This book is a collection of urban research and architectural projects by award-winning architects Nigel Bertram / NMBW Architecture Studio, using observation as a design tool and design as an observational method. Through this process, a position on the making of architecture and on the role of architecture within the wider urban environment is established; embracing the full messy reality of the present, finding delight in the everyday and developing sensitivity to a range of found environments. By taking pre-existing conditions seriously, each project, architectural or analytical, large or small, becomes understood as the strategic renovation of a continuing state.
This study of Tokyo by students from the RMIT school of architecture in Melbourne 'is concerned with the atypical, investigating unforeseen interstices and interesting gaps...the contingent, the makeshift, and the temporary get recorded'. Similar to PET ARCHITECTURE GUIDEBOOK
Architecture certainly creates separations. Is it also thereby concerned with an act of division? This research presupposes the latter as an elementary condition. This book addresses the gap between social histories and heritage style-guides for those wanting to know about the buildings on their own doorstep.
Worldwide, more and more people are living in cities, with suburbs conceived as appendages to the city, rather than being part of the city system, which is densely populated and offers a full range of services. But suburbs are not the city spread too thin, and in fact hold potential for a lived complexity as satisfying as that assumed to be available in inner cities. Just as the ecological function of wetlands was ignored by modernist planning, and swamps once-drained are now recognised as vital to water cycles, suburbs are increasingly recognised as part of a city’s wellbeing with their own alternative ideology and opportunities for urbanity and ecological sustainability. Suburbia Reimagined shows how such subdivision structures can offer new possibilities for sustainably integrating living between generations and between established and arriving migrant communities. The authors worked locally and internationally with university campuses, shopping centres, hospitals, airports, and other large entities spread through suburbia, to identify a broad range of suburban situations that have been modified to ensure that residents have a full access to amenities and services. The book addresses the history and design of suburbia, from the post-war soldier settlements of the 40s and 50s to the university hinterlands of Silicon Valley in order to reappraise the locked potential within such subdivision patterns. The authors propose a new model forward, examining case studies ranging from repurposed malls and railways for ecological sustainability to cul-de-sacs as social units and post-industrial factory conversions, ultimately showing the nascent patterns in suburbia that have the potential to support a rich life for all age groups.
A series of small objects made from thin slices of timber is presented with an unusual degree of precision. In this study of theme and variation our attention is drawn to slight shifts in emphasis and technique, within an overall formal repetition. The work reads at one level as a self-referential set, complete, but it is also fragmentary - each piece a snapshot of a continuous thought process around the making of something else. The models are a methodical study of alterations made to an existing site, and a method of communicating this process with a client. Put together as a whole, the sequence also presents an argument for an approach to architecture and a way of building.
A comprehensive guide to P. G. Wodehouse's two best-loved comic characters, Bertram Wilbeforce Wooster and his valet ('Reggie') Jeeves, Bertie's friends and relatives and their world of sunshine, country houses and champagne. Although the stories may seem quintessentially English, they were for the most part written in the United States by a man who spent more than half his adult life there, eventually becoming a citizen in 1955. The first stories involving the two characters are even set in New York, while those that aren't are set in an England that has never existed, contrived to appeal to an American audience. Cawthorne offers fascinating insights into Wodehouse's world, his life - on Long Island and elsewhere - the wonderful short stories and novels and the many adaptations for stage and screen.
Here is a unique guide book that takes us on a journey across the rural and urban landscapes of Britain, and helps us to discover and explore a multitude of sacred sites: ancient stone circles and tombs, Christian and pre-Christian shrines, medieval synagogues, small country churches and much more.
Worldwide, more and more people are living in cities, with suburbs conceived as appendages to the city, rather than being part of the city system, which is densely populated and offers a full range of services. But suburbs are not the city spread too thin, and in fact hold potential for a lived complexity as satisfying as that assumed to be available in inner cities. Just as the ecological function of wetlands was ignored by modernist planning, and swamps once-drained are now recognised as vital to water cycles, suburbs are increasingly recognised as part of a city’s wellbeing with their own alternative ideology and opportunities for urbanity and ecological sustainability. Suburbia Reimagined shows how such subdivision structures can offer new possibilities for sustainably integrating living between generations and between established and arriving migrant communities. The authors worked locally and internationally with university campuses, shopping centres, hospitals, airports, and other large entities spread through suburbia, to identify a broad range of suburban situations that have been modified to ensure that residents have a full access to amenities and services. The book addresses the history and design of suburbia, from the post-war soldier settlements of the 40s and 50s to the university hinterlands of Silicon Valley in order to reappraise the locked potential within such subdivision patterns. The authors propose a new model forward, examining case studies ranging from repurposed malls and railways for ecological sustainability to cul-de-sacs as social units and post-industrial factory conversions, ultimately showing the nascent patterns in suburbia that have the potential to support a rich life for all age groups.
