Norwich in the Second World War PDF Download

Author: Neil R Storey
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750999799
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Norwich in the Second World War is the story of the city and its people, both civilian and military, from the construction of the first air raid shelters in 1938 through to VE Day in 1945 and the return of Far Eastern prisoners of war in 1946. Featuring first-hand accounts of what happened when enemy bombers raided the city, notably during the notorious Baedeker Blitz of 1942, rare photographs and documents make this book a must for anyone who knows and loves the city of Norwich.

Author: John Julius Norwich
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 0802146708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
An “engaging, enthusiastic, sympathetic, funny” journey through French history from the New York Times–bestselling author of Absolute Monarchs (The Wall Street Journal). Beginning with Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters―Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette, to name a few―as John Julius Norwich chronicles France’s often violent, always fascinating history. From the French Revolution―after which neither France nor the world would be the same again―to the storming of the Bastille, from the Vichy regime and the Resistance to the end of the Second World War, A History of France is packed with heroes and villains, battles and rebellion—written with both an expert command of detail and a lively appreciation for the subject matter by this “true master of narrative history” (Simon Sebag Montefiore).

Author: Michael Chandler
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526707764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Originally a town that was built of wood by the Anglo-Saxons, it was later burned down and then rebuilt as Englands second city, after London, by William the Conqueror. Riots between the church and the citizens saw Norwich at war with the Pope in 1272 when a gate was constructed as a penance. The Norfolk Regiment has seen its men in combat from the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Boer War and both World Wars. The more recent conflicts in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan have also witnessed the bravery of the Norfolks. A comprehensive list of military personnel who gave their lives is examined, including Norwich-born Second Lieutenant Wilfred Edwards VC, as well as an account of 9694 Private John Henry Abigail of the Norfolk Regiment who, on 12 September 1917, aged 21, was executed for being AWOL. It would not be until November 2006 that Private Abigail was pardoned by the British government.

Author: John Julius Norwich
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812995198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Critically acclaimed author John Julius Norwich weaves the turbulent story of Sicily into a spellbinding narrative that places the island at the crossroads of world history. “Sicily,” said Goethe, “is the key to everything.” It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East. Sicily’s strategic location has tempted Roman emperors, French princes, and Spanish kings. The subsequent struggles to conquer and keep it have played crucial roles in the rise and fall of the world’s most powerful dynasties. Yet Sicily has often been little more than a footnote in books about other empires. John Julius Norwich’s engrossing narrative is the first to knit together all of the colorful strands of Sicilian history into a single comprehensive study. Here is a vivid, erudite, page-turning chronicle of an island and the remarkable kings, queens, and tyrants who fought to rule it. From its beginnings as a Greek city-state to its emergence as a multicultural trading hub during the Crusades, from the rebellion against Italian unification to the rise of the Mafia, the story of Sicily is rich with extraordinary moments and dramatic characters. Writing with his customary deftness and humor, Norwich outlines the surprising influence Sicily has had on world history—the Romans’ fascination with Greek civilization dates back to their sack of Sicily—and tells the story of one of the world’s most kaleidoscopic cultures in a galvanizing, contemporary way. This volume has been a long time coming—Norwich began to explore Sicily’s colorful history during his first visit to the island in the early 1960s. The dean of popular historians leads his readers through the millennia with the steady narrative hand of a master teacher or the world’s most learned tour guide. Like the island itself, Sicily is a book brimming with bold flavors that begs to be revisited again and again. Praise for Sicily “Suavely readable . . . The very model of a popular historian, [Norwich] writes to give pleasure to the common reader. And what pleasure it is.”—The Wall Street Journal “Entertaining on every page . . . There is something ancient and sorrowful in Sicily, ‘some dark, brooding quality,’ just as captivating as its spellbinding history or its beautiful and varied landscapes, from beaches to lemon groves, pine forests to volcanoes. . . . The most amiable and freewheeling of guides, Norwich will always find time for the amusing anecdote.”—The Sunday Times “Utterly engrossing . . . written with passion about the art and architecture of this magical island, filled with gossipy tidbits and sweeping historical theories.”—The Daily Beast “Dazzling . . . Norwich is an elegantly graceful and entertaining storyteller.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch “Charming . . . richly nuanced history relayed with enormous fondness.”—Kirkus Reviews “A brisk and always-lively tour.”—Open Letters Monthly “Norwich is deeply in love with Sicily. [His] boundless affection has inspired a determined effort to understand its painful past. The result is impressionistic, as love often is.”—The Times “Norwich sketches personalities vividly. . . . He does the island and the reader a generous service in providing such an amiable introduction.”—The Sunday Telegraph “Norwich tells [Sicily’s] long, sad but fascinating story with sympathy and brio.”—Literary Review

