Where Sky, Lincolnshire and Water meet is a quotation from Philip Larkins poem entitled The Whitsun Weddings` and is an apt choice as it offers place and theme for the story. It is a Family saga which spans history from Edwardian England to the present day. The characters are ordinary people caught up in events which changed the world and their lives. They keep diaries, which enables the reader to empathise with their situations. Love ties them together, despite the risks. But, there is always a price to pay.

Jack Simmons, perhaps more than any other single scholar, is responsible for the advancement of the academic study of transport history. As well as being a co-founder of the Journal of Transport History, he wrote extensively on a variety of transport-related topics and was instrumental in developing the London Transport and the National Railway museums. Whilst his death in September 2000 at the age of 85 was a sad loss to the world of transport history, the achievements of his life, celebrated in this festschrift, remain a lasting legacy to succeeding generations of scholars in many fields. Concentrating on the theme of the railways, and how they dramatically affected the development of Britain and her society, this collection touches on numerous issues first highlighted by Professor Simmons which are now central to academic study. These include the men who built the railways, those who financed the enterprise, how the railways affected such everyday issues as tourism, the arts, and politics, as well as the lasting legacy of the railways in a country now dominated by the private car. This volume written by former friends, students and colleagues of Professor Simmons reflects these interests, and provides a fitting tribute to one of the truly great British historians of the twentieth century.

'Prose from a poet and a personal take on the spectacles' Chris Packham, author of Fingers in the Sparkle Jar Shortlisted for Richard Jefferies Society & White Horse Bookshop Literary Prize 2017 Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2017 Britain is a nation of bird-lovers. However, few of us fully appreciate the sheer scale, variety and drama of our avian life. From city-centre hunters to vast flocks straight out of the Arctic wilderness, much-loved dawn songsters to the exotic invaders of supermarket car parks, a host of remarkable wildlife spectacles are waiting to be discovered right outside our front doors. In A Sky Full of Birds, poet and nature writer Matt Merritt shares his passion for birdwatching by taking us to some of the great avian gatherings that occur around the British isles – from ravens in Anglesey and raptors on the Wirral, to Kent nightingales and Scottish capercaillies. By turns lyrical, informative and entertaining, he shows how natural miracles can be found all around us, if only we know where to look for them. A Sky Full of Birds is the perfect read for avid birdwatchers and a beautiful gift for lovers of nature and poetic prose.

This volume combines a theoretical critique of the biographical method that dominates Larkin studies with a revolutionary interpretation of his works that better accounts for their profound influence upon leading Postmodernists like Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Carol Ann Duffy, Damien Hirst - and the creators of Jerry Springer - the Opera .

The first critical monograph to benefit from the textual rigour of Archie Burnett's landmark edition of The Complete Poems (2012), Radical Larkin celebrates Larkin's technical genius by offering seven in-depth analyses of the stylistic strategies he used to create eleven of his most famous poems.

This is the first biography of Richard Hoggart which seeks to tie together in a single narrative his life and work, to settle Hoggart in the great happiness of a fulfilled family life and in the astonishing achievements of his public and professional career, considering each of his books in detail, and following him through the long and hard labours of his different public and academic offices. It is a tale of a good man with which to edify the present, and to teach us of all that now threatens our best national (and international) forms of expression: our art, our culture, ourselves.