Bøger af David Boyle

Great Inventions in 30 Seconds looks at fifty groundbreaking innovations - together with the individuals behind the ideas - that really have changed the world.

Join the adventurous residents of No.7 Rexville as they navigate the challenges and joys of daily life. From new friendships to unexpected setbacks, every day is an adventure in this charming tale. David Boyle's witty prose and relatable characters will keep you engaged from start to finish, and leave you feeling uplifted and inspired. This book is a must-read for anyone looking for a heartwarming story and a reminder of the power of community.This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Pilgrim's Way, the ancient thoroughfare between Winchester and Canterbury - but how did it become a symbol of resistance to those who wanted to withdraw from Europe? That is what Adrian Matinson tries to discover after his friend is found dead on the Way, leaving behind him a series of scribbled clues, which Adrian must follow to find the bizarre truth, and to save himself. What he discovers is an ancient quango, the Office of the Defender of the Faith. And they have plans for him - and for the Old Road too. Unless Adrian can solve the puzzle before it is too late. A fascinating chase, and a medieval mystery brought roughly into the present during the 2016 European referendum. A thrilling read which also sheds some light onto the truth about Brexit, Britain and its disputed history.

September 1938. Hitler is poised to send his troops into Czechoslovakia, which is expected to lead to a wider European war. His generals are poised to remove him from power when he orders war. But somehow, none of these things took place. Instead, in an extraordinary series of betrayals, and three dramatic nail-biting diplomatic summits, the British and French gave Hitler everything he asked for. The Second World War was averted, but only for a year. David Boyle's gripping, hour-by-hour account tells the story as it seemed at the time, so that we can make up our own minds about the controversial - and probably naive - decision by prime minister Neville Chamberlain to fly to Germany three times, to meet Hitler and to bring back what he believed was "peace for our time". Munich 1938: Prelude to War relates the tale of the huge efforts by appeasers and anti-appeasers, like Halifax and Churchill, the diplomats, translators and spies, and the heroic plotters who were hoping to assassinate Hitler before it was too late. We may never agree about what we think now about the Munich conference - whether it was betrayal or breathing space before war - but we can hear the story, and learn from it. So that we never make the same mistakes again.

It is more than two centuries since William Blake penned the lines we now know as Jerusalem. It took half that time before Hubert Parry wrote the soaring music that went with it. The book sets out the strange, spiritual history of the song which looks set to be England's new national anthem.

Three non-fiction books in one edition - from the criminalisation of homosexuality in the 1880s to the world of radical psychiatry and LSD in the 1960s, and all studies of people who were able to see the world differently. Scandal visits Dublin in 1884 when the public furore about homosexuality in high places led to its criminalisation across the UK, seen though the eyes of one of those closely involved - the author's great-great-grandfather. V for Victory introduces us to the maverick operation of the BBC European Service in the Second World War and the most successful radio propaganda campaign ever organised, in the teeth of opposition from the establishment. Ronald Laing looks at the extraordinary achievements of the radical psychiatrist R D Laing, doubting, experimenting and fighting his own profession to make them more humane.

The capture of a working Enigma coding machine from the sinking U110 in May 1941, the pursuit of the battleship Bismarck later the same month, and the reason why British naval cryptographers won stole a march - when their own naval code had been cracked by the other side.

Rupert Brooke defies categorisation, even a century after his death. He was both romantic and a cynic, a radical and a conservative patriot, a passionate lover and a shy emotional bully with a horror of the physicality of sex. Yet is remains one of the few poets of his generation to still capture people's imagination today. In this brief biography, David Boyle pinpoints the real Brooke and tells the haunting story of the final few weeks of his life - and how quickly after his death he became a legend, and a symbol of something he may not have quite intended.

Dunkirk has gone into British history as a myth, with its patient queuing on the beaches, its ferry boats and stew in cocktail glasses. We have forgotten the blood, thirst and desperation, and the extraordinary feat of organisation. This day-by-day account puts the story back in context. It records those crucial nine days in summer, looking not just at the beaches, the rearguard, the naval operation and the little ships, but at what was happening in the military headquarters, in the cabinets in London and Paris, and how people felt at the time about what was taking place - events that were to change Europe and the UK forever. It reveals not just a miracle, but an amazing feat of administration and endurance, that made the reputation of one man in particular - Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay.

