Shire Publications imprint: 233 books

London's sewers could be called the city's forgotten underground: mostly invisible subterranean spaces of absolutely vital importance that nonetheless rarely get the same degree of attention as the Tube. Paul Dobraszczyk here outlines the fascinating history of London's sewers from the nineteenth...

Witchcraft haunts the Western imagination to this day, from Central Europe to Britain to North America. This book explores the development of witchcraft and of the belief in it (stressing the difference between the two), the sixteenthand seventeenth-century obsession that spawned witch-hunting, the...

The first school at Leehurst in Campbell Road, Salisbury, run by the Sisters of Christian Education, was opened by the Bishop of Clifton in May 1914. In 1953 the school was taken over by the Sisters of La Retraite who continued to be involved until 2005. Meanwhile, in the early 1930s Miss E. N. Swanton...

For a century and a half Notre Dame High School has occupied a central position in Norwich, and within the Roman Catholic community of East Anglia. This book traces the school's founding, the development of the school site, its transition from a Catholic convent with a day and boarding school to a...

In 1546, when Henry VIII founded Christ Church and its Cathedral, he made provision for a number of boy Choristers and a Schoolmaster. From this royal beginning has grown the present Christ Church Cathedral School which took its current shape with the building of 3 Brewer Street under Dean Liddell...

Four Four Jew is a major exhibition by Jewish Museum London exploring the story of football and Jews in Britain from the turn of the century to the present day. It brings together previously unseen material from private and public collections across the UK to tell the story of the clubs, the players,...

Sir William Lyons enjoyed a seemingly unstoppable rise to fame and fortune in the motor industry, and the Jaguar brand that he introduced became world-famous. Yet it did not happen overnight. In the 1920s he was in Blackpool, styling motorcycle sidecars, and in the 1930s in Coventry developing the...

It has now been over a century since Frank Hornby invented a toy to amuse his sons and called it Meccano, coining a word which has entered the dictionary as a term in common usage and is now known all over the world. Hornby's vision of an educational toy became the basis of perhaps the most successful...

E-type Jaguar; Triumph Spitfire; MGA; Austin-Healey – nobody built sports cars like British manufacturers in the 1950s and '60s. There was something very special about the combination of low-slung open two-seater bodywork and spartan interior, a slick sporting gearchange and a throaty exhaust note....

The First World War profoundly changed British society. The armed forces' need for mass recruitment saw the workforce severely depleted, with women stepping up to shoulder the burden; but nobody could ignore the social upheaval or the strains put upon daily life. With poverty a major issue at the...

Over the last century Britain has witnessed a royal family saga compelling, tumultuous and heartwarming. The constitution has been thrown into crisis by an abdication, royal divorces have become commonplace, coronations and jubilees have brought the nation together – and though Princess Diana's...

Gypsies have been a part of the British and European social fabric for centuries – and have faced prejudice and oppression for nearly as long, since at least the time of Henry VIII. Theirs is a peripatetic existence, dwelling in tents and in caravans and living often precariously at the edges of...

Muscle Cars is the story of America's pursuit of sheer horsepower in the 1960s and '70s. The first of the type, the famous Pontiac GTO or "Goat,†? would launch a race between America's automotive manufacturers to produce ever-more-powerful V8 engines wrapped in legendary "Coke-bottle†?...

On 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sat tensely at a microphone, using radio to declare that 'this country is at war with Germany'. During the ensuing wartime years, the BBC was the sole radio broadcaster in Britain, boosting morale through programmes such as 'ITMA' and 'Worker's...