Bøger af Stephen Roberts

This entertaining book provides a vivid, month-by-month portrait of life in Birmingham in one year - 1889, the year city status was awarded by Queen Victoria. Drawing on the city's famous satirical magazines and the correspondence columns of its leading morning newspaper, this account reveals what Brums most enjoyed doing (going to the pantomime and the circus, day trips to Llandudno, watching the Villa win at Perry Barr) and what they most moaned about (noisy and expensive trams, naked bathing in the canals, watching the Villa lose at Perry Barr). Readers will meet the rather stern town clerk Edward Orford Smith, the first black pastor in the city Peter Stanford, the Shah of Persia, Austen Chamberlain and Billy Poole, who appeared before the magistrates for being drunk and disorderly on no fewer than 170 occasions. The book is illustrated with ten photographs and ten cartoons relating to Brum in 1889.

This book offers readers an absorbing portrait of Birmingham's nineteenth century. It provides eyewitness accounts of the main events and personalities of the time. These twenty-five autobiographical articles were originally published in the Birmingham Gazette and Express in 1907-9, but have been long forgotten. In bringing them back to attention, the editor provides fascinating glimpses into life in Victorian Birmingham. Who knew that the town famous for brass bedsteads, buttons and glass produced a prize-winning strawberry? Or that a leading politician, wounded at being described as the ugliest man in Birmingham, set out to find a man who was even uglier? 'Stephen Roberts is an indefatigable and dedicated researcher of Victorian Birmingham. His knowledge is deep and wide-ranging yet he succeeds in sharing his expertise in an accessible and engaging way through his engrossing books and lively talks.' - Carl Chinn.

"My soul is a window slightly ajar and I spy a wandering star I can finally breathe my wish upon." "As a poet and a writer I often feel like I am scribbling on a sidewalk full of tiny cracks. From these small fissures, thoughts and concepts and possibilities fizzle up through my concrete-dull mind - a small word, a metaphor, a fragment of a phrase - and sometimes I am awake enough to notice them and write them down." This new collection of poetry attempts to capture that sudden glance from darkness into a brighter light which brings an all-together different way of looking at reality. There will forever remain an invitation for all of us to break free from our limitations so often bound by our narcissistic triteness and experience the wonder of life in all its possibilities.

'We launched the Great Eastern and she launched us' - Sir Richard Tangye. In January 1858 Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Eastern, at that point the largest ship ever built, was, after several failed attempts, finally launched into the Thames. The powerful hydraulic jacks that enabled the ship to get afloat were manufactured by Tangye Brothers of Birmingham. For this firm of Cornish-born engineers the launch of this great ship was the breakthrough they had been waiting for. By the end of the nineteenth century the Tangye Brothers' business employed 2000 workers and had come a long way from a packing room divided into two by brown paper stretched over a wooden frame. The life-story of Richard Tangye was held up in Victorian Britain as an outstanding example of what a man could achieve by determination, single-mindedness and sheer hard work. Born in a cottage in a small village near Redruth, he died in a mansion near the Thames. Tangye was undoubtedly a brilliant entrepreneur, but, as he acknowledged, his brothers were also brilliant engineers. Bound together by family ties, the talented Tangye Brothers created one of the most famous industrial success stories of the nineteenth century. Using autobiographies, periodicals and letters from the time, this book tells the story of how five brothers, with Richard leading the way, left Cornwall to establish a great engineering company, how they became generous benefactors in their adopted town, establishing the Art Gallery and School of Art, and how, in search of profits and adventure, they travelled across the globe. The reader will be left in no doubt as to why Richard Tangye was known as 'the foremost Cornish man of his day'.

