Strauss' Radetzky March, signature tune of one of Europe's most powerful regimes, presides over Joseph Roth's account of three generations of the Trotta family in the years preceding the Austro-Hungarian collapse in 1918. Grandfather, son & grandson are equally dependent on the empire: the first for his enoblement; the second for the civil virtues that make him a meticulous servant of an administration whose failure he can neither comprehend nor survive; the third for the family standards of conduct which he cannot attain but against which he is too enfeebled to rebel. ...

The Radetzky March is a meditation on the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the prism of three generations of the Trotta family. The novel opens in 1859 at the Battle of Solferino, when the young Lieutenant Trotta saves the life of the Emperor & is ennobled. He owes the Empire everything, & his son also becomes a conscientious servant of the great multinational state even as it enters into its period of chaos, with competing nationalisms & ideologies tearing it apart. The final generation of Trottas cannot comprehend or survive the collapse of the Empire, which no longer has any purchase on reality. Beginning at the moment when the Habsburg dominions began to crumble, & ending at the moment when the old Emperor`s body is finally entombed in the vault of Capuchins in Vienna, the narrative arc of Roth`s novel is perfectly judged. However, it is Roth`s intelligent compassion & ironic sense of history that confer on The Radetzky March its greatness. ...

`a 20th Century masterpiece`-- The Telegraph`” For sheer, epic sweep, I love reading The Radetzky March... I can`t recommend it highly enough” Jeremy Paxman Set during the doomed splendour of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, The Radetzky March tells the story of the celebrated Trotta family, tracing their rise & fall over three generations. Theirs is a sweeping history of heroism & duty, desire & compromise, tragedy & heartbreak, a story that lasts until the darkening eve of WWI, when all is set to fall apart. A rich & luminous masterpiece, moving, compassionate, witty & dramatic, The Radetzky March is one of the great reading pleasures of 20th-century literature. ...

` The importance of the brave & blighted dial-painters cannot be overstated.` Sunday Times `A perfect blend of the historical, the scientific & the personal.` Bustle ` Thrilling & carefully crafted.` Mail on Sundayâ Ordinary women in 1920s America. All they wanted was the chance to shine. Be careful what you wish for. ` The first thing we asked was, ” Does this stuff hurt you?” & they said, ” No.” The company said that it wasn`t dangerous, that we didn`t need to be afraid.` 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks & military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative & glamorous
- the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious & crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive
- their work
- was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. & so, in the face of unimaginable suffering
- in the face of death
- these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly, & instead became determined to fight for justice. Drawing on previously unpublished sources
- including diaries, letters & court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women`s relatives
- The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring Twenties, who themselves learned how to roar.






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Life with the Radleys: Radio 4, dinner parties with the Bishopthorpe neighbours & self-denial. Loads of self-denial. But all hell is about to break loose. When teenage daughter Clara gets attacked on the way home from a party, she & her brother Rowan finally discover why they can`t sleep, can`t eat a Thai salad without fear of asphyxiation & can`t go outside unless they`re smothered in Factor 50. With a visit from their lethally louche Uncle Will & an increasingly suspicious police force, life in Bishopthorpe is about to change. Drastically. ...

A dramatic & thrilling portrait of a long-forgotten true adventure & astounding seafaring achievement. In ` The Raftsmen`, author & documentary filmmaker Ryan Barnett takes readers on an astonishing maritime adventure set in the aftermath of World War II. For four French expatriates who escaped the clutches of the Nazi regime to find asylum in Canada, adventure was to be the antidote to depression brought on by the cruelty of war. In 1956, armed with nothing but the flannel on their backs, a small stock of food, & some crude navigation & communication equipment, the quartet set sail from Halifax. Their goal: become the first crew to cross the Atlantic by raft. Fashioned from telephone poles & built entirely by h&, the raft they called L` Egare II would be their home for 88 harrowing days as they crossed the North Atlantic from Canada to Britain. & they made it! In ` The Raftsmen`, Barnett & comic illustrator Dmitry Bondarenko explore the adventure-fuelled men aboard the L` Egare II, & the complex emotional undercurrents that led to their daredevil voyage. Original archival photography & film stills taken by the crew aboard the raft, along with news reports & contemporary interviews with still-living members & other key players, round out the re-telling of this amazing journey. Sixty years after they set sail, the epic story of the raftsmen`s historic Atlantic crossing is brought to life for the first time. ...

In this critically-acclaimed fictional memoir of Sir Walter Scott, Allan Massie recreates the life & times of one of Scotland`s greatest writers, convincingly capturing Scott`s humour, stoicism & eccentricity. Combining imaginative plausibility with his own deep knowledge of & love for Scott`s work, Massie reveals the intimate thoughts of a man at odds with his popular image: good & courageous, but also an enigma to thosearound him. By turns a ghost story & an examination of the Scottish character, The Ragged Lion is utterly enthralling. ...

A sustained attack on selfish capitalism, & a Socialist critique of Edwardian England`s social inequality, Robert Tressell`s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Includes:: an introduction by Tristram Hunt in Penguin Modern Classics. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists tells the story of a group of working men who are joined one day by Frank Owen, a journeyman-prophet with a vision of a just society. Indicting the `philanthropy` of the working class, who toil solely for the benefit of their masters, & initiating them into the secrets of the ` Great Money Trick` which alienates them from their labour, Owen`s spirited attacks on the greed & dishonesty of the capitalist system rouse his fellow men from their political quietism. A masterpiece of wit & political passion & one of the most authentic novels of English working class life ever written. Robert Noonan (1870-1911) who took the pseudonym ` Tressell` from the `trestle table` of the sort used by decorators, was an Irish housepainter who came to England from South Africa in 1900. He settled in Hastings, where he worked as a signwriter for various building firms. Tressell never lived to see his book in print; he died of tuberculosis in 1911, aged forty. If you enjoyed The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, you might also like Jaroslav Hasek`s The Good Soldier Svejk, available in Penguin Classics. ” Some books seem to batter their way to immortality against all odds, by sheer brute artistic strength, & high up in this curious & honourable company must be counted The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell`s unfailing humour mixes with an unfailing rage & the two together make a truly Swiftian impact.” (Evening Standard). ”A brilliant & very funny book.” (Spectator). ”[ It] has always seemed to me a wonderful book.” (George Orwell, author of Animal Farm). ” The first great English novel about the class war...witty, humourous, instinctive & full of excitement, harmony & pathos.” (Alan Sillitoe).

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Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 & 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town`s alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; & Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colourful lives offer a unique & comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, & a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tatars & Gypsies. At the heart of both the town & the novel stands the railway station
- a source of income & influence, & a connection to the greater world beyond the town. Rich & picaresque, The Railway chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.
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The railways are one of our finest engineering legacies
- a web of routes connecting people to each other & to a vast network of
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