelling a mystery. This book explores the enduring popularity of night trains as the setting for murder and mayhem in fiction over the past 150 yea...

The county of Berkshire is home to a through route from east to west following the River Thames, the ancient Ridgeway, the A4 trunk road, the Kennet and Avon Canal and the Great Western Railway. Within this long, slipper-shaped county there is something for everyone - gems from medieval to modern times. It can be divided into five geographical sections: the Vale of the White Horse, the Chalk Downs, the Kennet Valley, the district east of the River Loddon and the Thames Valley itself. Glori...