Tom Quinn Livres

Following on from the hugely successful London's Strangest Tales, Tom Quinn plunges even deeper into the endlessly beguiling past of one of the world's greatest capitals, and once more unpicks the quirkiest tales that characterise London.Why would Winston Churchill ask to be lowered in a bucket into the sewers of London? Why is the name George so important to certain elitist London clubs? Why did the market for human teeth become such a booming industry? As with many old cities, a wealth of bizarre and astonishing tales makes up the history of London: stories ranging from the churches and streets of the city to the incredible actions of monarchs and mavericks.Inside these pages you will uncover the stories of a king who enjoyed cross-dressing and the schoolboys who played football with a pancake; you will learn which prestigious department store once sold cocaine over the counter and why Napoleon's nose is built into the structure of Admiralty Arch. More London's Strangest Tales promises to be an incredible collection of the weird and wonderful, a city guide proving once and for all that truth is stranger than fiction.Tom Quinn is the author of many titles including London’s Strangest Tales, Backstairs Billy: The Life of William Tallon, the Queen Mother's most Devoted Servant, and The Cook’s Tale: Life Below Stairs as it Really Was. He also writes occasional obituaries for the Times and edits Country Business magazine.

Tom Quinn charts the history of angling in art from its earliest beginnings in ancient Egypt, Greece and China, through the golden age in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the prolific artists of modern times.

Barking Mad taps into the British passion for dogs by bringing together a unique collection of extraordinary, touching and sometimes bizarre but true stories covering sporting dogs (and hounds) military mascots, eccentric companions, war heroes and Royal dogs.

Here are stories of the Midland and Great Northern Railway - known to its staff as the 'Muddle and Get Nowhere Railway' - where drivers were not unknown to stop their trains near Sandringham to help themselves to the odd rabbit from a poacher's snare, and of young engine cleaners' pranks that blew up the cabin stove by dropping a detonator down its chimney. And, above all, here is the subtle, sooty, hot and sweaty art of firing and driving a great steam locomotive, with its glowing firebox, Yorkshire Hard steam coal, and gleaming brass. For anyone who looks at a lovingly restored steam engine on one of Britain's preserved lines and wonders what it was like in the days when such great beasts would have been hard at work, More Tales of the Old Railwaymen will be a wonderfully nostalgic evocation of a vanished world.

Secret Britain is an exploration of the fascinating and beautiful, yet more obscure and less-visited, corners of the country. Landscapes and heritage sites that receive little coverage in more conventional guides are revealed here in all their glory, and there is a diverse range of locations to suit every mood.

A quirky collection of true stories from the stranger side of the world's railways, featuring weird weather conditions, audacious robberies, hair- raising accidents, vanishing passengers, an infestation of maggots and a mysterious missing mummy.

Born in 1910 Rose Plummer grew up in an East End slum. At the age of fifteen she left the noise and squalor of Hoxton and started work as a live-in maid at a house in the West End.

Nancy Jackman was born in 1907 in a remote Norfolk village. Her father was a ploughman, her mother a former servant who struggled to make ends meet in a cottage so small that access to the single upstairs room was via a ladder. The pace of life in that long-vanished world was dictated by the slow, heavy tread of the farm horse and though Nancy's earliest memories were of a green, sunny countryside still unspoiled by the motorcar, she also knew at first hand the harshness of a world where the elderly were forced to break stones on the roads and where school children were regularly beaten. Nancy left school at the age of twelve to work for a local farmer who forced her to stand in the rain when she made a mistake, physically abused her and eventually tried to rape her. Nancy continued to work as a cook until the 1950s, sustained by her determination to escape and find a life of her own. The Cook's Tale shows you life below stairs as it really was and is perfect for fans of Downton Abbey. Part of the Lives of Servants series. Other titles in the series are: The Maid's Tale, They Also Serve and Cocoa at Midnight.

George Orwell once said that the British love a really good murder. He might have added that the only thing the British love more than a good murder is a really good scandal, and best of all are the sexual and political scandals that take place behind the gilded doors of Britain's royal palaces.

More extraordinary but true tales from London's history, featuring a mysterious mummy housed in a City church, a TARDIS at Earl's Court, and why the mulberry tree in the gardens at Buckingham Palace isn't quite what it was supposed to be.