Awareness: Conversations on Grace, Awakening, and Breaking Free from Religion is about finding that profound place of contentment. As a grace filled awareness rises in your heart you can be guaranteed one thing: you will never look at life the same way you always have. The writhes and twists that self-inflicted religion can impose on our inner life are both addictive and disturbing - sapping our spirits like a corrosive vapor oozing out of our limited perceptions. We hear a lot about awareness, enlightenment, or awakening - what do we really understand by those terms and how does that integrate in the day to day life of the average person as they go to work, feed the dog, and navigate hectic traffic on a crowded city street? Is awareness all about that mountain-top experience but of no real practical benefit? Do we all need to find a lonely wooden cabin and retire there for the next 30 years in solitude and bliss? What if awareness is not what we have been led to believe? What if God is not as complicated as we think he is? What if God is actually nice? Perhaps the human race, through our matrix of shame, brokenness and determined efforts to appease a deity (any deity will do) have complicated the simplicity, joy, and freedom of walking in divine love. In Steve's ongoing fashion of 'thinking outside the box' here is a patchwork of parables and reflections to help draw us away from the shadowy mausoleum of religious angst.

Sir Benjamin Stone lived a full life, and was certainly a more contented man than his restless Birmingham contemporary Joseph Chamberlain. Elected to Parliament in 1895, Stone would have been an undistinguished backbencher had it not been for his camera. On the terrace of the House of Commons he lined up his fellow-MPs and various interesting visitors to have their pictures taken. Dubbed 'Sir Snapshot' by the press, he became in these years the most well-known amateur photographer in the country. Stone was an intrepid traveller too, embarking - equipped, of course, with his camera - on a voyage around the world in 1891 and a journey of almost one thousand miles up the Amazon in 1893. He was also an insatiable collector, particularly of botanical and geological specimens and a shrewd businessman, with investments in glass and paper manufacture and house-building and quarrying. Stone was also a Tory politician. He doggedly promoted the Tory cause in Liberal-dominated Birmingham in the 1870s and early 1880s, and, after the Liberal rupture over Irish Home Rule in 1886, became an equally-determined supporter of the new Unionist alliance.Drawing on newspapers and his own extensive personal papers, this is the first biography of Sir Benjamin Stone to be written. It is published to mark the centenary of his death.The volume includes twenty rarely-seen or previously unpublished photographs by Sir Benjamin Stone

'Now, Mr Editor! I should very much like to know who is to blame ...' Birmingham Journal, 24 February 1838. This book was inspired by one letter to a newspaper. In January 1842 a correspondent to one of the Birmingham newspapers expressed his view that police constables, when they had nothing else to do, should be instructed to clear the foot paths of snow. From this unintentionally amusing letter grew this project, which collects together over sixty letters published in Aris's Birmingham Gazette and the Birmingham Journal from 1820 to 1850. Correspondents wrote in to their newspapers to complain about prostitution, bull-baiting, the state of their streets, the shortcomings of their police constables, the cost and comfort of railway travel and that most dangerous preacher George Dawson. Taken together these letters provide a fascinating insight into life in Birmingham in the first half of the nineteenth century. The letters are accompanied Eliezer Edwards' splendid essay describing Birmingham in the late 1830s. This essay has been edited, and extensive footnotes provide much detail about the people and places mentioned by Edwards.

In British provincial newspapers in the 1860s and 1870s brief reports began to appear informing readers that a number of writers, ministers and schoolmasters had been awarded LL.D degrees from Tusculum College in the United States. Correspondents to the newspapers began to query these degrees, claiming that they could not find Tusculum on the map. In fact Tusculum College did exist, and after the devastation of the Civil War, began to raise funds by selling degrees overseas to men deemed worthy of them. This pamphlet tells the story of this extraordinary saga. The autodidact, poet and radical John Alfred Langford (1823-1903) was one recipient of a Tusculum LL.D. He was deeply proud of the honour, recording it on the title pages of his books and even on his census returns. This pamphlet examines the routes taken by this remarkable working man into journalism, literature and radical politics, and the part he played in promoting the famous Civic Gospel which transformed Birmingham into 'the best-governed city in the world'. This account draws on a recently-located cache of Langford's correspondence, and offers the first full picture of his life. Stephen Roberts is Visiting Research Fellow in Victorian History at Newman University, Birmingham. He has written or edited a number of books on Chartism and related subjects.

