Stephen Halliday
1) The Olympics
Author
Description
Who reprimanded Hitler during the 1936 Olympic Games?
When did the Olympic event "shin-kicking" get banned?
Which Shakespearean play refers to the Olympic Games?
Who was the first official cheat in 388 BC?
Find the answers to these questions and many other intriguing aspects of the Olympic Games in this absorbing collection of stories and trivia.
Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: The Olympics reveals the beguiling stories behind the well-known history...
Author
Description
London is unrivalled as a source of inspiration for writers from Geoffrey Chaucer to J.K. Rowling. From 221B Baker Street to the Old Curiosity Shop will explore the capital both from the viewpoint of the many writers who have used it as a stage for their plots and their characters; and of the readers whose imagination is fired by the knowledge that they are standing outside the home of David Copperfield on the Strand or Count Dracula's residence in...
Author
Series
Description
The English criminal justice system has come a long way since the days when noses were cut off, heretics burned at the stake and rebels were hung, drawn and quartered. Yet the Common Law, which emerged from Henry II's conflict with Thomas a Becket, survives in England (and much of the English-speaking world) and magistrates still deal with 95 per cent of crimes as they have done for at least 650 years. We no longer duck scolds and witches but we still...
Author
Description
Victorian Britain was the world's industrial powerhouse. Its factories, mills and foundries supplied a global demand for manufactured goods. As Britain changed from an agricultural to an industrial economy, people swarmed into the towns and cities where the work was; by the end of Queen Victoria's reign, almost 80 per cent of the population was urban. Overcrowding and filthy living conditions, though, were a recipe for disaster, and diseases such...
Author
Description
St. Maximus the Confessor might well be called the Saint of Synthesis. His thought places him between the theologies of East and West and between the Middle Ages and the ancient Church. The Ascetic Life takes the form of question and answer between a novice and an old monk. The Four Centuries on Charity is written in the form of gnomic literature.-print ed.
Author
Description
Why did London have to wait so long for a main line railway beneath its streets? For a few years in the mid-nineteenth century, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's broad gauge Great Western trains ran from Reading to Faringdon. Now, after many false starts, his vision is being realised as the Elizabeth Line carries passengers from Reading to the City once again and beyond Essex to Kent, using engineering that would have earned the admiration of the greatest...
Author
Description
London's Underground is one of the best-known and most distinctive aspects of the city. Since Victorian times, this remarkable feat of engineering has made an extraordinary contribution to the economy of the capital and played a vital role in the daily life of generations of Londoners.
Stephen Halliday's informative, entertaining, wide-ranging history of the Underground celebrates the vision and determination of the Victorian Pioneers who conceived...