Who are those at the bottom of society? There has been much discussion in recent years, on both Left and Right, about the existence of an alleged 'underclass' in both Britain and the USA. It has been claimed this group lives outside the mainstream of society, is characterised by crime, suffers from long-term unemployment and single parenthood, and is alienated from its core values.John Welshman shows that there have always been concerns about an 'underclass', whether constructed as...

The essays in this volume address the displacement of natural and cultural heritage caused by disasters, whether they be dramatic natural impacts or terrible events unleashed by humankind, including holocaust and genocide. Disasters can be natural or human-made, rapid or slow, great or small, yet the impact is effectively the same; nature, people and cultural heritage are displaced or lost. Yet while heritage and place are at risk from disasters, in time,sites of suffering are sometimes re...

In his famous book A Night to Remember, historian Walter Lord described the sinking of the Titanic as 'the last night of a small town'. Now, a hundred years after her sinking, John Welshman reconstructs the fascinating individual histories of twelve of the inhabitants of this tragically short-lived floating town. They include members of the crew; passengers in First, Second, and Third Class; women and men; adults and children; rich and poor. Among them are a ship's Captain, a Seco...

'We were dumped at a roundabout with our labels on. People pulled and tugged at the children they wanted. It was a bit like a cattle market... people just waded in. I went with a lady and her daughter - she was like a second Mum.' Alexander King, evacuated aged eleven Based on the stories of thirteen children and adults, Churchill's Children tells the often moving story of the evacuation of schoolchildren in Britain during the Second World War, from the first mass evacuations of ...

#1 New York Times Bestseller: The definitive book on the sinking of the Titanic , based on interviews with survivors, by the author of The Miracle of Dunkirk ."Absolutely gripping and un-put-downable." —David McCullough, author of John AdamsAt first, no one but the lookout recognized...

The first book to be published following the tragic sinking of the Titanic, Titanic, based on interviews with survivors, provided a first-person account of life on the "unsinkable" ship, and of the events leading up to and following its collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912. Titanic continues to be considered one of the most complete records of the maritime disaster.Be it mystery, romance, drama, comedy, politics, or history, g...

How the mighty clipper ships transformed Australia from convict outpost to a nation.More than one million Australians can trace their heritage to the migrant ships of the mid-to-late 19th century...The story of the Clipper ships, and the tens of thousands of migrants they bought to the Australian colony of the nineteenth century, is one of the world's great migration stories. For anyone who travelled to Australia before 1850, it was a long and arduous journey that could tak...

In 1996, at 100 years of age, Edith Haisman, (nee Brown) became the world's oldest living survivor of the Titanic disaster. She was almost sixteen years of age at the time and could well remember those screams and cries for help as the ship sank in those icy waters of the North Atlantic. Those sounds were to haunt her for the rest of her life.

'Goodbye Miss Young. Good luck to you and don't forget to remember me to the folks back home.'Major Archibald Butt (1865-1912)The sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage in 1912 is one of the most dramatic stories in maritime history. The largest passenger steamship in the world, fitted with more advanced safety features than any of her rivals, she was proclaimed to be virtually unsinkable.More than 1,500 people perished when th...

Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage takes us behind the paneled doors of the Titanic’s elegant private suites to present compelling, memorable portraits of her most notable passengers.The Titanic has often been called "An exquisite microcosm of the Edwardian era,” but until now, her story has not been presented as such. In Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage, historian Hugh Brewster seamlessly interweaves personal narratives of the lost liner’s most fascin...

By the same author as the bestselling Total Loss this is a new collection of terrifying and compelling accounts of yachts lost at sea. The seven deadly causes of loss continue to take their toll and Paul Gelder has compiled first-hand accounts of shipwreck and sinking caused by Collision Gear Failure Stress of Weather Faulty Navigation Fire Crew Failure and Exhaustion. The moving emotionally charged descriptions of shipwrecked sailors abandoning their yachts at sea will have you on the edg...

This account of British life in the wake of World War I is "social history at its very best . . . insightful and utterly absorbing" ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune).As the euphoria of Armistice Day in 1918 quickly subsided, there was no denying the carnage that the Great War had left in its wake. Grief and shock overwhelmed the psyche of the British people—but from their despair, new life would slowly emerge.For veterans with faces demolished in the tre...