In his day the Victorian businessman Charles Seely was known as 'Pigs'. It has long been believed that this nickname was derived from his refusal to bring to an end a contract supplying the Admiralty with iron ballast when it no longer needed it. It's a great story, but that's what it is ... a story. This is the first biography of Charles Seely and the authors reveal the real reason why Seely became known as 'Pigs'. The book tells a remarkable story. Seely was a man of great ambition and enterprise and he drove hard bargains. He rose from being co-partner in a corn mill to being the owner of mines and landed estates that brought him immense wealth. The 'Baker's Boy' from Lincoln lived at a prestigious address in London and owned a beautiful country house on the Isle of Wight, where he played host to Garibaldi. An independently-minded Liberal, Seely represented Lincoln in the House of Commons for almost a quarter of a century. This book offers something of interest to all those fascinated by our Victorian predecessors.

During the second half of the nineteenth century the country houses of leading statesmen became part of the political vocabulary. Gladstone's Hawarden, Disraeli's Hughenden, Salisbury's Hatfield House would all have been familiar place names to those who took an interest in politics. As a man with great ambitions for himself in the political world, and with a son who was being made ready to follow in his footsteps, Joseph Chamberlain wished to own a house that reflected his status and importance. The result was Highbury, situated several miles south of the town centre, which became the Birmingham home for Chamberlain and his family in 1880. But Highbury was more than a family home; it was also a public symbol, a physical reminder of Joe's national importance and local political control. Statesmen regularly arrived to be entertained and to formulate their political plans at Highbury, and were photographed on the terrace which overlooked the magnificent gardens, another feature designed to impress. The house and gardens were widely written about in the newspapers and magazines of the day. This essay, drawing on this material and personal recollections, offers a glimpse into life in a very public private house.

"Half poet, half mad, half terrified, half ecstatic. Exhausted at the beauty of words, fascinated that I still haven't a clue what's going on..." Flight means movement upon the wind, and lately Lady Wind has been up to something grand. I think she is crying with delight at what is unfolding around us. We think it is hazy with smoke, but it is merely the inner eye getting used to a new sight beyond a plastic and neon spirituality. Oxygen can get in through your open window, and when it does you will take off your shoes, put down your basket of plucked blackberries, and sit before the majestic fires of the universe. If you would rather buy a book of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning at this point, I understand. Honesty and humility are never easy for self-absorbed poets who sneak about on a thin slab of emotional ice-they think they are adept at compassion, wicked in wit, and living on the edge of a more sane world. They could also be tragically wrong, so pay no attention whatsoever to them. In Flight, Steve presents another collection of word sculptures, poetics, and reflective nudges towards awakening, trying to be as honest and as real as a shifting beam of sunlight.

This book is made up of five biographical studies ranging across the trades of nineteenth century Birmingham. As well as the lead chapter about the pen maker Joseph Gillott, there are essays on the brass founder Robert Walter Winfield, the glass manufacturer Rice Harris, the button and electroplate manufacturer James Deykin and the rule manufacturer John Rabone. The antiquarian J.A. Langford - himself once a chair maker - was much impressed by a description of what was manufactured in Birmingham in one week in the 1870s: 'A week's work in Birmingham, in its aggregate results, is something wonderful. It comprises the fabrication of 14,000,000 of pens, 6,000 bedsteads, 7,000 guns, 300,000 of cut nails, 100,000,000 of buttons, 1,000 saddles, 5,000,000 of copper and bronze coins, 20,000 pairs of spectacles, 6 tons of papier mache ware, £30,000 worth of jewellery, 4,000 miles of iron and steel wire, 10 tons of pins, 5 tons of hair pins, hooks, eyes and eyelets, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts, screw bolts, spikes and rivets, 50 tons of wrought iron hinges, 350 miles length of wax for vestas, 40 tons of refined metal, 40 tons of German silver, 1,000 dozen of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 1,000 roasting jacks, 150 sewing machines, 800 tons of brass and copper wares, besides the almost endless multitude of miscellaneous articles of which no statistics can be given, but which, like those enumerated, find employment for hundreds and thousands of busy hands, and are destined to supply the manifold wants of humanity from China to Peru.'

