Boys Story papers 1st Penguin 1976 edition paperback vg+ condition. In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Boys Will Be Boys - The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton et al.

TURNER, E.S.

Literature & Fiction

Penguin

This is a lively foray into a world where a gentleman with Â£2,000 a year was betraying his class if he did not employ six females and five males; where a lady could go to the grave without ever having picked up a nightdress, carried her prayer book or made a pot of tea. It is the story of the housekeeper and the butler, the cook, the lady's maid, the valet and the coachman. Their duties are described in detail, and the story is told of the strife and even pitched battles that ensued between servants and the served. Here is social history from a fascinating angle, packed with droll information lightly handled, with many a moral for our own times.

What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem

History

World

Penguin Global

E.S. Turner's first book, published in 1948, is a wholly original, richly researched and uncommonly insightful study of a somewhat disreputable genre: the 'Boys' Weekly' papers commonly known as 'penny dreadfuls.'
'A classic of its kind... [Turner] ploughed through back numbers of the old blood-and-thunder adventure magazines specialising in cliffhanger serials; the young hero would be left hanging over a cliff in a totally impossible situation, which would be easily resolved in the next issue: 'With one bound Jack was free.' Social history had never been as much fun or, with three extra printings in its first week - such was the demand - as profitable.' Jonathan Sale, Guardian
 'Some people felt that E.S. Turner may have invented a new kind of book - the popular social history, very British, very funny, but written with a glistening elegance.'
Andrew O'Hagan, London Review of Books

Boys Will Be Boys

Faber&Faber

'It is a salutary thing to look back at some of the reforms which have long been an accepted part of our life, and to examine the opposition, usually bitter and often bizarre, sometimes dishonest but all too often honest, which had to be countered by the restless advocates of 'grandmotherly' legislation...'
Contemporary readers of a progressive bent may like to think it elementary that certain inhumane practices in which Britons indulged pre-1800 came to be abolished. But as E.S. Turner reveals, our history is littered with Colonel Blimp figures, of a mind that 'reforms are all right as long as they don't change anything.'
'Roads to Ruin still entertains and appals. It chronicles the disgraceful rearguard action of the upper classes against the introduction of the Plimsoll line, the abolition of child chimney sweeps and the repeal of laws under which convicted criminals could be hung, drawn and quartered...' Jonathan Sale, Guardian

Roads to Ruin

Historical Study & Educational Resources

One of the strangest periods in the social history of Britain was that of the Phoney War of 1939-40, when the nation did not know quite whether it was at war or peace. E.S. Turner's marvellous study, first published in 1961, offers a none-too-reverent account of how Britons tried to adjust themselves to the uncertainties of those days. What was a woman to do if the air-raid siren sounded while she was curling her hair? Were the police required to open fire through jewellers' windows at un-extinguished light bulbs? What was more patriotic - to buy War Bonds or to drink as much whisky as possible? Turner further explores the difficulties posed by blackouts to private detectives and prostitutes; the impact of the moment upon morals, and on fashions; and the bureaucracy's blundering seizure of the nation's spa hotels. The story is carried entertainingly all the way to the Blitz: the darkening moment at which Britain realized there was indeed 'a war on.'

The Phoney War on the Home Front

Europe

'A book which goes on a special shelf in my library.' P.G. WodehouseWhat the Butler Saw (1962) is one of E.S. Turner's most pertinent and illuminating 'social histories', an exploration of the 'upstairs/downstairs' relationship across three centuries of English life. Drawing on literature, contemporary accounts and household manuals, Turner describes in fascinating detail how it came to be that the upper classes felt a need for an ever larger household staff, engaged in every imaginable form of drudgery; and, accordingly, how those in service - from high to low, butler to footman, housemaid to au pair - had to give satisfaction to their masters and mistresses while also, on occasions, contending with physical blows, tantrums, and (in the cases of some unfortunate servant girls) threats to their virtue.

What the Butler Saw

Parenting & Relationships

May it please Your Lordship

Michael, Joseph

The story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton and more

Boys will be boys: The story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton, et al

Joseph

An ABC of nostalgia: From aspidistras to zoot suits

M.Joseph

"A fully-equipped duke costs as much to keep up a two Dreadnoughts. They are just as great a terror and they last longer". So said David Lloyd George, the fiery Welsh duke-baiter in 1909. "Amazing Grace" surveys the dukes of Great Britain in their prime, chiefly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dukes were expected to bring something extra to the grand manner, writes E.S. Turner, "something which unmistakably conveyed that here was a man who owned Belgravia or Eastbourne or Ben Lomond". He offers an anecdote led study of "godhead, eccentricity, noblesse oblige, self-indulgence and landlordism"; but his eye for the outrageous does not prevent him from paying tribute to those dukes to whom humanity has been much indebted. In these pages can be found a Duke of Somerset who cut #20,000 from a daughter's inheritance because she sat down while he slept; an heir to the Duke of Richmond who embarked on the Grand Tour within minutes of contracting a marriage of convenience with a Georgette Heyer-like conclusion; and a Duke of Northumberland who defiantly assured a Coal Commission that he owned all the minerals in his lands right down to the centre of the earth.

Amazing Grace: The Great Days of Dukes

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

The History Press

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