Stuart Hylton: 12 books

From Victorian manufacturing town, famous for the ‘three Bs’ – beer, bulbs and biscuits – to its current status as a major centre for service industries and cutting-edge technology, Reading has a proud and distinctive identity. This extraordinary history is embodied in the buildings that have...

The Great War of 1914-1918 was the world's first total conflict. It drew the whole population into the war effort as never before. The armed forces recruited on a scale that was previously unimaginable, and the munitions industries drew more and more citizens into the labour market. The entire national...

Reading has a rich history going back well over a thousand years. It has seen kings and queens making extended stays in the town (a king of England is even buried there), meetings of Parliament, and pitched battles fought for the control of the nation in its streets. In its time it has been a nationally...

It is hard, from a distance of nearly two centuries, to imagine the impact the coming of the railways must have had at the start of the nineteenth century. Their physical impact was dramatic enough – great mechanical horses, breathing fire and smoke and drawing impossibly heavy trains at unimaginable...

The Little Book of Manchester is an intriguing, fast-paced, fact-packed compendium of places, people and events in the city, from its Roman origins to the present day. Here you can read about the important contributions the city made to the history of the nation, learn about the individual communities...

The Little Book of the 1950s is a fast-paced and entertaining account of life in Britain during an extraordinary decade, as we moved from post-war austerity to the swinging sixties. There are dramas, tragedies, scandals, and characters galore, all packaged in an easily readable "dip-in"...

The Little Book of Berkshire is an intriguing, fast-paced, fact-packed compendium of places, people, and events in the city, from its earliest origins to the present day. Here you can read about the important contributions Berkshire has made to the history of the nation, and meet some of the great...

Reading: The 1950s is a fast-paced and entertaining account of life in Britain during an extraordinary decade, as we moved from post-war austerity to the swinging sixties. There are dramas, tragedies, scandals and characters galore, all packaged in an easily readable 'dip-in' format. We can see how...

Reading has been transformed in the last century or so. It has gone from being a Victorian manufacturing town to a major centre for service industries and cutting-edge technology. It was, and still is, an important railway town, but both its appearance and its operation have been dramatically changed...

Reporting the Blitz takes a fresh look at the home front during World War Two, using local newspaper archives from around the country to throw light on some relatively neglected aspects of those years. It explores the unspoken attitudes and values of those wartime communities; the ways in which local...

A nation's choice of leisure activities can tell you much about its national character, and Britain has seen a revolution in leisure since the war. Growing affluence, increased mobility and new technology have combined to give us a host of new opportunities for enjoying ourselves - but are we? Leisure...

The Little Book of the 1970s is a fast-paced and entertaining account of life in Britain during an extraordinary decade, as we moved from the swinging sixties to the punk-rock seventies. Here are dramas, tragedies, scandals, and characters galore, all packaged in an easily readable "dip-in"...