David Brandon

Curious Walks Around London provides an informative and entertaining selection of walks around well-known and some less-visited parts of London. The guide includes Bloomsbury with its literary connections and garden squares; the historic Borough; Whitechapel and Stepney in the East End; Clerkenwell and its associations with monastic orders, prisons and radicalism; parts of the historic and ancient City of London; the stylish area of St James's and Mayfair; Fleet Street, once synonymous with the printing industry, but also with its religious and legal connections; for those who like their horrible histories the Smithfield walk includes tales of executions, hauntings, plague and debauchery; the execution route from Newgate to Tyburn better known now as the Old Bailey to Marble Arch; Bankside, once the home to theatre, bear baiting and brothels, has seen some of the most dynamic changes in London; and the sedate area of Marylebone with its famous streets and squares. The visitor will see en route many famous landmarks and there will be passing allusions to the supernatural or illegal activities and to interesting buildings. However the book concentrates on oddities, curiosities, strange stories, bizarre connections or those things to be seen in the streets which are so familiar that they are frequently overlooked. The seemingly mundane or the understated can on investigation often turn out to be as fascinating as the best-known of London's historic monuments. The book is hopefully designed for the reader to walk, look, be informed and entertained and frequently say 'I never knew that.'

Why don't people take more notice of bollards? How often do they stop to look at a coal-hole cover? Why are pub signs largely ignored and Royal Warrants on shops scarcely noticed? Such a grievous situation is about to change with the publication of this, the first book dealing specifically with London Street Furniture. It examines the unconsidered trifles which can be found in bewildering diversity around the streets particularly of the older parts of central London but also elsewhere in the Metropolis. These items help us to understand the growth of London and provide pointers and fascinating insights into its economic and social development as well as the changes in science and technology it has witnessed. Knowing something about street furniture makes a walk around London far more interesting.

This book is a unique record of a journey along the beautiful and often dramatic Yorkshire coastline, tracing the region’s diverse industry, the history of its settlements, seaside resorts and fishing quays, and reflecting upon the different uses to which man has put the resources where sea and land meet. The area’s rich variety of towns and landscape, its ancient fortifications and modern harbours are all featured, but it is above all the unusual, the hidden and the bizarre that this book reveals. Whether the scene be dramatic or everyday, whether the site be well known or unfrequented, Along the Yorkshire Coast offers a new perspective that will surprise and delight both those familiar with the area and the tourist or traveller just passing through. With a blend of photographs, fact, folklore and social history, David Brandon offers a fascinating and evocative look the county’s local history, and should capture the imagination of anyone who knows the places that are featured.

This book contains all manner of grim and ancient punishments from London’s long and bloody history. Over the centuries, many hundreds have expired inside the capital’s dank, rat-infested cells, or whilst ‘dancing the Tyburn jig’ at the end of a swinging rope, and many of the sites in this book have become bywords for infamy. From the Tower and Newgate prison to the Clink and the Fleet, this book explores London’s criminal heritage; also including the stocks and pillories that lie, almost forgotten, in churchyards and squares across the City, and the many shocking punishments exacted inside the region’s churches, workhouses and schools, it is a heart-breaking survey of our nation’s penal history. Richly illustrated, and filled with victims and villains, nobles, executioners and torturers, it will delight historians, residents and visitors alike.

London's pubs and other drinking places, just like its people, its history, traditions and institutions, are fascinating and extraordinarily diverse. This book provides a readable introduction to aspects of the role they have played in the history of the metropolis. What were the differences between taverns and alehouses? What was a 'gin palace'? Where do coffee-houses fit into London's liquid history? Have any of London's great coaching inns survived? Who was 'Polly' and why did she draw customers to 'Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese' in Fleet Street? Who was Charlie Brown of the Railway Tavern in the West India Dock Road? This wide-ranging book traces the evolution of London's drinking houses from the earliest times. It suggests that some of the best of today's hostelries have a history, atmosphere and tradition that mean that visiting them and appreciating the role they have played is essential to an understanding of London as it is today.

Why is the highwayman largely perceived as a romantic, glamorous and gallant figure? How is it that men who were really nothing more than bandits, who were often gratuitously violent, sometimes murderers and rapists as well, have become the swashbuckling heroes of history? To put their roles in context, the book probes into the economic, social and technological factors that at certain times made highway robbery highly lucrative and which help to explain why some of its exponents eventually disappeared from the scene. Finally, the legacy of the highwaymen on pub signs, in films and in fiction is discussed. Informative, stimulating and entertaining, from the pen of a true enthusiast, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the dramatic, murky underworld of history.

