Other books that might interest you

• 

  James Connolly A Full Life - A...

  Donal Nevin

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  'Hasn't it been a full life, Lillie, and isn't this a good end?', were James Connolly's last words to his wife in Dublin Castle in the early hours of 12 May 1916 just before his execution for his part in leading the Easter Rising.
  
  James Connolly, the son of Irish immigrants, was born in Edinburgh. The first fourteen years of his life were spent in Edinburgh and the next seven years in the King's Liverpool Regiment in Ireland. In 1889, he returned to Edinburgh where he was a socialist activist and organiser for seven years. In 1896, at the age of 28, he was invited to Dublin as socialist organiser, founding the Irish Republican Socialist Party and editing The Workers' Republic.
  
  Connolly spent seven years in America between 1903 and 1910, returning to Ireland in 1910 as organiser of the Socialist Party of Ireland. Connolly was appointed Ulster Organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union by James Larkin, succeeding him as acting general secretary in October 1914. As Commander of the Irish Citizen Army, Connolly joined with leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the Easter Rising in 1916, becoming Commandant-General of the Dublin Division of the Army of the Republic and Vice-President of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic.
  
  For their part in the Easter Rising, Connolly and thirteen of his fellow revolutionaries were executed in Kilmainham Gaol by the British government. Connolly, the last to be executed, was wounded in the Rising and had to be strapped to a chair to face the firing squad.
  
  This biography deals with Connolly's activities as soldier, agitator, propagandist, orator, socialist organiser, pamphleteer, trade union leader, insurgent, and traces the evolution of his political thinking as social democrat, revolutionist, syndicalist, revolutionary socialist, insurrectionist. It is based largely on Connolly's prolific writings in twenty-seven journals in Scotland, England, Ireland, France and America, and some 200 letters which are particularly revealing of his relationships with colleagues. James Connolly is the very best survey of Connolly's remarkable life and times.
  James Connolly, A Full Life: Table of Contents
  Preface by Des Geraghty
  
  - PART I Edinburgh 1868–1882
  - PART II Ireland 1882–1889
  - PART III Edinburgh 1889–1896: Social Democrat
  - PART IV Dublin 1890–1903: Revolutionist
  - PART V America 1903–1910: Syndicalist
  - PART VI Writings
  - PART VII Ireland 1910–1916 The Red and the Green: Revolutionary Socialist–Insurrectionist
  - PART VIII Revolutionary Thinker
  - APPENDICES

  Show book

• 

  My Year Off

  Robert McCrum

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Introduction Copyright 2015 Henry Marsh, Afterword Copyright 2015 Robert McCrumRobert McCrum was forty-two when he suffered a massive stroke which left one side of his body paralysed, his speech drastically impaired and his sense of himself radically altered. My Year Off traces McCrum's gruelling recovery as he regains sensation and begins to come to terms, with the help of his family, with what can and cannot be recovered after a grave injury. It is a moving remonstrance against human frailty, and a vital and insightful exploration of hope, despair, determination and, ultimately, of love.

  Show book

• 

  The Precipice

  Elia Wilkinson Peattie

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Elia Peattie was an outspoken journalist and social activist who gave her attention to such areas as orphanages, charity hospitals, the Wounded Knee massacre, capital punishment, and the like. The Precipice is partially based on the life of her close friend Katherine Ostrander, a social work pioneer, and tells of the evolution of Kate Barrington after her college years and with it the evolution of society as a whole and women in particular in pre-World War I America. Friendship, romance, betrayal, searchings of the soul, dreams, and shattered hopes -- all the stuff of life -- bring Kate to full realization of her true self. (Introduction by Mary Schneider)

  Show book

• 

  Medical Downfall of the Tudors -...

  Sylvia Barbara Soberton

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The Tudor dynasty died out because there was no heir of Elizabeth I's body to succeed her. Henry VIII, despite his six marriages, had produced no legitimate son who would live into old age. Three of the reigning Tudors (Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I) died without heirs apparent, the most tragic case being that of Mary Tudor, who went through two recorded cases of phantom pregnancy. If it were not for physical frailty and the lack of reproductive health among the Tudors, the course of history might have been different.This book concentrates on the medical downfall of the Tudors, examining their gynecological history and medical records.● Did you know that an archival source suggests that Henry VIII may have suffered from venereal disease or a urinary tract infection?● It is generally assumed that Katharine of Aragon went through menopause by 1524, but primary sources tell a different tale.● Did you know that Jane Seymour's coronation in 1537 was postponed and later cancelled because of the plague? She was originally to be crowned on 29 September 1536.

  Show book

• 

  The Peanut Factory

  Deborah Price

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A coming-of-age memoir about a young woman and her friends squatting in abandoned houses in London in the late 70s during the emerging counterculture scene.
  Set in South London (Crystal Palace), Deborah mingled with some of the biggest names to emerge from the scene. She booked The Damned's first show, served pints to Johnny Rotten, and attended a backyard gig from King Kurt.
  Squat life was sex, drugs and punk rock but it wasn't all fun and games. The Peanut Factory shows Deborah navigating a male-dominated scene, moving every few months and living with drug dealers, sex workers, people on the run, and working-class kids like her.
  Despite the chaos, the squatters were a family. They were kids creating their own rules. Making art. Living life on the fly. The Peanut Factory is an ode to the youthful rebellion of the 1970s and to London itself.
  'A window into a time of raw energy and rough edges, Deb Price paints a vivid picture of life in the squats of South London. By turns amusing and alarming, but always engaging, we accompany a teenager as she navigates her way to womanhood in a sub-culture on the margins.' - Allie Rogers, author of Little Gold and Tale of a Tooth

  Show book

• 

  The Marriage Bureau - The True...

  Penrose Halson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A riveting glimpse of life and love during and after World War II—a heart-warming, touching, and thoroughly absorbing true story of a world gone by.In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined twenty-four-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. They found a tiny office on London’s Bond Street and set about the delicate business of matchmaking. Drawing on the bureau’s extensive archives, Penrose Halson—who many years later found herself the proprietor of the bureau—tells their story, and those of their clients. From shop girls to debutantes; widowers to war veterans, clients came in search of security, social acceptance, or simply love. And thanks to the meticulous organization and astute intuition of the Bureau’s matchmakers, most found what they were looking for. Penrose Halson draws from newspaper and magazine articles, advertisements, and interviews with the proprietors themselves to bring the romance and heartbreak of matchmaking during wartime to vivid, often hilarious, life in this unforgettable story of a most unusual business.“A book full of charm and hilarity.”—Country Life

  Show book