On a yearly basis, more people visit historic buildings than attend football matches - that's quite some statistic. The draw of the past is perhaps more prevalent today than at any other time, but in recent years people have wanted to be able to experience the past rather than merely reading about it or watching it on television. This book on `living history' is endorsed by English Heritage and contains hundreds of photographs from some of the 400 re-enactment events that they stage every year. From recreations of Roman legions on manoeuvres at Richborough in Kent, to the work of thatchers re-roofing a 17th century house, a close eye on authenticity and an unstoppable enthusiasm for participation, gets you closer to the action. This book celebrates those who re-live the battles, pageants and day-to-day lives of their ancestors. Details on living history museums to visit, how to locate and use archival material, and step-by-step guides which show you how to load and fire a flintlock musket, or lay the table for a Stuart tea ceremony, reveal how you can get a piece of the action. Includes a foreword by David Starkey.

Living the Past

Travel

Horsler, Val

Europe

English Heritage

This Spectred Isle: A Journey Through Haunted England

Available for the first time in paperback This Spectred Isle presents the 'other side' of a collection of intriguing English Heritage sites. Here you will find the legends and the mysteries, the tales of the unexplained, and the shivery unknown - the fascinating stories that bring the past to life and cloth the ruins. The stories follow a journey from the tip of Cornwall at St Michael's Mount, ending in the far north-east at Lindisfarne Priory on Holy Island and a trip through time from the prehistoric through to the ghosts of the Second World War.

Arts & Photography

Marsden, Simon

Kelleher, Susan

Photography & Video

For centuries, the vagaries of human passion have moved, amused or scandalized us. Drawing on literary sources as well as personal letters, criminal trials and divorce papers from the National Archives, it uncovers people's real attitudes to sexual transgressions, from the rumbustious 14th century to the 'permissive society' of the 1960s - and much swept under the carpet along the way. Topics include adultery, prostitution, divorce, high-society scandals, homosexuality, wartime romances, the effects of class and religious and the complex - often contradictory - standards imposed on love and sex. Famous and infamous cases, popular ballads and individual stories evoke the very real perils of love that broke the rules - pregnancy, social disgrace, loss of marriagibility, employment and a respectable future. Both a celebration of sexuality and a sober analysis of its consequences, this is a thoughtful, deeply moving guide to our ancestors' hidden desires.

All for Love: Seven Centuries of Illicit Liaison

Parenting & Relationships

The National Archives

Jack the Ripper, the late-Victorian killer who brought terror to London’s Whitechapel, still prowls our imaginations today. His victims were all female prostitutes; most had their throats cut and were gruesomely butchered. The case unleashed an avalanche of letters claiming responsibility for the murders, but the Ripper’s identity was never established despite the best efforts of Scotland Yard. This ‘bloody history’ cuts through the speculation by presenting the key facts in their full horror, backed by hard evidence from the National Archives. Original police reports, witness statements and letters bearing the chilling signature ‘Jack the Ripper’ combine with a compelling narrative to tell the story behind the legend.

Jack the Ripper

History

The National Archives UK

As Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip celebrate their 60 years of marriage, the National Archives presents a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the royal wedding of 1947. The magnificence of the occasion captured the nation’s imagination and brought thousands on to the streets to cheer. Its Norman Hartnell dresses and 400lb wedding cake (extravagances frowned on in some quarters) offered a temporary escape from a ration-book economy and the worries of an unstable world.Using the unparalleled original material in The National Archives, Elizabeth and Philip charts the round-the-clock efforts of those—high and low—who ensured the event’s success. Fascinating nuggets and individual anecdotes abound from the official who proposed using fireworks (given all the ‘surplus explosive chemicals’ left over from the war!) to civil servants appalled at the poor-quality tourist tat, or the police who—politely but firmly—demandedtheir own beer tent to keep up morale on the day. There was royal protocol to consider too— how would the Foreign Office deal with congratulations from Japan, with which Britain was still technically at war, or from Albania’s former king, now persona non grata in his homeland? And would it be necessary to protect all that pageantry and glamour from that most British of problems, rain?

Elizabeth and Philip: 20 November 1947

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

A richly entertaining and beautifully illustrated portrait of Club life past and present, featuring rare archive images and specially commissioned contemporary photography.

Cavalry & Guards

Third Millenium Pub Ltd

A new publication to accompany the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition in Durham in summer 2013. It will draw on the diverse expertise of scholars from within North East and beyond.

Landscapes of Faith: Heritage of the North

Riddell, Sarah

Park, Jin-Ho

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

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Books by Horsler, Val