Antiquities & Oddities

//Antiquities & Oddities
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  • Book 3 of the Stories From History series. Contains William Of Normandy; Hereward The Wake; The Bridal Of Norwich; In The New Forest; Emperor And Pope; The Adventures Of Robert Guiscard; The First Crusade; Richard The Lionheart; More Adventures Of King Richard; Marco Polo; St. Thomas Of Canterbury; The Abbot Of Bury St. Edmonds; St. Francis; The Coming Of The Friars; On Pilgrimage; King John And The Barons; The Builder; The Prince Of Wales; Robert Bruce; William Tell; Merchants And Pirates; Six Brave Men; The Manor of Oakthorpe; Dick Whittington; Five Hundred Years Ago; For St. George And England; Saint Joan; Prince Henry Of Portugal; Moors And Christians; The Tale Of An Old Book.  Handsomely illustrated with black and white plates and engravings.
  • From the Great Fire of 1666 to the Blitz of the Second World War, from the building of the Tower of London to the building of Canary Wharf, London has always been much more than just a capital city. It's an eclectic, teeming, vital town which prompted Samuel Johnson to declare: 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' There's the seedy rather than the smart, the outcast rather than the established and the bizarre rather than the beautiful.  Contributors include G.K. Chesterton, Daniel Defoe, Hilaire Belloc, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Michael Moorcock, Samuel Pepys, Edith Sitwell, H.G. Wells and many more.  A view of London that spans the centuries, with such intriguing chapter titles as The Face On Waterloo Steps; London Molehills; Mobs, Marches, Riots and Affrays; Clubs, Taverns and Coffee Houses and 'When A Man Is Tired Of London'.
  • Published in 1940, Daphne du Maurier turned from fiction to write the true stories of everyday English people who, while following the common round of their daily lives, have given their best to their country and done deeds of gallantry in their respective spheres in a time of war. The mother who triumphed over bereavement, the London grocer who settled labor disputes at the pithead - all were able to turn the difficulties of war time into opportunities to spread a spirit of victory on the Home Front.
  • A series of strange events in and around a group of volcanic islands in the Augean with associated happenings in London. On a bright morning,  Ian Caudray, a young devotee of archaeology and of the classics swims from a yacht to one of the islands which he believes is uninhabited.  When a beautiful girl appears he thinks of her as Nausicaa with himself as Odysseus- but she makes it clear she doesn't share his fantasy and wants him gone! Discouraged, he returns to the yacht for breakfast and a light-hearted inquisition from his family - but it's not long before the beautiful lady's secrets come out.
  • First published in 1948, this book caused a sensation.  Waugh, on a visit to California, was fascinated by the elaborate graveyards, pet cemeteries and overblown rituals of death. It inspired him to write this witty 'tragedy' of Anglo-American manners set against the background of embalming rooms and incinerators.
  • Hilarious. Incredible. Bizarre. Witty. Deliciously malicious! Where There's a Will is an absorbing collection of odd and curious wills from many countries and many times. Vindictive wills, revealing wills, wills written on nurses' petticoats, eggshells, tractor fenders and wills found in a bottle at sea included in the book reflect the full range of man's virtues and vices. The colorful individuals whose Last Will and Testament grace the pages of this book give more than their money away - they give themselves away. They use their wills to get back at obnoxious relatives, to maintain control beyond the grave, to reward, to punish, to defy those who say you can't take it with you. And to have the last word. Among the famous and the infamous whose wills are featured are: George Bernard Shaw, W.C. Fields, Patrick Henry, Janis Joplin, Napoleon, Jack Kelly, Howard Hughes, William Shakespeare, Ian Fleming, Billy Rose, Picasso, Marilyn Monroe, Aristotle Onassis. . . and many more.
  • The hilarious story of how Graham 'Screw' Turner established a bus touring company using old converted double-decker buses. From humble beginnings in London 1973, Screw, together with a crew of colonial larrikins, builds up a fleet of 100 deckers. Screw, Spy, Bill Speaking, Wombat. Filthy, Grilly, Budgie, the mysterious Graham James Lloyd and other incorrigible crew members lead their unsuspecting punters on riotous escapades to the far flung, exotic corners of the world. Today, Graham 'Screw' Turner is one of Australia's wealthiest men and is the CEO of Flight Centre, which he began in the 1980s.  With caricatures by Bill Leak and cartoons by Warren Brown. Illustrated with black and white photographs and newspaper clippings.
  • Obadiah and Elizabeth ‘flabbergasted frightfully’ when they heard their three children, Daniel, Walter and Sarah, were considering leaving England and joining the goldrush to the Antipodes - the Australian Goldfields. The children expected to find gold and to make ‘their everlasting fortune.’ Their parents could only see the terrible dangers involved in what they considered ‘a foolhardy adventure.’  Obadiah and Elizabeth concluded a warning letter they wrote to Walter, Daniel and Sarah with this desperate plea: PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT GO TO THE GOLDFIELDS.  This is an entertaining look at life on the goldfields in the 1850s from the journey from 'Home' to the Antipodes; the scenes of drunkneness and brawling that greeted the shocked Britishers;  the intriguing crimes of interfering with your own clock, severing a clothesline, kite flying and why they were deemed to be criminal; the women of the goldfields and what life was like for children and school students. For teenage readers and upwards. Illustrated  by Carson Ellis.
  • If you want Irish oatmeal bread, Italian bread sticks, French or Alsatian sourdough bread, Jewish honey cakes, Swedish limpa, German buttermilk rye or the more exotic German farmer's herb-parmesan bread, you'll find it all here - and much, much more. John Braué has lovingly collected priceless recipes which have been handed down family to family, baker to baker, friend to friend, for generations.  But this book is more than that; it's also an entertaining primer of fascinating bread lore covering the different properties of flours, the vast differences in recipe results due to climate, altitude and ovens; and the little known techniques of baking perfection. Tucked between the recipes are dozens of wise hints on the good life, good baking, good humor - and good eating.