The house was built in the Old Queen's time for an Elizabethan pirate who was knighted for the plunder he brought home. It survived many eras and many reigns - it saw the passing of Cromwell and the Civil War. It was rescued by an illiterate woman farmer, became rich with an Indian Nabob and poor with a twentieth century hotelier. Children, both heirs and bastards, were born there. It had ghosts, legends and a history that grew stranger with every generation. Never be put off by the covers of any book by Norah Lofts. She always told a wonderful story, no matter what time period she chose to set her tales. Cover art by J.A. Greenberg.
- Sorry, this product is unavailable.
-
-
What's in a name? Well, plenty, according to this interesting little booklet. The word 'dunce' meaning slow-witted or dull is from the name Duns Scotus, a brilliant medieval teacher; Dick Whittington, mayor of London, did exist but is not the legendary poor boy with a pet cat seeking his fortune; Robert Louis Stevenson's infamous character Dr. Jekyll was based on a real man; Old 'Uncle Tom Cobbleigh' was a hotblooded and amorous red-headed man; Lady Godiva did get her gear off as a result of a bet with her husband - and Mother Goose did write a swag of nursery rhymes! Loads of interest in a small package. -
A pictorial history of Australia by Charles Henry Kerry (1858-1928). Kerry was a surveyor but changed to photography in 1875 and by using dry plate photography (a new process then) he was able to delay processing his negatives. Until dry plate photography, negatives had to be processed immediately. This new method gave Kerry more time to do more scenic views. This volume is a revisit to many of Kerry's locations - tourist attractions, farms, events and occupations such as cattle farming and tree felling showing how much has changed and how much has NOT changed. A fabulous collection of black and white and colour archival photographs with interviews and articles. -
As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of a house. A founding text of Victorian middle-class identity, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management is today one of the great unread classics. Mrs Beeton was only 22 when she compiled this thorough and authoritative volume, written in response to the lack of such books for the newly married housewife of 1860 - and who might not have the good fortune of a parent or guardian to guide her through the initial lessons of marriage, housekeeping, cookery and the myriad necessary knowledge of the day. Over a thousand pages long, it offered advice on subjects as diverse as fashion, child-care, animal husbandry, poisons and the management of servants. There's no stuffy moralising here; it's a mix of domestic advice with discussions of science, religion, class, industrialism and gender roles as well as ranging widely across the foods of Europe and beyond, actively embracing new food stuffs and techniques. Alternately fashionable and frugal, anxious and blusteringly self-confident, Household Management highlights the concerns of the ever-expanding Victorian middle-class at a key moment in its history. -
Imagine - you have just finished building your dream home, it has two bedrooms and has been designed just for you. You've endured the traumas of tradesmen who you've had to cajole, bribe and beg in order to get your home finished. The next thing that happens is that you are suddenly married, and five of your husband's children, two grandchildren, a step-son-in-law and an assortment of animals are living with you. At the end of the year, your cosy two-bedroom dream home has become a six-room mansion. This is Patsy's entertaining story - all the comical incidents, tradesmen trials, nosy neighbours and extended-family dilemmas from her first year of marriage to Bill, a psychiatrist. Patsy Rowe combined being a best-selling author with coaching in business etiquette, conducting fun nationwide seminars. She passed away in 2016. -
A softcover book of black and white photographs in the Katoomba-Leura area, circa 1930s. Locations include views of Megalong Valley; Leura Cascades; Bridal Veil and Weeping Rock; Narrow Neck Peninsula; Katoomba Falls; The Three Sisters; Pantom Falls; Echo Point; Federal Pass and more. There is also a photo credited to Mr H. Phillips, taken in 1909 and which earned the title 'War Clouds' for its astonishing imagery. -
A collection of not-so-tall stories collected in the course of eighteen years in the rugged outback of the Northern Territory, where distances are measured in pints of water and time is hardly noticed. There's gold diggers, old men some of them, still fishing for their buckets of ore at the bottom of deep shafts; you should never to go see them without a 'calling card' - they come in bottles from the brewery. There are also the stock drovers, whose job it is to drive thousands of cattle across the country for up to a thousand miles or so. These and many various characters, white men, aboriginals, and half castes are the author's neighbours. But even such a bare and primitive area is not immune from the troubles of the world, and, just after Pearl Harbour in 1942, the Japanese brought the war to Darwin. Lockwood was there to write an eye-witness account for his paper. Then in 1954, came the world shaking bombshell of the Petrov story. Once again, the author was on the spot, in Darwin, to broadcast it to the world. These, and many other stories, some historical, some tragic, some amusing, some supernatural, but all of them fascinating - and fair dinkum. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
