One hundred years on... The Battle of Passchendaele, fought from July to November 1917, epitomises everything that was most terrible about the Western Front in the First World War. This was the war of attrition at its most spectacular & ferocious. The intervening century, the most violent in human history, has not diluted the power of the images we have from this battle. We commemorate the event, we pin poppies to our chests. But it is almost impossible to underst&. Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth shows how ordinary men on both sides endured this constant state of siege, with a very real awareness that they were being gradually, deliberately, felled. Yet the men never broke. They went over the top when ordered, again & again & again. The commanders saw a soldier as ” Normal wastage”. His family knew him as a son, a husband or a brother before he had enlisted. Only the soldiers truly saw each other in those moments. By the end of 1917 each surviving soldier was a different man to the one who had left home; his experiences on the Western Front, incomprehensible to anyone but him. Here, Paul Ham tells the story of ordinary men in the grip of an extraordinary global power struggle. He lays down a powerful challenge to the idea of war as an inevitable expression of human will, & examines the culpability of governments & military commanders in a catastrophe that destroyed the best part of a generation. ...

It will be forever known as Passchendaele: the very word is used to describe wretched & perilous conditions such as were encountered at the battles which became officially designated as Third Ypres. There with better tactics, equipment & experience than he had previously employed, Haig was surely set for considerable advance & ultimate success. Initial successes were, however, reversed by stout German defence & weak British strategy before unprecedented rainfall reduced the Belgian landscape to a quagmire. Through August the British suffered net losses & only towards the end of September did the more enlightened command of Plumer bring gains against the German divisions, only for more rain & the subsequent reduction of offensive effectiveness to reduce territorial gains to a meaningless trickle. Following his popular volume on The Somme, Chris Mc Carthy re-assesses & enhances the official history of Third Ypres, presenting his research with comprehenive illustrations & valuable coloured maps. ...

The Classic Account of Passchendaele
- Reissued for the First World War Centenary. The third battle of Ypres, culminating in a
...

In 1926 Vita Sackville-West travelled to Iran to visit her husb&, Harold Nicolson, who was serving as a diplomat in Teheran. Her route was deliberately slow-paced
- she stopped in Egypt, where she sailed up the Nile to Luxor; & India, where she visited New Delhi & Agra before sailing across the Persian Gulf to Iraq & on through bandit-infested mountains to Teheran. She returned to England in an equally circuitous manner & despite travelling under dangerous circumstances, through communist Russia & Poland in the midst of revolution, her humour & sense of adventure never failed. ” Passenger to Teheran” is a classic work, revealing the lesser-known side of one of the twentieth century`s most luminous authors.
...

From the Cederberg in the northwest to the Tsitsikamma Mountains in the east, the rugged mountains of the Western Cape from a formidable barrier between the coastal plateau & the hinterl&. Many of the modern passes through them still follow ancient animal migration routes; others are engineering masterpieces that challenge gravity. Passes & Poorts provides a detailed guide to the most scenic & is packed with information to enrich readers` driving experience, from fauna & flora to the personalities behind the passes. Activities highlighted in each area include favourite hiking trails, mountain biking tracks & 4x 4 routes. Each chapter ends with tips to make driving the passes more pleasurable: the best picnic spots, view points, farm stalls, roadside restaurants, guesthouses & self-catering cottages, & quirky country attractions. Many can be done as day drives or weekend trips from Cape Town or Garden Route towns such as George & Knysna, or combined for longer holidays. Full-colour maps assist in travel planning & the routes are illustrated with photographs from the author & the Getaway library. ...

Swiss topographic survey at 1:100, 000 from Swisstopo, highly regarded for it superb use of graphic relief & hill shading, ...

Map No. 1314, Passo San Jorio, in the topographic survey of Switzerland at 1:25, 000 from Bundesamt für Landestopographie (swisstopo), covering the whole country on 247 small format sheets, with special larger maps published for popular regions including some titles now available in hiking versions. Highly regarded for their superb use of graphic relief & hill shading, the maps give an almost 3-D picture of Switzerland`s mountainous terrain. Contours are at 10 m intervals, with 20m intervals in the mountainous areas. All the maps have a 1-km grid for Swiss national coordinates (datum CH 1903). * Small format sheets (Nos. 1011
- 1374)* Map legend in the language of the area covered by the map. Additional margin ticks show latitude & longitude in steps of 2`. The area covered by each map is 17 x 12 km (11 x 7 miles approx). * Special larger sheets (Nos. from 2501 onwards) – STANDARD editions:* No map legend is included but a separate leaflet can be provided instead. The area covered by each map is 25 x 17 km (15 x 11 miles approx).* Special larger sheets (Nos. from 2501 onwards) – HIKING editions:* An overprint highlights hiking, mountain & alpine paths, including regional & national long-distance trails. The maps also show bus routes with bus stops, plus inns in remote locations. The area covered by each map is 25 x 17 km (15 x 11 miles approx).
...

The Bosign Passport & Ticket Holder is a sleek & practical solution to the problem of organizing your travel documents. Suitable for carrying passports, tickets, credit cards, camera memory sticks & important documents, the white frost-transparent pouch has pockets of various sizes & is made from a durable & moisture resistant material. ...

Colourful & stylish passport holder from the Wild & Wolf Keepsake Collection, illustrated on the cover with souvenirs of a visit to France: a plan of Paris & old French stamps, postmarks & coins. made from faux leather & brightly pink inside, the holder is perfect for personalizing & protecting your passport. ...

Passport holder made from recycled leather. The leather is produced from ground down leather scraps that are a by-product of leather manufacturing. It retains most of the properties of regular leather & it will maintain its beauty for many years. The passport holder features interior cotton lining in matching colour, three small slots for business or bank cards & two side pockets to hold the passport cover firmly in place. It is possible to close & secure the content of the holder thanks to a slim strap on the side. Available in different colours. ...