Markham Pyle: 4 books

This is the story of America on August 12, 1941, four months before Pearl Harbor. Isolationism was still strong, FDR was hammering out the Atlantic Charter with Churchill (to the fury of America Firsters), the Japanese were ready to kick off a war, most Americans were more interested in baseball and...

It was the year of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance, the destruction of Guernica from the air, the New London School Explosion, and the Hindenburg disaster; of Alban Berg’s Lulu and MC Escher’s first ‘impossible’ print, the Panay Incident and Howard Hughes’ newest airspeed record. Spain...

RMS Titanic sank in 1912, a US presidential election year; and in the very first days of the great House of Commons debate on Home Rule for Ireland. The Marconi companies were heroes to the press and the public, who credited them with saving the lives that were saved; JP Morgan, who owned the shipping...

Lady Selina Shirley was the daughter of Washington Shirley, second earl Ferrers; she married Theophilus Hastings, ninth earl of Huntingdon. As Selina, countess of Huntingdon, she became the patroness of the evangelicals in – and out – of the Church of England, including the early Methodists in...