Dick Denver, a fifteen year old lad has just learnt from a friend that his father, a sailor, has died. Dick cannot bring himself to open the letter that accompanies this news - then there is a knock on the door and an unsavoury character, another mariner, barges in, insisting on seizing the letter. Dick escapes downstairs and bumps into Biggles, Algy and Ginger, who decide to help eject the intruder and retrieve Dick's letter - which contains a gold doubloon and the location of where more could be found. Biggles and Co. do not hesitate to go on a treasure hunt to the Caribbean, but none of them know that the doubloon carries an ancient curse. -
The building of a road to link the Sudan with Southern Transjordania, part of which crosses the Sinai Peninsula, is being sabotaged. The local natives are being supplied with weapons and ammunition to stop construction and Cedric Collington of the Foreign Office wants help in finding out who the smugglers are and how the guns are getting into the country. Air Commodore Raymond sends Worrals and Frecks to Alexandria to investigate. Drug smugglers, shady gun and ammunition deals, mysterious strangers and desert sheiks all play their roles in the adventures of the two heroines. -
Humour can arise at the oddest moments during the grimmest moments of Court trials. This is a miscellany of stories from the Courts and those who practice in them. The anecdotes which are all based on truth, have been oft-repeated in legal circles but this is the first time they have been published for all to enjoy. Legendary men of law - such as Clive Evatt Q.C. and Frank Galbally - make their appearance together with the paralysed (?) victim of a road accident, who was going to spend his insurance cheque on a trip to Lourdes and experience a 'miracle healing'; the illiterate forger who was sentenced to seven years prison; and the baffling case of the disappearance of 129 lawn mowers from a locked warehouse. Illustrated by Vane Lindesay. -
There was a person sitting on the kitchen table - a person about eighteen inches tall - looking for all the world like a large, fat cucumber. And it was talking...Perhaps there's nothing unusual about a cucumber. But a cucumber that talks, that suddenly appears in the kitchen and starts throwing its weight around (about being a KING cucumber)...Then to discover it's planning revenge on rebellious cucumber subjects (living in OUR basement...) and it expects us to lend a hand in the massacre...It's enough to disrupt any family. And especially ours! A children's book? Maybe - but have a look and seeing what the grown-ups on Goodreads remember about it! Translated by Anthea Bell. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252879.The_Cucumber_King?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=lB0Ziy5MGJ&rank=1 -
Subtitle: A dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet! Such as... Clabby (adj.): A conversation struck up by a cleaning lady or commissionaire in order to avoid further work. The opening gambit is meant to provoke the maximum confusion and the longest clabby conversation. Or...Lowther (vb) To stand aimlessly about on the footpath after coming out of the cinema and argue about whether to go and eat a Chinese meal nearby or an Indian meal at a restaurant which someone says is very good but isn't certain where it is or just go home; or to have the Chinese meal nearby - by the time agreement is reached everything is shut. And many more definitions which are equally hilarious in true Adams fashion. Illustrated by Bert Kitchen. -
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'. -
The sequel to The L-Shaped Room. Jane has had her baby and is living alone with him in the country cottage she inherited from her late, non-conformist Aunt Addy. Her idyllic time there is soon complicated by the arrival of Toby, the love of her life, and her friend Dorothy. The two women start up a shop in the village, and it is their changing fortunes and feelings for the men on whom so much of their lives are staked which form the core of this novel. Readers new to this author will find it dated - The L-Shaped Room was written and set in the early 60s, when cultural and societal beliefs about many things, including single mothers, were vastly different. But kept in context, both books, together with the third, Two Is Lonely, can form a very interesting and educational trio of life in the 60s. -
The sequel to Abbie. The further outrageous, funny and entirely credible adventures of Lady Abbott-Acland (and her best friend Maud) - the prototype of all impossible female relations. Abbie can cause a peculiar gut-guilt reaction; since most of us have done - or wish we'd done - some of the appallingly brazen things that she gets away with! And she is still observed with clear-sighted affection by her long-suffering nephew, and revealed through her copious letters from unlikely addresses and erroneous headings. -
Mr Gerald Hardcastle - successful, middle-aged banker and pillar of society - had discovered his wife's supply of birth control pills, even though their relationship has been platonic for fifteen years. So naturally, he switches the pills for aspirin tablets and waits to see what happens next...and what happens next is they find that their sixteen year old and sexually active daughter Geraldine has been swapping what she thought were contraceptive pills for aspirins...Illustrated by Peter Edwards. -
Jerusha Abbott is the oldest orphan in the John Grier Home. When her future is discussed, one of the Trustees offers to finance her through college so that she can become a writer. The conditions: she must write to him once a month and tell him of her progress and she can only know him as Mr John Smith as he wishes his identity to remain a secret. Jerusha - now called Judy - names him Daddy-Long-Legs because her single glimpse of his shadow reminds her of a spider. Here are Judy's college days letters to 'Daddy-Long-Legs.' Cover art from a photograph by Houston Rogers showing actress Jean Carson as Judy in the play Love from Judy based on the book. -
