John Christopher: 313 books

1915, the second year of the Great War, was to see the failure of the Dardanelles landings and the sinking of the Lusitania, shown below, with the loss of 1,198 people, as well as the first bombing of mainland Britain by Zeppelin and the entry of Italy into the war. Huge battles would be fought at...

1941 At the beginning of the year, Britain stood alone against Germany and Italy. The war in Africa dominated the headlines, with huge swathes of the North African desert changing hands continually. At sea, Germany’s Bismarck sank HMS Hood, but was soon sunk herself, while Fortress Britain endured...

With its famous hotel, St Pancras is now the London terminus of the Eurostar, with a high speed rail link to the Kent coast and the Channel Tunnel. But it was not always so. Once nearly redundant and threatened with demolition, the station was the London terminus of the Midland Railway, and could...

1944 saw the largest seaborne invasion ever staged in Operation Overlord. The Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, opened the way for the thrust into the occupied countries of northern Europe, in particular France, with the Allies liberating Paris in August. This was the...

1917, the fourth year of the Great War, saw another year in the trenches for millions of troops mobilised in Europe. Apart from short patrols in the North Sea, the ships of the Royal Navy and Germany’s imperial navy remained in port. However, the enemy submarines were in operation intensively. In...

Cornwall marks the extreme south-western extent of Brunel’s kingdom and the county is surprisingly rich in his works. The Royal Albert Bridge, which crosses the River Tamar, connected the broad gauge network with the Cornwall and West Cornwall railways – both engineered by Brunel – to take the...

The first Waterloo Station opened in 1848 and the current building was completed in 1922, after a huge rebuilding programme started in 1899. Catering for suburban traffic, Waterloo is also the major station for trains to Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth and once served the famous boat trains....

1945 was the meeting point of two eras. It marked the end of the Second World War, a conflict ushered in by the lightning strikes of the Blitzkrieg and characterised by the brutalities inflicted by the Nazi regime. It concluded with the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima...

1940 As the period of the ‘Phoney War’ came to an end, the Nazis unleashed their Blitzkrieg tactics, which saw the rapid mobility of the ground forces closely supported by superior air power. The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway fell in the spring, and the British Expeditionary Force made...

Bradshaw’s Guide of 1863 was the staple book on what’s what and where’s where for the mid-Victorians and it gives the modern reader a unique insight into the world of the nineteenth-century railway travellers. The guide introduced the notion of seaside holidays to the general public and thanks...

Brunel and Bradshaw were close contemporaries. One became Britain's most celebrated engineer, driving his iron rails across the country, while the other brought the experience of rail travel to the masses through his timetables and guide books. Although the GWR mainline from London to Bristol had...

ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL is famous for the engineering wonders he left behind - from the SS Great Britain to the delights of Paddington and Temple Meads stations, but much of what he designed has been lost. From the ships Great Western and Great Eastern to the majestic water towers of Crystal Palace,...

The book of Revelation is perhaps the most theologically complex and literarily sophisticated — and also the most sensual — document in the New Testament. In this commentary John Christopher Thomas’s literary and exegetical analysis makes the challenging text of Revelation more accessible and...

John and Brea have lived very different lives. His began as a near orphan in New York City, where he became involved with, and practically raised by, the mob; accepted as a man of honor by his fellow mobsters, young and old. His involvement in an incident, one resulting in the death of his childhood...