London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing

History

Elborough, Travis

Europe

Vintage

In 1968 the world's largest antique went to America. But how do you transport a 130-year-old bridge 3000 miles? And why set it up in the waterless Arizona desert? This wry, compelling social history musters a colourful cast of Fleet Street shysters, Thames dockers, Disneyland designers and gun-toting sheriffs to tell the extraordinary tale of how London Bridge was sold to a US oil baron, and charts its curious afterlife in Lake Havasu.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

JONATHAN CAPE.

VINYL MAY BE FINAL NAIL IN CD’S COFFIN ran the headline in a Wired magazine article in October 2007.Ever since the arrival of the longplaying record in 1948, the album has acted as the soundtrack to our lives. Record collectionseven on a CD or iPod-are personal treasures, revealing our loves, errors in judgment, and lapses in taste.In The Vinyl Countdown, Travis Elborough explores the way in which particular albums are deeply embedded in cultural history or so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible. While music itself has experienced several different movements over the past sixty years, the album has remained a constant. But the way we listen to music has changed in the last ten years. In the age of the iPod, when we can download an infinite number of single tracks instantaneously, does the concept of the album mean anything?Elborough moves chronologically through relevant periods, letting the story of the LP, certain genres, youth cults, and topics like sleeve designs, shops, drugs, and education unfurl as he goes along. The Vinyl Countdown is a brilliant piece of popular history, an idiosyncratic tribute to a much-loved part of our shared consciousness, and a celebration of the joy of records.

The Long-Player Goodbye: The Album from Vinyl to IPod and Back Again

Sceptre

Wish You Were Here: England on Sea

The seaside, like football and the railways, is a distinctly English and largely nineteenth century invention. At the Festival of Britain in 1951, a replica of a seafront represented hope and modernity - once the preserve of the sickly elite, the seaside had become one of the great English egalitarian institutions. But when the advent of cheap flights allowed us to go and see how the rest of the world did it - with better weather and sandier beaches - our boarding houses and bandstands slowly rotted away. As the economy forced a reassessment of our holidaying habits, resorts from Morecambe to Bournemouth enjoyed a renaissance. Capitalising on the uniquely English combination of irony and pride, the English Riviera has been reborn. In many ways, our national character has been defined by our relationship with the seaside - and in tracing its development, we can see how our ideas about health, welath and happiness evolved. Our aspirations and snobbery, our attitudes to sex, our keen sense of fair play, our chequered relationship with national pride and our ability to laugh at ourselves have all been played out against a backdrop of stormy skies, pebbly beaches and sticks of rock.The seaside is the place we go to get better, to let our hair down, to downsize, to retire, to take drugs and to hide. Ranging from Agatha Christie to the Prince Regent via Billy Butlin and Brighton Rock, Travis Elborough explores how a coastline peppered with quasi-Oriental piers makes us quintessentially English. Erudite, charming and surprising, Wish You Were Here is a gloriously unorthodox social history of a nation of islanders.

In this gloriously original social history, Travis Elborough argues that our national character - our snobbishness and willingness to laugh at ourselves, our attitudes to sex and fair play and our chequered relationship with national pride - has been forged against a backdrop of stormy skies and pebbly beaches. Covering everything from Agatha Christie to the Prince Regent via Billy Butlin and Brighton Rock, this is a book for anyone who has ever wrestled with a deckchair, braved a sopping esplanade or felt the crunch of sand in a sandwich.

'Elegant and multi-focal. Glorious!' Simon Garfield 'It will make you look at specs with fresh eyes' New Statesman 'Lively, engaging and admirably wide-ranging' The Times 'Fascinating' Observer The humble pair of glasses might just be one of the world's greatest inventions, allowing millions to see a world that might otherwise appear a blur. And yet how much do many of us really think about these things perched on the ends of our noses? Through the Looking Glasses traces the fascinating story of spectacles: from their inception as primitive visual aids for monkish scribes right through to today's designer eyewear and the augmented reality of Google Glass. There are encounters with ingenious medieval Italian glassmakers, myopic Renaissance rulers and spectacle-makers, as well as the silent movie star Harold Lloyd, the rock'n'roller Buddy Holly and the full-screen figure of Marilyn Monroe. This is a book about vision and the need for humanity to see clearly, and where the impulse to improve our eyesight has led us.

Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

ABACUS +

This is an anthology of short diary entries (with the occasional journal entry or letter), one or two for each day of the year, which, taken together, will provide an impressionistic portrait of life in the city over the last five centuries. The book will vividly evoke moments in the lives of Londoners in the past, providing snapshots of the city's inhabitants at work, at play, in pursuit of money, sex, entertainment, pleasure and power. A prefect book for readers of The Assassin's Cloak or Craig Taylor's Londoners, and essential reading for all those who live in or love the city.

A London Year: 365 Days of City Life in Diaries, Journals and Letters

Rennison, Nick

Frances Lincoln

How well do you know London? Here are 400 provocative, curious and humorous questions to enlighten and entertain. Even the most devoted Londoner will learn something new from these fun and wide-ranging trivia questions about London's history, monuments, architecture, famous residents, place-names, notable events, and more. A delightful way to explore the city, this fun book is a perfect stocking filler, with history ranging from obscure lore to facts and fascinating, often humorous histories. Where is the only cross-eyed statue in London and who does it depict? a) Next to the Royal Exchange in the City of London; George Peabody, the nineteenth-century American-born philanthropist b) At the point where Fetter Lane and New Fetter Lane converge; John Wilkes, the eighteenth-century politician c) Islington Green; Sir Hugh Myddleton, the seventeenth-century entrepreneur Answer: b) John Wilkes really did have a severe squint, as reproduced in the statue, but despite his looks, he was a legendary and eloquent womanizer who once said that, when meeting an attractive woman, it took him only ten minutes "to talk away his face."

London Quiz

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

A Travellerâ??s Year is an anthology of extracts from diaries, journals and letters, two or three for each day of the year, on the subject of travel and exploration. The extracts convey men and womenâ??s experiences of travel and discovery from the sixteenth to the early twenty-first centuries, with an emphasis on the period 1750â??1950, the classic era of both European exploration and diary-writing. The authors of the pieces range from famous explorers such as Captains Cook and Scott to modern travel writers journeying through the contemporary world, from people who pushed back the boundaries of geographical knowledge to people who wrote about what they did on their summer holidays.Â 
The book includes an introduction, explanatory notes and mini-biographies of all the contributors. Â 
Â 
Contributors include:
Gertrude Bell (woman traveller in the Middle East)
James Boswell (travels in Scotland and the Hebrides)
William Cobbett (Rural Rides through England)
Christopher Columbus (journals of his voyages to America)
Charles Darwin (Voyage of the Beagle)
Captain James Cook (voyages in the Pacific)
Washington Irving (American writer travelled in Europe in first decades of nineteenth century)
Edward Lear (landscape painter and nonsense writer produced journals of his travels in Greece, Corsica, Near East etc)
Lewis &amp; Clark (journals of famous journey of American exploration)
William Morris (wrote a journal of a trip to Iceland in 1870s)
Michael Palin (a Python abroad)
Mungo Park (African explorer in early nineteenth century)
Captain Robert Falcon Scott (doomed journey to South Pole)
Evelyn Waugh (diaries of 1930s travels in Mediterranean and beyond)
William John Wills (explorer of Australia)

A Traveller's Year: 365 Days of Travel Writing in Diaries, Journals and Letters

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Gardening & Landscape Design

The joys and challenges of being a writer are explored in this inspiring assemblage of wit, wisdom and hard-won practical advice from some of the world’s greatest authors musing on the art of writing and how they came to define themselves as writers. From Samuel Johnson in eighteenth-century London to Lorrie Moore in twenty-first-century Wisconsin, the contributors range from the canon to contemporary, covering more than 250 years, and come from all over the world. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this stunning anthology explores and illuminates the pleasures and pitfalls of the compulsion to write, with advice about the whole messy business of writing literature and what it takes to be a writer. The perfect gift for aspiring writers, curious readers, and anyone interested in what the world's greatest authors have to say about the art of writing.

Being a Writer: Advice, Musings, Essays and Experiences From the World's Greatest Authors

Gordon, Helen

Essays & Correspondence

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elborough, Travis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Elborough, Travis

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Elborough, Travis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing

London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing

The Long-Player Goodbye: The Album from Vinyl to IPod and Back Again

Wish You Were Here: England on Sea

Wish You Were Here: England on Sea

Through The Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles

A London Year: 365 Days of City Life in Diaries, Journals and Letters

London Quiz

A Traveller's Year: 365 Days of Travel Writing in Diaries, Journals and Letters

Being a Writer: Advice, Musings, Essays and Experiences From the World's Greatest Authors