Caractacus: Book Two'The struggle against oppression had me rooting for Caractacus.' Alistair Forrest, author of Libertas 44AD. Caractacus, the British war leader, has been beaten into a corner and his brother, the previous high king, has changed sides in despair. The island of Albion is split down the middle, along the line of the old Fosse Way. If Caractacus engages the Romans on the battlefield, his people will be slaughtered. If not, then he will have to accept the enemy's increasing presence in his country. So, what should the leader of the British nations do? To add to his trials, the soldier's old enemy returns, Scapula. The Roman officer, who murdered his sister, is out for blood. The son of the new Roman governor has the will and means to hunt Caractacus down - to end his tribe and their peaceful, civilised way of life. As Caractacus sets up his headquarters in Caer Leon, another factor comes in to play - the early Christians and relatives of Christ himself have begun to settle in southern Siluria. Are the Romans actually there to root them out? Heavy is the head that wears the crown.Caractacus and those other Britons determined to reject Roman domination find themselves forced into battle - on a distant, but well-defended hillfort - in Ordovicia. The fate of a man - and his tribe - hang in the balance.David Boyle is a British author and journalist who writes mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business, and culture.

"We returned to our loved ones, but we were never the same again. Most were markedly changed. Young boys had become mature older men, aged beyond their years. All because of those days in the sea." For five days near the end of the Second World War, the USS Indianapolis disappeared from the map. After being hit by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, the warship sank within twelve minutes: 900 men out of a crew of 1200 managed to jump free. But by the time they were found, all that time later, the survivors had plummeted to just 316 men. The story of how that happened, and how the few that remained of her crew were eventually rescued from the mid-Pacific, have become one of the most enduring - and notorious - of wartime sea stories. But the meaning of the Indianapolis goes beyond a simple sinking. What makes the story of this American warship so compelling is that it was important in so many ways. It was the flagship of the fighting admiral Raymond Spruance, in 1943-44, during the crucial battles to control the central Pacific. It delivered the key components of the first atomic bomb dropped in anger, in this case on Hiroshima. It was the greatest single loss of life at sea in an American naval disaster at war. It goes down in history as the biggest attack by sharks on human beings ever recorded. It also became a huge scandal as naval authorities tried to cover-up what had gone wrong, and why the crew had been inadvertently left to die. This book is designed to interweave all these themes to provide a short and informative, and above all, readable, guide to the Indianapolis story, and to also tell the intertwined tales of the two men at the heart of the story: Captain Charles McVay and the man who sank the ship, Mochitsura Hashimoto.

New Year 1915. The world is locked in a terrible conflict, and Winston Churchill has conceived of a bold plan. Constantinople would be seized and Turkey knocked out of the war. The key is the Dardanelles. The British submarine E14 approached the portal of the Ottoman Empire, viewing the ominous darkness from its small conning tower, eight feet above the waves. Its commander, Courtney Boyle, had told his superiors he thought the voyage - probably the longest dive ever contemplated in a submarine - was impossible. It would also take him past the wreckage of the submarines that had tried to pass that way in the days before: their dead buried on the beach, their survivors in captivity. The crew had said their goodbyes. They had written their farewell letters and given them into safekeeping, knowing that the chances were now against their survival. This book sets out what happened next and tells the story of the pioneering submarines of the Dardanelles.

The real, explosive story of the Southern Railways crisis, by the blogger whose posts were read by over 100,000 in a few days of rage and disruption. 10p of the sale price of every copy sold goes to the Railway Benefit Fund. It's a surprising read, and you have the added satisfaction of knowing that the rail managers don't want you to read it! Researched, written and published in a few days at the heart of the unravelling of the Southern Railways franchise, this book explains clearly what is actually happening and why. It follows the extraordinary response to a series of blog posts written by the author and explains what happened as a result. It tells the real story, assigns blame and sets out why we need to be very worried indeed.