The criminal history of Australia from bushrangers who robbed, raped and murdered their way across the Outback in the late 18th and 19th centuries to today's breed of celebrity villain, from Ned Kelly and Jack the Rammer to Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read and Alan Bond.
The recent development of ideas on biodiversity conservation was already being considered almost three-quarters of a century ago for crop plants and the wild species related to them, by the Russian geneticist N.!. Vavilov. He was undoubtedly the first scientist to understand the impor tance for humankind of conserving for utilization the genetic diversity of our ancient crop plants and their wild relatives from their centres of diversity. His collections showed various traits of adaptation to environ mental extremes and biotypes of crop diseases and pests which were unknown to most plant breeders in the first quarter of the twentieth cen tury. Later, in the 1940s-1960s scientists began to realize that the pool of genetic diversity known to Vavilov and his colleagues was beginning to disappear. Through the replacement of the old, primitive and highly diverse land races by uniform modem varieties created by plant breed ers, the crop gene pool was being eroded. The genetic diversity of wild species was equally being threatened by human activities: over-exploita tion, habitat destruction or fragmentation, competition resulting from the introduction of alien species or varieties, changes and intensification of land use, environmental pollution and possible climate change.
Foreshadowing our unseemly haste to fight for King and Country in 1914, New Zealanders were enthusiastic supporters of the colonial war between Britainand the Boers when it was declared in 1899. The country welcomed the chanceto prove itself and its loyalty to the British Empire on an international stage. Ourcontribution was small — just 6500 troops sent to fight — but our response tothe conflict was on a grander scale. In an outpouring of patriotic sentiment, manythousands followed the stories of the sieges of Mafeking, Kimberley and Ladysmith. There was memorabilia everywhere, and it seemed as if everyone was either raising funds or joining cadet corps, including many women and girls.Little has been written of this important period in New Zealand's history. This isthe first book to offer a finely grained analysis of the nation's perceptions andexpectations of the war, Maori responses to the conflict, the effect of war-relateddeaths, injuries and disease on the country, and its economic impact. It alsodemonstrates that the building of our national identity through military engagementbegan well before Gallipoli and the Western Front.
Agatha Christie’s 80 novels and short-story collections have sold over 2 billion copies in more than 45 languages, more than any other author. When Christie finally killed off her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, the year before she herself died, that ‘detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep’ in Christie’s words, received a full-page obituary in the New York Times, the only fictional character ever to have done so. From her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a Poirot mystery, to her last, Sleeping Murder, featuring Miss Marple, Crawford explores Christie’s life and fiction. Cawthorne examines recurring characters, such as Captain Arthur Hastings, Poirot’s Dr Watson; Chief Inspector Japp, his Lestrade, as well as other flat-footed policemen that Poirot outsmarts on his travels; his efficient secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon; another employee, George; and Ariadne Oliver, a humorous caricature of Christie herself. He looks at the writer’s own fascinating: her work as a nurse during the First World War; her strange disappearance after her first husband asked for a divorce; and her exotic expeditions with her second husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. He examines the author’s working life – her inspirations, methods and oeuvre – and provides biographies of her key characters, their attire, habits and methods, including Poirot’s relationships with women, particularly Countess Vera Rossakoff and Miss Amy Carnaby. In doing so, he sheds light on the genteel world of the country house and the Grand Tour between the wars. He takes a look at the numerous adaptations of Christie’s stories for stage and screen, especially Poirot’s new life in the eponymous long-running and very successful TV series.
In August 1909, a kindly, balding, figure named Mansfield Smith-Cumming was summoned to London by Admiral Alexander Bethell, Director of Naval Intelligence. He was to assume the inaugural position of Chief – more famously known as ‘C – of what has become
In this innovative and compelling book Nigel Saul approaches the world of the medieval gentry through the monuments they left behind them. The Cobham family left the largest and most spectacular collection of brasses in Britain in their church at Cobham, and other magnificent brasses in Lingfield, and elsewhere. Medieval brasses have hitherto been studied chiefly from an antiquarian or technical perspective; Nigel Saul for the first time shows how they served as a link between the living and the dead. Commemoration was inseparable from the wider dynamics of society. Through the brasses and through family history he takes us to the heart of gentry aspirations and fears, successes and disappointments. This extensively illustrated study offers a new paradigm for the study of medieval church monuments and makes a major contribution to our understanding of gentry culture.