Author: Nina Bawden
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1849436118
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
When the Second World War air raids threaten their safety in the city, Carrie and her brother Nick are evacuated to a small Welsh village. But the countryside has dangers and adventures of its own - and a group of characters who will change Carrie's life for ever. There's mean Mr Evans, who won't let the children eat meat; but there’s also kind Auntie Lou. There's brilliant young Albert Sandwich, another evacuee, and Mr Johnny, who speaks a language all of his own. Then there's Hepzibah Green, the witch at Druid’s Grove who makes perfect mince pies, and the ancient skull with its terrifying curse... For adults and young people aged eight and over. Emma Reeves has created a stunning stage adaptation of Nina Bawden’s much loved classic account of life as an evacuee in the 1940s, which opened at the Lillian Bayliss Theatre in November 2006. This edition includes teachers' notes and activities for classes based on the play.

Author: John Julius Norwich
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 1780227507
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 780

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Book Description
The long awaited and highly revealing diaries of the politician, diplomat, and socialite (married to Lady Diana Cooper) 'This is a fabulous, jaw-dropping read' SUNDAY TIMES 'Duff Cooper was as close to the action as anyone during the dramatic events of the mid-20th century. He was also comically priapic, committing enough sexual indiscretions to fill a dozen diaries' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Fascinating for two things: their testament to an exhilarating century and their witness to a vanished age of power and privilege ... What a man' OBSERVER Duff Cooper was a first-rate witness of just about every significant event from 1914 to 1950. His diary includes some magnificent set pieces - as a young soldier at the end of WWI, as a politician during the General Strike of 1926, as King Edward VIII's friend at the time of the Abdication, and from Paris after the liberation in 1944, when he became British ambassador. If Duff Cooper's name has dimmed in the 50 years since his death, publication of these diaries will bring him to the fore once again. His family have long resisted publication - indeed Duff Cooper's nephew, the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis, was so shocked by the sexual revelations that he suggested to John Julius Norwich that it might be best for all concerned if they were burnt. Now, superbly edited by John Julius Norwich, who familial link ensures all kinds of additional information as footnotes, these diaries join the ranks.

Author: Mark Treanor
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682476375
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Winner of 2020 W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction Military Writers Society of America Award Winner: Gold Medal in Historical Fiction Winner of the 2021 William E. Colby Award Sometimes it takes years for a combat vet to understand what war did to him when he was nineteen. With the perception and reflection of a man on the cusp of retirement from a career teaching high school kids, Marty McClure recalls the relentless intensity of prolonged combat as a teenaged Marine machine gunner facing booby traps and battles in a war with few boundaries. Family and friends know Marty as a kind, peaceful man. They aren‘t aware that when he was young, he plumbed the depths of terror, hatred, and despair with no assurance he‘d ever surface again. Now he needs to reveal what happened in Vietnam and how, with the help of Patti, his wife, Corrie Corrigan, a disabled vet, and Doc Matheson, a corpsman turned trauma surgeon, he works to become a good husband, father, and teacher while he fights to bury the war. Only if he accepts help from his wife and his friends will he find real peace.