Exactly a century ago, the soldiers on both sides of the opposing lines came out of the trenches, sang and played football, sometimes for more than a week. It was one of the strangest, most inspiring, most controversial but spontaneous acts of war. But there remain unanswered, and sometimes uncomfortable, questions. This book uses first-hand accounts to answer some of them and explain why these extraordinary events took place.

"There was a moment at the height of the Battle of Shrewsbury when it looked as though everyone, every knight and archer, every nobleman and peasant, would die there on that field of peas outside the city...." The battle that decided the fate of the Lancastrian regime in July 1403 is remembered by Battlefield Church, the medieval place of worship that was built on the site of the battle that killed Harry Hotspur and paved the way for his protege Henry V to become king. It is also remembered as the crisis in William Shakespeare's play Henry IV Part I. But so much else about this critical battle in English history has been forgotten - the fact that, for the first time, the longbowmen, which had made English armies so feared in other countries, were unleashed against each other. And the bitter rivalry between the two cities at the heart of the battle. This book is sold in aid of the church and tells the whole story of the Battle of Shrewsbury, and the life and death of the towering figures involved.

How did the British codebreakers succeed in cracking the apparently unbreakable Enigma code during the Second World War? Was it their gifted amateurism? The brilliance of Alan Turing? The invention of the very first computers? Or the pioneering work of Polish cryptographers? It was all of the above. But there is one other crucial factor, which is much less well known. The same team had done it before. The truth is that many of those most closely involved in cracking the Enigma code - Alistair Denniston, Frank Birch, Dilly Knox - had wrestled with German naval codes for most of the First World War. By the end of the war they had been successfully cracking a new code every day, from their secret Room 40 at the Old Admiralty Building, in a London blacked out for Zeppelin Raids. The techniques they developed then, the ideas that they came to rely on, the people they came to trust, had been developed the hard way, under intense pressure and absolute secrecy during World War I. Before Enigma tells their story and explains how they managed to crack the supposedly indecipherable code. The book outlines the capture of the Magdeburg and the Hobart, discusses the use of cracked codes to bring German fleets to battle at Dogger Bank and Jutland, and focuses on individuals such as Winston Churchill and Admiral Sir Reginald 'Blinker' Hall and their importance in the development of a British naval code tradition.

We have been through modernism. And post-modernism has already become the cultural norm - a sure sign that its power may be ebbing. But what is 'The Age To Come'? In this provocative, stimulating collection of essays David Boyle examines trends in the arts, business, academia and government to draw a map of the world our children will be living in. The way we all live our lives is dominated by sweeping philosophical trends covering culture, politics and morality. The age of post-modernism with its shiny, glitzy, ironic and media savvy jokes, fakery and moral relativism has been dominant for three decades. But the first shoots are emerging of a new age which looks set to sweep it away. It will be based on depth, authenticity and human relationships - and it will change the lives of our children completely. In 'The Age to Come', David Boyle heralds this emerging paradigm, explains what it means and why it is coming - and, in a series of cutting edge essays, predicts where it will take us.