As the Second World War progressed and defeat for Hitler’s Third Reich in all theatres became ever more certain, the tight Abwehr network, built so effectively by its head, Admiral Canaris, began to unravel. High-level defections to the Allies and bitter disputes with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) added to a collapse in morale. Most notably was the increasing opposition within the officer ranks of the Army to Hitler fermented by Canaris and his deputy Generalmajor Hans Oster. The final years of the Abwehr were marked by the Abwehr’s efforts to undermine the regime, which came to a bloody conclusion following the Valkyrie assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. This saw the arrest of many Abwehr officials and the execution of Canaris and Oster. In this penetrating study of the final years of the Abwehr, Nigel West, a world-renowned specialist in the field, pieces together the gradual decline in the organization’s role and importance with Hitler and his acolytes paying little heed to reports that were increasingly cautionary. Among the many previously undisclosed stories are details gleaned from recently opened files which tell of a hitherto unknown spy-swap. This was the exchange of Berthold Shulze-Holthus, a German spy detained in Iran, for Ferdinand Rodriguez, a British radio operator captured in France. This was the only such exchange that took place during the whole of the Second World War – though the fact that the swap took place at all suggests that a previously unsuspected degree of communication existed between the Allies and Nazi Germany. Perhaps most tantalizingly of all, is the new night light thrown upon the role the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had, in league with the Abwehr, in the Valkyrie bombing which almost killed Hitler.
This is a comprehensive survey of English medieval church monuments. It examines all types of monument-cross slabs, brasses, incised slabs, and sculpted effigies. It analyzes them in an historical context to show what they reveal of the self image and religious aspirations of those they commemorate.--Summary by the editor.
Demonstrates how to design, construct, garden, and maintain a green roof; and offers examples of the structure being used on rooftops in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
Biologists since Darwin have been intrigued and confounded by the complex issues involved in the evolution and ecology of the social behavior of insects. The self-sacrifice of sterile workers in ant colonies has been particularly difficult for evolutionary biologists to explain. In this important new book, Andrew Bourke and Nigel Franks not only present a detailed overview of the current state of scientific knowledge about social evolution in ants, but also show how studies on ants have contributed to an understanding of many fundamental topics in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. One of the substantial contributions of Social Evolution in Ants is its clear explanation of kin selection theory and sex ratio theory and their applications to social evolution in insects. Working to dispel lingering skepticism about the validity of kin selection and, more broadly, of "selfish gene" theory, Bourke and Franks show how these ideas underpin the evolution of both cooperation and conflict within ant societies. In addition, using simple algebra, they provide detailed explanations of key mathematical models. Finally, the authors discuss two relatively little-known topics in ant social biology: life history strategy and mating systems. This comprehensive, up-to-date, and well-referenced work will appeal to all researchers in social insect biology and to scholars and students in the fields of entomology, behavioral ecology, and evolution.
While cricket remains a national game today, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it was THE national game. Cricketers were the sporting icons of their age, as footballers are today.When the call to arms was made in 1914 and the years of war that followed, it was answered in droves by young men including Test and First Class cricketers. The machine guns and gas of the Western Front and other theatres did not discriminate and many hundreds of these star performers perished alongside their lesser known comrades. The author has researched the lives and deaths of over 200 top class cricketers who made the ultimate sacrifice. He includes not just British players but those from the Empire. The enormity of the horror and wholesale loss of life during The Great War is well demonstrated by these moving biographies.
Lordship and Faith takes as its subject the many hundreds of parish churches built in England in the Middle Ages by the gentry, the knights and esquires, and the lords of country manors. Nigel Saul uses lordly engagement with the parish church as a way of opening up the piety and sociability of the gentry, focusing on the gentry as founders and builders of churches, worshippers in them, holders of church advowsons, and patrons and sponsors of parish communities. Saul also looks at how the gentry's interest in the parish church sat alongside their patronage of the monks and friars, and their use of private chapels in their manor houses. Lordship and Faith seeks to weave together themes in social, religious, and architectural history, examining in all its richness a subject that has hitherto been considered only in journal articles. Written in an accessible way, this volume makes a significant contribution not only to the history of the English gentry but also to the history of the rural parish church, an institution now in the forefront of medieval historical studies.
