Bøger udgivet af Youcaxton

In spite of failing all three sea trials, in late 1853 the SS San Francisco set off on her maiden voyage. She was carrying a US Army regiment from New York to California by way of Cape Horn and was heavily overloaded. Two days out, she had the misfortune to run into the worst storm of the century. Her engines failed and then an enormous wave swept over the decks, taking with it about 140 souls, the lifeboats and all the auxiliary sails, leaving her completely disabled. Two ships found the SS San Francisco but sailed away and a third managed to rescue about a hundred people before the storm tore the two vessels apart. Then cholera struck. All that stood between the survivors and almost certain death was Scotsman Robert Crighton, Captain of the Three Bells. His ship had also been badly battered by the storm, but he stayed beside the stricken vessel for four days, risking the lives of everyone on board his own ship and jettisoning most of his cargo. Using chalked boards held up by the crew, he sent the San Francisco a message later immortalised by Walt Whitman, ?Be of good cheer, we will stand by you? Eventually, and with the help of another ship, all were rescued. Robert, to his great surprise, became an overnight hero - in America. What happened on his return to Scotland was another matter. With meticulous research and using contemporary documents, Clare Abbott has pieced together Robert's fascinating life, the life of a Victorian sea captain who sailed the world in the great age of Empire. It is a story of outstanding courage and love but also of greed, betrayal and hypocrisy.

Ask most people about pounds and pinfolds and they look blank. They may not have noticed the small, round or rectangular building that likely stands at the edge of their village. And yet these modest structures, now often reduced to piles of stones, were once an essential part of rural life in what is now Cumbria. They were where stray stock, and any animal found grazing on land for which its owner had no proper grazing rights, were once confined - until the owner paid a fine imposed by the local court. For hill-farmers and others, pounds or pinfolds were indispensable for ensuring community harmony. In this scholarly and well-researched account, Nigel Mills provides us with a comprehensive and unique insight into a little-considered aspect of our rural heritage and into the way of life of the men and women who farmed our hills in days gone by. It will be of great interest to local historians and to all who take an interest in the social history of Cumbria.

A unique and vivid first hand account of a young soldier, one of the millions who fought in World War I. Walter Williams volunteered at age fifteen and after completing his initial training in Shrewsbury, passed through the notorious training camp at Etaples before being plunged into the horrors of trench warfare. He fought in some of the major battles of the war including Passchendaele, the Somme and Vimy Ridge - and was badly wounded during the final attack on the Hindenburg line in September 1918, when he was hit by machine-gun fire from an enemy plane. After spending some months in a French hospital in Dieppe, he was repatriated to England where he made a full recovery. Walter's story was captured on an ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder during long conversations with his two nephews, Michael and Derek, who went on to research and verify the events he described before producing this remarkable story. Walter died in 1998, by which time he was one of the last veterans of World War I.

This book contains amazing stories from years gone by. From the rich and powerful Pargeter family living in England whose daughter Amy married Lawrence Washington from another well-to-do family, I have researched the Washington family back to 1193, to where they originated, in Northumberland in England - generations later Lawrence and Amy's seven-times grandson George would make history by becoming the first president of the U.S.A. We hear of the glass pioneers in the Dudley area of England and about their remake of the amazing Portland Vase. There are stories of churches, including one that was burned down by order of the suffragettes - the whole church along with the registers and irreplaceable items lost forever. From power and riches through to poverty and destitution, all human life is here. Some of my ancestors ended up in the dreaded workhouse with absolutely nothing. There are stories from WW1 and WW2, and stories of Germany and of my mother who, thankfully, avoided the death camps whilst others including her friends did not. At the end of the book there is a host of wills, obtained from all over England, from so many different places from so many different people

Why do some people reject the sexed bodies they were born into and transform themselves into women? Are the brains of men and women different? Is gender identity fixed at birth, is it learned behaviour or is it socially constructed? In Virtual Women, social anthropologist Anne Beaumont shows us that the answers to these prickly questions lie as much in the sphere of cultural difference as in that of science, and she constructs a new framework for gendering the body - one that centres solely on the individual. Virtual Women takes us from England to Thailand, to the twilight zone of the bars where genders blend into a human hybrid - the Ladyboys (Kathoey) of Thailand who live betwixt and between in sex. Drawing on extensive empirical research and on interviews with Kathoey and with British transsexual women and with the surgeons and psychiatrists involved, Virtual Women brings a new understanding of the transgender phenomenon: '... no matter what the outer appearances, I never felt like a man...' '... in my heart I am a woman. One hundred per cent, I am a woman...' '... my papa told me, "you can do what you want with your body, but you can't change your heart. You have a good heart. Nothing can change that..."' '...wearing male clothing made me feel physically sick...' '... No! We are not men, we are not women; we are Ladyboys, that's what we are!'