Author: Reina Pennington
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700615547
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women pilots to fly combat missions. During World War II the Red Air Force formed three all-female units-grouped into separate fighter, dive bomber, and night bomber regiments-while also recruiting other women to fly with mostly male units. Their amazing story, fully recounted for the first time by Reina Pennington, honors a group of fearless and determined women whose exploits have not yet received the recognition they deserve. Pennington chronicles the creation, organization, and leadership of these regiments, as well as the experiences of the pilots, navigators, bomb loaders, mechanics, and others who made up their ranks, all within the context of the Soviet air war on the Eastern Front. These regiments flew a combined total of more than 30,000 combat sorties, produced at least thirty Heroes of the Soviet Union, and included at least two fighter aces. Among their ranks were women like Marina Raskova ("the Soviet Amelia Earhart"), a renowned aviator who persuaded Stalin in 1941 to establish the all-women regiments; the daredevil "night witches" who flew ramshackle biplanes on nocturnal bombing missions over German frontlines; and fighter aces like Liliia Litviak, whose twelve "kills" are largely unknown in the West. She also tells the story of Alexander Gridnev, a fighter pilot twice arrested by the Soviet secret police before he was chosen to command the women's fighter regiment. Pennington draws upon personal interviews and the Soviet archives to detail the recruitment, training, and combat lives of these women. Deftly mixing anecdote with analysis, her work should find a wide readership among scholars and buffs interested in the history of aviation, World War II, or the Russian military, as well as anyone concerned with the contentious debates surrounding military and combat service for women.

Author: Neil R. Storey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780752458656
Category : Hanging
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
This is the story of those who ended up on the end of the hangman's rope at Norwich Castle Prison, Norwich City Prison on Earlham Road and the later Victorian Norwich Prison on Knox Road. The executions included in this book range from some of the earliest recorded in the county during the thirteenth century, then down the years including two gallows survivors and the execution of Kett and many of his rebels in 1549, to the last execution conducted in the county in 1951, when two young men went to the gallows for separate incidents but having committed the same crime - they both murdered their pregnant sweethearts. Recorded here are executions for a host of forgotten cases and a cornucopia of crimes as diverse as highway robbery, housebreaking, riot, arson and theft of livestock. Norwich was the location for the hangings of such notorious criminals as Frances Billing and Catherine Frary 'The Burnham Poisoners' - the last public double execution and last women to hang in the county; James Blomfield Rush, the Stanfield Hall Murderer; William Sheward, the murderer who confessed almost eighteen years after the murder and dismemberment of his wife; and, Herbert Bennett, the Yarmouth Bootlace Murderer who may, or may not, have been guilty of his crime. Norwich Castle Prison was also the scene of one of the most infamous incidents in the history of British hangings and recalled with trepidation by all executioners who came after as 'The Goodale Mess'. Crime historian Neil R. Storey has researched Norfolk executions and the stories behind them for over twenty years and brings them together in this volume for the first time.

Author: Stephen Browning
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1473857007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This year-on-year study of Norfolk at war is the first such for many years, which utilizes material that has not been published in book form before or, sometimes, at all. In both the First and Second World War, Norfolk was pivotal, albeit for different reasons. During the war of 1939-45 Norfolk was home to many bases of the USAAF, changing the area forever with bases remaining a fond feature of Norfolk life. Another unique and enduring legacy was the arrival and often permanent settlement of many Poles, who are commemorated today by a shrine in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Norwich. Norfolk was in many ways changed forever as it had largely, up until this time, been proudly, even stubbornly, isolated a feature that could not have changed more dramatically. This study is both inevitably a military and social study. The major events both at home and overseas are laid out, together with a description of how home life unfolded in very dark times when the stoicism and humor of the Norfolk residents were tested. Contemporary material from newspapers, diaries and local records, as well as over 200 photographs, are used to bring life and color and life to the account.