The word freak can easily conjure up the image of a squalid Victorian side show exhibit; yet behind the peep-show curtains, the medical textbooks and screaming headlines, these are people who were thrust into a prying, probing limelight because they were different. In this volume: John Merrick, the Elephant Man; Tony Albarran, the Elephant Boy; Maurice Tillet; David Lopez, the 'Devil Boy'; Alice, The Faceless Child; Helen Keller, who possessed the ability of 'eyeless sight'; Matthew Manning, who progressed from bending cutlery and automatic writing to psychic healing; Greta and Freda Chaplin, who spent 20 years in pursuit of the love of a lorry driver; Louise, the Four Legged Woman; Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, who married and lived with their husbands successfully, as well as featuring in Tod Browning's famous film Freaks; Norman Green, the Human Mole who lived beneath his family's home for eight years unbeknownst to all except his wife; wild children and many more. Black and white photographs. -
Covers a wide selection of well-known and lesser-known mysteries: The Moving Coffins of Barbados; The Bermuda Triangle; The Disappearance of Agatha Christie; The Devil's Footprints; Was Dillinger Shot? The Mystery of Eilean Mor (The Island Of Disappearing Men); Joan of Arc - Did She Return From The Dead? The Loch Ness Monster; The Mystery of the Mary Celeste; Where Is Mona Lisa? Orffyreus and the Perpetual Motion Machine; Psychometry - A Telescope Into The Past; Did Robin Hood Really Exist? Synchronicity or Mere Coincidence? Spontaneous Human Combustion; The Great Tunguska Explosion; Velikovsky's Comet; The Most Mysterious Manuscript In The World - The Voynich Manuscript; Crop Circles - Whirlwinds, UFO's or Hoaxers? -
Volcano: Cecil Roberts
$8.00A 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. -
Pancho Villa: Jean Rouverol
$40.00Pancho Villa lived in violent, brutal times and the necessities of those times made him a violent, brutal man. He was a revolutionary, who fought for his country and his people through ten years of civil war. He was born in 1878, a time when the land owners and the Church grew fat by stealing land from the peasants and exploiting their labour. Villa saw his fellow revolutionaries Madero and Carranza turn into greedy politicians upon gaining office, forgetting their promises to their loyal followers. He helped create a revolution; yet tragically, he could not help solve it. -
A thrilling story of a strange caravan - a group of British colonists in the Raj travel in a wheeled house pulled by a steam-powered mechanical elephant in 1867 - that penetrates the Terai, the immense forest that stretches across India at the foot of the mighty Himalayas. In this forest wild men, wilder beasts and even more adventures are encountered in the aftermath of the Sepoy rebellion. -
A humorous domestic comedy that is not about normal life - not when Jean's husband is a famous drama critic; they have four children who behave infamously; a dog called Kelly and they live in a turreted mansion with a 32-bell carillon that plays the duet from Carmen daily at noon. Here's plenty of slapstick about dieting, decorating and parental rights ("There's four of them and only two of us, but we're bigger and it's OUR house!") as well as hilarious observations about the world of theatre. This was also made into a film starring Doris Day. -
Good Intentions: Ogden Nash
$15.00Nash can't resist a good sly poke at society, pretensions, the battle of the sexes and so much more in this outing of verses, including the Axis powers of World War II - and how not to annoy them! Some of the verse titles...Now Tell Me About Yourself; Pay To The Collector of Internal Revenue; I'll Stay out Of Your Diet If You'll Stay Out Of Mine; I'll Write Their Number Down When We Get Home... From Drive Slow, Man Chortling...Gangway, everybody hold your hats,
Curb your dogs and leash your cats,
Embrace your young in parental clasp,
Breathe in deep and prepare to gasp!
Feel your pulse go rapid and joggly,
Open your eyes and goggle agogly,
Hitch your wonderment to a star -
Here comes me in a brand new car!
-
Nash has more sly and wry observations, this time on the nuclear family. Chapters include: Man Is The Father of the Child - But He Never Quite Gets Used To It; Daddy, I Want A Pet Of My Own, I Promise To Take Care Of It and Around The House or What Parents Think About When They Aren't Thinking About Their Children. The following is a sample of the poem, Children's Party - and no doubt many fathers can relate to Mr Nash's observations...May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party’s over.
Since three o’clock I’ve done my best
To entertain each tiny guest.
My conscience now I’ve left behind me,
And if the want me let them find me…
Of similarities there’s lots,
’Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I’ve earned repose to heal the ravages
of these angelic-looking savages...
-
Nash observes the world around him and cannot resist making humorous, sly and very on-the-mark rhymes while often poking fun at society pretensions. There's even a few fractured fables and fairy tales in this collection. So, just for fun...I often grieve for Uncle Hannibal
Who inadvertently became a cannibal.
He asked Aunt Mary to roast him the gobbler;
She understood him to say - the cobbler.
-
A dashing tale of Prince Charles Edward, the Pretender when he returns to France weary and heartbroken after the failure of '45. He is frustrated at every turn, invoved with love and intrigues and forced to wander through Europe on the hopeless quest for help to begin a new rising in order to regain his throne. This was Boileau's final book; she died before completing it and it was subsequently finished by Baxter Ellis.