What happened to the Chartists after the movement was over? Many local spokesmen in fact remained prominent figures in their communities - and carried the principles they had fought for in the 1840s into their later careers. This book tells the stories of two such men who became, respectively, a town councillor and a minister in Birmingham. James Whateley spoke up for working men in the council chamber. He called for polling hours to be extended into the evenings to increase working class participation; and he campaigned on behalf of postmen who made up to eight deliveries a day and who, faced with few letter boxes, had to wait for each door to be opened. Charles Clarke, from his pulpit, inspired members of his congregation to enter local politics and improve their town - six of them became mayors - and campaigned for free, compulsory, secular schooling for working class children. The book is illustrated with twelve contemporary cartoons and photographs.

"The mystics get it-everyone one else fights about it." Illumina is a provocative collection of thoughts, poetry, and reflections-an energising tumble of ideas retelling old wonders in a modern poetic cant. Illumina forges the often-broken words of poetry with the speech of wonder, much like an audacious moon, pausing for a moment in the stillness, waits for you to see for the first time. If we remain still long enough, we may glimpse the beauty of a rare light and discover how deep that light actually goes within the human soul. Like his previous books, here again Steve presents a patchwork of words that delight to bathe you in their sacred white waters. Your thoughts are primed and poised, ready to discover the world of Illumina.

Teaching and dating for an average, middle-aged guy can be rough at times. Throughout the years, things that help shape our lives happen and leave us standing there thinking this can't be real. Well, they are real. These are the stories of my life through two different views. One as an educator and one as a single guy.

Ego prefers to think it is awake, aware, and awash in truth. It mimics divine rest in chains of servitude, running a religious sweatshop beside the river of good intentions. I do not believe this is who we are, and the words of the 70+ poems herein reflect part of that discovery. I have seen them emerge out of a spiritual struggle with the unfamiliar. Soul-reflection, as a form of solitude, is a lost art in these days of ultra-connectedness, and while I don't bemoan the beauty of the global community and networking that is happening on so many levels, I do think there's a need to step back from it on a regular basis. Words have been my enemies as much as they have been my friends - ego, identity, and frustration still provoke me deeply - they are articulated within these works, but there is also a longing for freedom for all humanity that is central to the profound experience of divine love.

The Chartist Movement has attracted a great deal of interest from scholars. Lists of primary and secondary sources have filled two volumes. This volume is intended as a supplement to The Chartist Movement: A New Annotated Bibliography (1995), edited by Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson and Stephen Roberts. There is no overlap. It lists manuscript material located in the last quarter of a century - including petitions, letters and sketches - and the many books, articles and theses that have been produced. For all those interested in Chartism, this book is indispensable.

This book tells the story of Sutton Coldfield between 1800 and 1914. With a focus on the struggles to bring to an end the self-appointed corporation, the arrival of the railway, shops, schools, law and order and leisure, it is a work of social history. During the period that this book covers, Sutton was transformed beyond any origins asa mere suburb of Birmingham. It could fairly be said that more of consequence happened in Sutton in the nineteenth century than any preceding century, including the sixteenth century when Bishop Vesey secured a royal charter. The book includes many contemporary images.

'By the gains of Industry, we promote Art' 'In Birmingham you may generally recognise a board school by it being the best building in the neighbourhood, with its lofty towers, gabled windows, warm red bricks and stained glass.' So observed the Pall Mall Gazette in 1894. The famous civic gospel shaped Birmingham

A full portrait of the complex and brilliant Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca.

The peopleAs charter was the most famous and important radical manifesto of 19th century Britain.