Mike Brown

During the last days of peace in 1939 nearly two million people, most of them children, were evacuated from British cities, towns and ports to the countryside, or across the Atlantic to the USA and Canada. Whole schools were evacuated together and found themselves billeted in large country houses. Others were sent off individually or in small groups to whoever had space to accommodate them. It was a time of great upheaval and the transition from city life to countryside, or from one region to another, often proving extremely stressful. This is a concise history of British evacuation during the Second World War, including the unimaginable upheaval suffered by the inhabitants of the Channel Islands and Gibraltar, who were evacuated to mainland Britain. Beginning with the uncertainty of the Phoney War and the making of plans, this highly illustrated book looks at the experience of evacuation up to the homecomings of 1945 and the aftermath.

Growing up as a child in the Second World War could be a frightening or an exciting experience. Depending on the age of the child, the experience of war might be strange and scary, or all he or she had ever known. For many city children the war brought evacuation to the countryside and a way of life very different from the one they enjoyed in the city. For children who remained in areas that suffered from the attention of German bombers, escape to the Morrison or Anderson shelter, and the donning of a 'Mickey Mouse' gas mask, became part of life. War brought new excitement for boys who could now add parts of downed German aircraft, or parts of bombs, to their collections of conkers and string. For many girls the war brought greater responsibility, as their fathers went off to fight. This book recounts the British child's experience of the War with photographs, objects and ephemera. A feast of nostalgia, this book will appeal strongly to anyone who grew up during the war, and it will give younger people a fascinating insight into the childhood of their parents or grandparents.

This enjoyable, engagingly readable book provides a detailed roadmap for rebuilding and restoring unit-construction Triumph and BSA twins without having to mortgage your house. The book is organised just as you would a rebuilding project, starting with selecting a bike to work on and finishing with bringing all the pieces together to ride. It contains the practical, down-to-earth information you wish the factory manuals had, but dont. Brown passes along the tips, shortcuts, and money-saving advice he has acquired over a span of 20 years working with British motorcycles. As an amateur builder himself, he understands that you may not have the expensive tools and equipment found in professional shops. Yet, Brown offers practical, clever ways to get the job done without spending a fortune. Every aspect of refurbishing unit-construction British twins is covered: engine work, transmissions, frame repairs, shocks and forks, brakes, tanks, and those pesky Amal carbs and Lucas electrical systems. The book also helps you choose a bike to buy, including how to spot bogus serial numbers and avoid stolen goods. The chapter on selecting a bike can itself save the cost of this book many times over. In addition, Brown offers many time-saving and money-saving suggestions that can save you lots of money without sacrificing quality. Whether you want to build a concurs quality restoration or simply put a good-looking, reliable British bike on the road, you will find plenty of helpful information in this book, much of which is not found in any other book or manual on British bikes. Best of all, the author applies his masters degree in education and his broad experience turning wrenches to provide entertaining and easily understandable instructions.

This is a book sure to delight designers, social historians and anyone with an interest in this style-defining decade. "The 1950s Look: Recreating the Fashions of the Fifties" takes the reader on a tour of the trends and signature styles of the era - from Audrey Hepburn chic to high school prom queen. Moving forward a decade from his successful book "The 1940s Look", Mike Brown deconstructs the key elements of iconic 50s fashions, as well as shedding light on the origins of many items of clothing now taken for granted on today's high street. Over 144 pages, with more than 300 full colour photographs and pictures, readers can learn about the new synthetic wonder fabrics, the Trapeze dress and the Teddy Boys' quiff, pedal pushers and drain pipe trousers. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously summed up the mood of the fifties when he told the country: 'you've never had it so good'. Cinched waists and full, layered skirts celebrated femininity and the availability of luxurious fabrics after the restrictions of the previous decade. The success of fashion houses such as Dior signalled the rise of chic Italian and French styling, and this was the decade that denim jeans arrived in the UK from the USA. An eclectic British style began to emerge from these influences, and with it a whole new breed - the teenager. Author Mike Brown says: 'The 1950s was a decade of decadence - a rebellion against wartime restrictions and rationing. As people turned their backs on the privations of the drab war years, exciting new fashions and daring styles from overseas found a place in British homes. In the decade of the Coronation, the conquest of Everest and the Festival of Britain, the second Elizabethan age had arrived, and with it came optimism for a bright future'. Meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated, this retrospective is essential reading for anyone interested in social history, fifties design, and those that look back fondly at the 1950s. Chapters of this title include: formal and informal fashions; couture house to homemade; hairstyles and make-up; the figure; and, accessories.

As the last days of peace ebbed away in 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War appeared inevitable, a massive exodus took place in Britain: nearly two million civilians, most of them children, were taken from the cities, industrial towns and ports to the relative safety of the British countryside. For many of these bewildered children this was the first time away from their families or even their own home town. But for overseas British nationals evacuacted to the mother country from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar, the shock of the upheaval was great indeed. Carrying pitifully few belongings, they had no idea where they were being sent - for many it was the beginning of a great adventure, for some a nightmare. Mike Brown combines factual narrative with contemporary eyewitness accounts and oral history extracts to investigate the phenomenon of evacuation in Britain during the Second World War. Illustrated with a variety of contemporary photographs and ephemera, Evacuees provides a fascinating, amusing and sometimes disturbing glimpse of how children and adults coped with the trials and tribulations of evacuation. It will appeal to anyone who is interested in reading about life on the Home Front during the Second World War, and especially to anyone who was an evacuee.

What was it like to live in Britain during the Second World War? What kind of house did the average family live in? How did people cope with the ever-present threat of air-raids, not to mention the hardship of food and clothes rationing? How was a typical suburban home built? What were the choices open to householders when it came to interior decoration and furnishing? How did the war affect the domestic routines of an average household? The demands of a nation at war had many other far-reaching effects on the average home. How did women cope with bringing up a family single-handedly after their husbands were conscripted for military service? How did they use the rations and keep up their families spirits? What was it like to 'Make do and Mend' or 'Dig for Victory', or to sleep in an Anderson shelter? By looking at the lives of ordinary people who inhabited the semi-detached world of suburbia, Mike Brown and Carol Harris have painted a vivid picture of daily life on the Home Front in wartime Britain.

Internet and web technology penetrates many aspects of our daily life. Its importance as a medium for business transactions will grow exponentially during the next few years. In terms of the involved market volume, the B2B area will hereby be the most interesting area. Also, it will be the place, where the new technology will lead to drastic changes in established customer relationships and business models. In an era where open and flexible electronic commerce provides new types of services to its users, simple 1-1 connections will be replaced by n-m relationships between customers and vendors. This new flexibility in electronic trading will generate serious challenges. The main problem stems from the heterogeneity of information descriptions used by vendors and customers, creating problems in both manual trading and in direct 1-1 electronic trading. In the case of B2B market places, it becomes too serious to be neglected. Product descriptions, catalog formats and business documents are often unstructured and non-standardized. Intelligent solutions that mechanize the structuring, standardizing, aligning, and personalizing process are a key requisite for successfully overcoming the current bottlenecks of B2B electronic commerce while enabling its further growth. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce discusses the main problems of information integration in this area and sketches several technological solution paths. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce is designed to meet the needs of a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry and graduate level students in Computer Science.

Mike Brown's fully illustrated narrative captures what life was really like for children in Britain during the Second World War.