Richard II is one of the most enigmatic of English kings. Shakespeare depicted him as a tragic figure, an irresponsible, cruel monarch who nevertheless rose in stature as the substance of power slipped from him.
Great battles mark history's turning points where cultures and ideologies clash. Some battles are won by inspired leaders, some by superior weaponry, while others are won by a sheer dogged refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds. This gripping account introduces 40 battles which changed the course of history, from the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC to the Vietnamese defeat of the French army at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. It includes the extraordinary generalships of Napoleon, Wellington and Marlborough, among others, as well as the victories of ordinary soldiers who, through their courage, determination and sacrifice, changed the course of history. Includes: • Siege of Jerusalem, 79 CE • The Battle of Hastings, 1066 • The Battle of Yorktown, 1781 • The Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 • D-Day, 1944 Brought to life by photographs, maps and artwork of the battles, this book gives an expansive account of the most pivotal battles in the history of war and how they were lost or won.
The outbreak of the Second World War came towards the closing stages of the 1939 cricket season. Hitler permitted us almost to complete an exceptionally interesting season, Sir Home Gordon, wrote in the Cricketer magazine, When shall we see the stumps pitched again?As the West Indies touring team canceled their last five matches and sailed home before the U-boat threat developed, the treasures at Lords, including the Ashes, were sent to a secret location for safekeeping. The Marylebone Cricket Club cancelled its tour to India - England played under the MCC banner then.During the ensuing conflict twelve test cricketers (five English, two South Africans, one Australian and one New Zealander) perished together with 130 first class players. In this superbly researched sequel to Final Wicket, covering cricketing fatalities during The Great War, this book reveals each mans career details, including cricketing statistics, and the circumstances of death. There is also a brief history of the game during the War. Arguably the period between the two world wars was the golden age of cricket, and this book honors those who made it so only to die serving their countries in a different way.
In the years immediately following World War II, information was disclosed about what has been termed the shadow war of the existence of hitherto secret agencies. In Germany it was the Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst; in Britain it was MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE); in the United States it was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Special Intelligence Service (SIS) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); in Japan it was the Kempet'ai; and in Italy the Servicio di Informazione Militare (SIM). Sixty years after World War II secrets are still being revealed about the covert activities that took place. Many countries had secret agencies maintaining covert operations, but even ostensibly neutral countries also conducted secret operations. Changes in American, British, and even Soviet official attitudes to declassification in the 1980s allowed thousands of secret documents to be made available for public examination, and the result was extensive revisionism of the conventional histories of the conflict, which previously had excluded references to secret intelligence sources. The Historical Dictionary of World War II Intelligence tells the emerging history of the intelligence world during World War II. This is done through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the secret agencies, operations, and events. The world of double agents, spies, and moles during WWII is explained in the most comprehensive reference currently available.
In November 1939, the Nazis used the so-called Venlo Incident as a pretext for invading the Netherlands. Following orders from Himmler, two British intelligence officers, Sigismund Payne Best and Richard Stevens, were captured from the Café Backus in the town of Venlo. Best had been trying to contact German officers plotting against Hitler. The Netherlands had been an ideal ground for operations, because of its proximity to Germany and the fact that Dutch Intelligence was badly funded. When Best met the three agents including Walter Schellenberg he was carrying with him a list of British agents who were working in Europe. hen he arrived at the café, which was just over the Dutch border, he realised he had walked into a trap. A Dutch intelligence officer who accompanied them, Dirk Klop, was fatally wounded. Best and Stevens were taken into Germany. After their Berlin interrogation and torture they were taken to the notorious Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Hitler used the incident together with the Elser bomb plot as an excuse for war with the Netherlands, claiming their involvement with Britain violated their neutrality. As Nigel Jones explains, the incident was crucial in making the British suspicious of dealings with anti-Hitler resistance.
This book tells the story of Operation Overlord, the largest and most meticulously planned seaborne invasion in the history of warfare. As dawn broke on 6 June 1944, thousands of Allied soldiers - American, British, Canadian, Free French and Polish - hit the Normandy beaches and stormed the German defenses of the Atlantic Wall. By Midnight, over 150,000 troops had been safely landed, and the ling push towards Berlin and the final defeat of the Third Reich had begun. Including useful maps with troop movements, as well as an index of the armies, battles, campaigns and commanders, Fighting Them on the Beaches is a brilliant guide to this historic battle which turned the tide against Adolf Hitler.
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