Bob Clarke – författare

Today’s village of Kinver first made an appearance in 736 AD as Cynibre. Despite being close to the Black Country and having a flourishing iron working industry from the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, the village avoided the spread of industry and housing. Even today much of the village lies within a conservation area and is surrounded by green belt land. The neighbouring village of Enville, its hall the seat of the former Earls of Stamford and Warrington, has also escaped the seemingly relentless spread of suburbia, and has retained its unspoilt individuality. Chapters cover canals and rivers, pubs, prominent properties, churches, the Kinver Light Railway and tourism. This attractive volume will evoke nostalgic memories for many people, and will give pleasure to residents and visitors alike.

Grub Street was a real place, a place of poverty and vice. It was also a metaphor for journalists and other writers of ephemeral publications and, by implication, the infant newspaper industry. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, journalists were held in low regard, even by their fellow journalists who exchanged torrents of mutual abuse in the pages of their newspapers. But Grub Street's vitality and its battles with authority laid the foundations of modern Fleet Street. In this book, Bob Clarke examines the origination and development of the English newspaper from its early origin in the broadsides of the sixteenth century, through the burgeoning of the press during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to its arrival as a respectable part of the establishment in the nineteenth century. Along the way this narrative is illuminated with stories of the characters who contributed to the growth of the English press in all its rich variety of forms, and how newspapers tailored their contents to particular audiences. As well as providing a detailed chronological history, the volume focuses on specific themes important to the development of the English newspaper. These include such issues as state censorship and struggles for the freedom of the press, the growth of advertising and its effect on editorial policy, the impact on editorial strategies of taxation policy, increased literacy rates and social changes, the rise of provincial newspapers and the birth of the Sunday paper and the popular press. The book also describes the content of newspapers, and includes numerous extracts and illustrations that vividly portray the way in which news was reported to provide a colourful picture of the social history of their times. Written in a lively and engaging manner, this volume will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in English social history, print culture or journalism.

A pocket-sized, illustrated history tour of the Wiltshire town of Royal Wootton Bassett showing how it has changed across the decades.

From the late 1940s to the fall of Communist Russia, Britain was at war. To the general public much of it was imaginary but the Cold War was real nonetheless. Flaring up in 1962, with the Cuban missile crisis and in the 1980s with the standoffs between Reagan and Thatcher on one side, with the Soviet leaders on the other. There are many remains today from 'secret' nuclear bunkers to missile sites, early-warning radar sites, huge research establishments and, of course, spy sites such as GCHQ. Bob Clarke tells the story of the myriad Cold War remains, illustrated with 150 images, most never published before. He explains the need for our defences and the consequences of nuclear war.

Devizes is a typical bustling Wiltshire market town. Architecturally the town boasts a variety of buildings spanning almost a thousand years, and over 500 are currently listed. The town, located centrally in the county of Wiltshire, continues to thrive as a commercial hub despite losing the canal to industrial traffic and the railway by the mid-1960s. A range of industries have made Devizes their home, including Brown & May and Wadworth's, and there has been major development in and around town. This series of images - many not published before - has been drawn from the collection housed at the Wiltshire Museum. The museum is also the recipient of all profits made by this book.

In November 1726, England was shocked by the astonishing news that Mary Toft, a poor cloth-worker's wife from Godalming, was giving birth to rabbits. When King George heard of this medical miracle, he sent two of his royal surgeons down to Surrey to investigate. They both delivered rabbits from Mary on separate occasions. After giving birth to seventeen rabbits, Mary was brought to London where; "great Numbers of the Nobility have been to see her and many Physicians have attended her, in order to make a strict Search into the Affair". Mary's story was a great gift to Grub Street. As well as providing several months of sensational material for the newspapers, it inspired a host of pamphlets, caricatures, ribald ballads, and satires, and made the medical profession look a bunch of gullible fools. This well-researched but entertaining book will appeal to anyone who is interested in the quirkier side of history, covering a sensational event that generated hilarity and anxiety, splitting the nation between those who believed the births were genuine and those who considered them fraudulent. As well as being a human-interest story, it deals with print culture, medical developments, and beliefs, among other aspects of eighteenth century life.

Britain's Cold War started in 1945 after the fall of Nazi Germany. With Europe split apart into spheres of influence, and East distrusting West, it soon became apparent that the next war would be between Communism and Capitalism. It was an idealogical war, fought not on the battlefields of Europe but in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and numerous other small-scale battlefields in Asia and Africa. With the threat of mutually assured destruction between the nuclear powers, the Cold War was about confrontation on a small scale, never between the superpowers, but with the might of the superpowers backing opposing sides. Britain became a mini fortress, with American lend-lease bases, missile sites, radar installations, airfields full of jets ready to scramble, as well as nuclear bunkers and command centres located in the countryside. Bob Clarke, author of Four Minute Warning: Britain's Cold War, takes us on a guided tour of Britain's Cold War, showing us the installations, the plans and just what would have happened if Britain had gone to war with the Eastern Bloc states.