London owes its origins to being a suitable site for settlement close to what was then the lowest bridging point of the Thames. There have been many factors that have caused it to become such a vast, diverse and dynamic organism. Transport and the railways in particular have played a vital part in making London what it is today. This book does not pretend to be a chronological or comprehensive history of the railways of London because this has been done elsewhere. Instead this book acts as an introduction to various aspects of the impact and place of railways in the Metropolis with a particular emphasis on some of their social and economic influences.

Edinburgh is a city rightly famed world-wide. It is perhaps the only large British city which can be described as beautiful. It always seems to have been at the centre of major events, many of them turbulent. The innumerable murky legends of murder, misdemeanour and mayhem have perhaps taken root because of the topography and architecture of the Old Town with its maze of ill-lit and menacing wynds, closes and courts. Leading off the High Street and the Cowgate there are still places redolent of the atmosphere of past Edinburgh. In this simple introduction to the dark side of Edinburgh's history, the authors have brough together some well-known and other more obscure tales of dark deeds. They can reveal that it did not all take place in the Old Town.

A look at the dark side of life, Victorian-style, when nothing was quite as it seemed and a public execution could be an entertaining family day out. Murderers, poachers, thieves, pickpockets and vagabonds all went about their business with impunity. Crime took place on the streets, on public transport, in homes, pubs, prisons, asylums, workhouses and brothels - it was all part of everyday life. Naturally the punishments awarded varied considerably, depending upon the crimes committed. Murderers and thieves - particularly horse thieves - could expect the rope, though others could hope for a reprieve. Such a remission would automatically add them to list of convicts to be deported to the penal colonies in Australia. Alternatively, convicts might expect to spend time in gaol or a House of Correction, with hard labour and floggings often thrown in for good measure. This collection of real life crimes vividly recreates the events surrounding them, offering an insight not only into criminal law but also into the social history attached to crime as society evolved and adapted to meet changing industries and class structures. A must have book for any arm chair detective and anyone interested in the social mores of the day.

London's Underground is associated with a multitude of ghostly stories and sightings, particular stations and abandoned lines, many of which are in close proximity to burial sites from centuries ago. This chilling book reveals well-known and hitherto unpublished tales of spirits, spectres and other spooky occurrences on one of the oldest railway networks in the world. The stories of sightings include the ghost of an actress regularly witnessed on Aldywch Station and the 'Black Nun' at Bank Station. Eerie noises, such as the cries of thirteen-year-old Anne Naylor, who was murdered in 1758 near to the site of what is now Farringdon Station, and the screams of children who were in an accident at Bethnal Green Station during Second World War, are still heard echoing. These and many more ghostly accounts are recorded in fascinating detail in this book, which is a must-read for anyone interested in the mysterious and murky history of London's Underground.

The half-timbered buildings that cling to the steep streets and narrow lanes of the city of Lincoln groan under the weight of thousands of years of history. Atop this maze of courtyards and alleyways, nooks and crannies stands the imposing Gothic outline of the cathedral. Not surprisingly, this ancient city is rife with tales of spectral spirits and ghastly ghouls. Even the more workaday areas can boast haunted pubs, residences and mysterious goings-on in the theatre. In this book the area immediately around Lincoln itself is explored, with reports of dancing stones, roadside apparitions and omens of death in deserted churchyards. An in-depth introduction and a glossary of spooky terms is included to guide the reader on their spine-tingling journey around Lincoln. David Brandon is an expert on paranormal reports, and is the author of numerous collections of ghost stories for the History Press.

Ghosts traditionally make their presence felt in many ways, from unexplained footfalls and chills to odours and apparitions. This fascinating volume takes a look at some of the strange and unexplained hauntings across Britain's railway network: signals and messages sent from empty boxes; trains that went into tunnels and never left; ghostly passengers and spectral crew; the wires whizzing to signal the arrival of trains on lines that have been closed for years.... Based on hundreds of first-person and historical accounts, Shadows in the Steam is a unique collection of mysterious happenings, inexplicable events and spine-chilling tales, all related to the railways. Compiled by David Brandon and Alan Brooke, acknowledged experts on railways and the supernatural, and including sections on the London Underground and railway ghosts in literature and film, this book will delight lovers of railways and spooky stories alike.