Thomas Edison is a detailed and insightful account of the life and times of one of the greatest minds in American history, and suggests the unique ways in which Edison managed to accomplish one of the most coveted attainments in our human lives: originality.What was it about Edison's life and character that shaped him into one of the world's most prolific inventors, and father of the phonograph, motion picture camera and electric lightbulb, to name a few of his greatest achievements? In this biography, David Boyle gives a revealing portrait of Edison's life and temperament, and the events of the time that fostered his remarkable feats.Edison was, from childhood, a business mind and opportunist, having conducted a newspaper-selling business on the local railway as a boy. He applied this entrepreneurial instinct later in life, to the competitive business of patenting inventions and staying ahead of his fellow inventors. This enterprising predisposition was just one of the components to Edison's remarkable genius.The inspiration that literally lit up the world was born, in part, out of Edison's methodical approach to problem-solving, and relentless questioning. He realized it was not sufficient to observe that a method hadn't worked; the valuable question was why? By quantifying his successes and failures, and constantly revisiting failures until they were resolved, Edison stayed ahead of the innovation game.It was his dogged determination to discover solutions that affected Edison's marriage and home life, as his commitment to work was all too often at the expense of the familial kind. Boyle sheds light on why Edison was often seen as a difficult man, by his dejected first wife Mary Stilwell, his colleagues and competitors.Lesser known about Edison are his revolutionary ideas on the economy, and his condemnation of debt-based money and the subsequent interest rates incurred. Boyle reveals Edison's proposals for economic reform; all the more poignant when reading in our age of national debt and failed money lending.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Featured in the new film Mad to be Normal, the radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing took the world by storm in the 1960s and 1970s with his ideas about madness, families and people's need for authenticity. At the height of his fame he could fill stadiums like Bob Dylan, and often did so. He became an icon of the movement that held psychiatry to be an agency of repression, his phrases on a million hippy T-shirts. Then he fell from grace, flung out of the medical profession, and his influence has been waning since. His basic ideas have been regarded as having been discredited. Yet, despite this, his influence is also everywhere - but largely unnoticed and unremarked. This book tells the extraordinary human story of his struggle, first with the authorities as a psychiatrist in the army and then a series of mental hospitals. It explains his extraordinary influence in the context of the upheavals of those psychedelic days - and it looks at what we can still learn from Laing today. Boyle finds he still has an unexpectedly potent message.

The extraordinary, untold story of the greatest piece of radio propaganda ever created - the V for Victory campaign - designed to shape a sense of resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe. It was propaganda made by amateurs but was so successful that Churchill and de Gaulle both adopted the V sign, and Goebbels had to hit back with his own V campaign. The book also explains how it was the BBC, without reference to higher authority, rejected Hitler's peace offer of July 1940, immediately and insultingly - to the horror of both the British and German foreign offices. At the start of 1941, Britain stood alone and a great silence fell over occupied Europe. What were they thinking? Did they want to resist? Nobody knew - nor did they know how to build up the confidence of the occupied peoples so that, one day, they might want to fight back. The result was an extraordinary radio campaign, broadcast from London, and led by a man known to the world as 'Colonel Britton'. The V campaign caught the imagination of people around the world. It gave Churchill and de Gaulle their hand gestures. It inflamed what was already an almighty propaganda battle over the airwaves. But it was also furiously controversial in London, as rival government departments struggled to assert control over broadcasts to occupied Europe. This book tells the amazing story of how a radio campaign was able to shape resistance to the Nazis, and how and why - for a brief moment in time - Britain spoke fearlessly, passionately and positively to Europe.

This is an essential handbook - a supportive, realistic and practical 'how to' guide for 21st century families for dealing with the knotty issue of how to regulate how much time children spend online or on social media. Meet some of the families - Tiger Mum, who harnesses the internet to increase her children's potential, or the Low Tech Parents who want to shield their children from technology for as long as they can. This is not a guide to online safety, which is well-covered elsewhere. Instead, this books helps navigate research, some of it alarming, some of it reassuring, to help parents find a way through - so that children can avoid addiction, enjoy the world around them, but also enjoy themselves online. The problem is that, without anyone realising the implications, technology is now at the heart of family life - and parents are struggling to stay ahead of the digital wave that is changing both our lives and those of our children's, forever. But they have in many ways been abandoned to deal with the lure of the online world alone. They face the sheer power of the internet companies by themselves. Schools and governments alike encourage children to spend their lives online, yet many of the internet founders - including Steve Jobs himself - rigorously restricted their own children's tech exposure.

It's a paradox. Liberals are everywhere. In every political party, socialists and conservatives alike. Yet Liberal democracy is struggling across Europe and its new form is yet to be re-born. This book provides a vision of what that re-born version could look like. The authors argue for the current bland, politically correct, compromising Liberalism that comes across as a weak-willed lack of conviction to be reborn as something clearer and fiercer. One that re-discovers its radical roots and is decisive in constructing an open society, that discards the top-down bureaucratic form of government and replaces it with one that is open to challenge from below. They cast this vision into the context of the history of political Liberalism and mesh it with the rapid changes we are seeing in contemporary culture. This is a book for anyone, whatever their chosen political party affiliation, who cares deeply about the revival of European liberal democracy in the face of an extremist challenge.