Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Business & Money

Tomlinson, Richard

Economics

Unwin Hyman

This overview of the British monarchy, from the accession of the unpopular George I in 1714, through the apparently halcyon Victorian era to the present, argues that the House of Windsor, often beset by sloth and lack of self-restraint, has frequently been saved not by its own actions, but by dedicated servants and spouses; and that the seeds of the collapse of its mystique were sown back in the 1970s, when the Royal Family tried to transform its image and became active figures in the publicity game.

Divine Right: The Inglorious Survival of British Royalty

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Little,Brown & Co

Divine Right: The Inglorious Survival Of British Royalty

Social Sciences

On a sunny afternoon in May 1868, nineteen-year-old Gilbert Grace stood in a Wiltshire field, wondering why he was playing cricket against the Great Western Railway Club. A batting genius, 'W. G.' should have been starring at Lord's in the grand opening match of the season. But MCC did not want to elect this humble son of a provincial doctor. W. G's career was faltering before it had barely begun.
Grace finally forced his way into MCC and over the next three decades, millions came to watch him - not just at Lord's, but across the British Empire and beyond. Only W. G. could boast a fan base that stretched from an American Civil War general and the Prince of Wales's mistress to the children who fingered his coat-tails as he walked down the street, just to say 'I touched him'.
The public never knew the darker story behind W. G.'s triumphal progress. Accused of avarice, W. G. was married to the daughter of a bankrupt. Disparaged as a simpleton, his subversive mind recast how to play sport - thrillingly hard, pushing the rules, beating his opponents his own way.
In Amazing Grace, Richard Tomlinson unearths a life lived so far ahead of his times that W. G. is still misunderstood today. For the first time, Tomlinson delves into long-buried archives in England and Australia to reveal the real W. G: a self-made, self-destructive genius, at odds with the world and himself.

Amazing Grace: The Man Who was W.G.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

ABACUS +

Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Routledge Library Editions: Urbanization)

Reference

Routledge

Regional Restructuring Under Apartheid: Urban and Regional Policies in Contemporary South Africa

Ravan Pr of South Africa

Richard Tomlinson was recruited by MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, during his senior year at Cambridge University. He quickly gained the trust and confidence of one of the world's most effective intelligence organisations. MI6 relied on Tomlinson to smuggle nuclear secrets out of Moscow, to run an undercover operation in Sarajevo while the city was under siege, and to infiltrate and dismantle a criminal group that sought to export chemical weapons capabilities to Iran. Four years after joining MI6, Tomlinson's career was abruptly terminated for reasons that are still unclear. When he tried to fight the unjust dismissal, government accused him in breaching the Official Secrets Act and imprisoned him in one of the Britain's toughest maximum security prisons. Following his release, MI6 kept up its pressure, hounding Tomlinson, launching a smear campaign in the international press, and pressuring its allies around the world to illegally arrest and expel him. The British intelligence service has used threats of legal action to force publishers in several European countries to abandon plans to publish this book.

The Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security

Leaders & Notable People

Global Pr

On a sunny afternoon in May 1868, nineteen-year-old Gilbert Grace stood in a Wiltshire field, wondering why he was playing cricket against the Great Western Railway Club. A batting genius, 'W. G.' should have been starring at Lord's in the grand opening match of the season. But MCC did not want to elect this humble son of a provincial doctor. W. G's career was faltering before it had barely begun.Grace finally forced his way into MCC and over the next three decades, millions came to watch him - not just at Lord's, but across the British Empire and beyond. Only W. G. could boast a fan base that stretched from an American Civil War general and the Prince of Wales's mistress to the children who fingered his coat-tails as he walked down the street, just to say 'I touched him'.The public never knew the darker story behind W. G.'s triumphal progress. Accused of avarice, W. G. was married to the daughter of a bankrupt. Disparaged as a simpleton, his subversive mind recast how to play sport - thrillingly hard, pushing the rules, beating his opponents his own way.In Amazing Grace, Richard Tomlinson unearths a life lived so far ahead of his times that W. G. is still misunderstood today. For the first time, Tomlinson delves into long-buried archives in England and Australia to reveal the real W. G: a self-made, self-destructive genius, at odds with the world and himself.

Little, Brown, UK

William Gilbert Grace (1848-1915) looms as large in the history of modern sport as Bach in the history of music or Michelangelo in the history of art. Physically immense, with a luxuriant black mane of a beard, Grace's performances on the cricket field towered above his peers. When 'W.G.' became the first-ever batsman to score 100 first-class centuries, his nearest rival had only scored forty-three. With his rustic accent and village school education, Grace was also the victim of immense snobbery, during his lifetime and ever since. In this definitive biography, marking the centenary of W.G.'s death, Richard Tomlinson mines a trove of previously undiscovered archive material in England, Australia and North America and at last connects Grace's astounding achievements on the field (he took 3000 wickets as well) with the private life he hid from the world. Agnes, W.G.'s beloved wife, steps from the shadows of her ruined family background as the woman who rescued Grace from his own worst nature and shared his torment at the loss of their only daughter Bessie. We meet as well the swarm of chancers who preyed on Grace, from the doomed gold speculator who first brought him to Melbourne to the sex-crazed cricket grandee who captured W.G. for England's sporting aristocracy. And we join W.G. on his rounds as a lowly parish surgeon in the slums of Bristol. His patients - the paupers and tramps along the Stapleton Road - hailed their doctor each summer as he set forth from his surgery to vanquish his cricketing enemies. Through it all, W.G. emerges as one of the last Victorian inventors, transforming the game he loved and showing the modern world how to play all sport - to the death, mercilessly, with beers all round in the funeral parlour. A century after W.G. was buried with his secrets in a forlorn suburban graveyard, Amazing Grace gloriously unveils one of sport's greatest untold stories.

On 12 April 1919, the Paris police arrested a bald, short, 50-year-old swindler at his apartment near the Gare du Nord, acting on a lead from a humble housemaid. A century later, Henri Désiré Landru remains the most notorious and enigmatic serial killer in French criminal history, a riddle at the heart of an unsolved murder puzzle. The official version of Landru’s lethal rampage was so shocking that it almost defied belief. According to the authorities, Landru had made “romantic contact” with 283 women during the First World War, luring ten of them to his country houses outside Paris where he killed them for their money. Yet no bodies were ever found, while Landru obdurately protested his innocence. “It is for you to prove the deeds of which I am accused,” he sneered at the investigating magistrate. The true story of l’affaire Landru, buried in the Paris police archives for the past century, was altogether more disturbing. In Landru’s Secret, Richard Tomlinson draws on more than 5,000 pages of original case documents, including witness statements, police reports and private correspondence, to reveal for the first time that: Landru killed more women than the 10 victims on the charge sheet. The police failed to trace at least 72 of the women he contacted. The authorities ignored the key victim who explained why the killings began. Landru did not kill for money, but to revel in his power over what he called the “feeble sex”. Lavishly illustrated with previous unpublished photographs, Landru’s Secret is a story for our times: a female revengers’ tragedy starring the mothers and sisters of the missing fiancées, a lethal misogynist and France’s greatest defense lawyer, intent on saving his repulsive client from the guillotine.

Landru’s Secret: The Deadly Seductions of France’s Lonely Hearts Serial Killer

Pen and Sword History

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