London is a historical city full of mysteries and curiosities, and is home to many of England's oldest and most quirky pubs. It comes as no surprise that these pubs have a great deal more than their fair share of ghosts, phantoms and ghouls or, as the old joke goes, spirits galore! A menacing ghostly soldier lurks in Mayfair's Grenadier pub; the hooves of Dick Turpin's Black Bess can be heard galloping up to the Spaniard's Inn at Hampstead; a scary nun does the rounds at the Horns in Bermondsey; and many people have heard the voices of long-dead drinkers killed when the King's Arms in Peckham Rye was blitzed. Combining some well-known stories with others that are long-forgotten, this fascinating book delves into the rich tapestry of London's pub history, with a perfect mix of the past, folklore, popular culture and the supernatural.

A pub with a deceased barmaid who simply refuses to leave, a Grey Lady in the Theatre Royal; a poltergeist in the Garrick's Head pub; a man in a black hat at the Assembly Rooms. Bath is one of the few British cities which may justifiably be called beautiful. It is also one of the most haunted of British cities. Bath is an ancient place and, at the height of its fashionable popularity in the eighteenth century, it was almost the country's alternative capital and the scene of social intrigues and skulduggery of the sort that its ghosts seem to reflect. Even the Circus, regarded as the epitome of the classical in domestic architecture, has a ghostly young lady who sings. This book combines a love and appreciation of Bath with the recounting of tales about its best-known ghosts. David has also researched local archives to find less familiar phantoms, spooks and spectres.

This creepy collection of true-life tales takes the reader on a tour of the streets, alehouses, cemeteries and city walls of Chester the ancient city many claim is the most haunted in the North. Drawing on contemporary and historical sources, it contains many chilling accounts of spirits, spectres and poltergeists including 'Sarah', who has been known to throw people who mock her down the stairs, the strange tale of dreadful curse that struck the Great Eastern in 1859 and the ghost who booked himself a room at The Coachhouse. Containing more than sixty photographs by local photographer Ed Brandon, this book will delight anyone with an interest in the paranormal history of the area.

London: City of the Dead is a groundbreaking account of London's dealing with death, covering the afterlife, execution, bodysnatching, murder, fatal disease, spiritualism, bizarre deaths and cemeteries. Taking the reader from Roman London to the 'glorious dead' of the First World War, this is the first systematic look at London's culture of death, with analysis of its customs and superstitions, rituals and representations. The authors of the celebrated London: The Executioner's City (Sutton, 2006) weave their way through the streets of London once again, this time combining some of the capital's most curious features, such as London's Necropolis Railway and Brookwood Cemetery, with the culture of death exposed in the works of great writers such as Dickens. The book captures for the first time a side of the city that has always been every bit as fascinating and colourful as other better known aspects of the metropolis. It shows London in all its moods - serious, comic, tragic and heroic-and celebrates its robust acceptance of the only certainty in life.

Microstructural characterization is usually achieved by allowing some form of probe to interact with a carefully prepared specimen. The most commonly used probes are visible light, X-ray radiation, a high-energy electron beam, or a sharp, flexible needle. These four types of probe form the basis for optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and scanning probe microscopy. Microstructural Characterization of Materials, 2nd Edition is an introduction to the expertise involved in assessing the microstructure of engineering materials and to the experimental methods used for this purpose. Similar to the first edition, this 2nd edition explores the methodology of materials characterization under the three headings of crystal structure, microstructural morphology, and microanalysis. The principal methods of characterization, including diffraction analysis, optical microscopy, electron microscopy, and chemical microanalytical techniques are treated both qualitatively and quantitatively. An additional chapter has been added to the new edition to cover surface probe microscopy, and there are new sections on digital image recording and analysis, orientation imaging microscopy, focused ion-beam instruments, atom-probe microscopy, and 3-D image reconstruction. As well as being fully updated, this second edition also includes revised and expanded examples and exercises, with a solutions manual available at http://develop.wiley.co.uk/microstructural2e/ Microstructural Characterization of Materials, 2nd Edition will appeal to senior undergraduate and graduate students of material science, materials engineering, and materials chemistry, as well as to qualified engineers and more advanced researchers, who will find the book a useful and comprehensive general reference source.

Tyburn Fields is the best known site of execution in London, but London may be aptly named the executioner's city, so many were the places where executions could and did occur. This book reveals the capital as a place where the bodies of criminals defined the boundaries of the city and heads on poles greeted patrons on London Bridge.

We have all seen the hilarious depiction of Mrs Miggins' coffee shop in "Blackadder", but what was it really like in the first cafes, as coffee drinking became more popular? What else did the shops sell? How did coffee shop life influence politics, the media and everyday life?