Donald Thomas – författare

'Donald Thomas introduces us to the slums and fetid courtyards of nineteenth-century London and in doing so provides a sweeping portrait of the vast world that did not accept "Victorian Values". The villainy is outstanding. It is also entertaining. The author has a practised eye for the best anecdotes and presents amazing characters, some of whom come equipped with names that sound positively Dickensian . . . a wonderful profile of Victorian London' The Spectator

Bestselling account of the life of a real Horatio HornblowerThe life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, later 10th Earl of Dundonald, was more extraordinary than that of Nelson, more far fetched than that of Hornblower or Patrick O'Brien's Jack Aubrey. Born the son of an eccentric and indigent Scottish peer, he entered the Royal Navy in 1793. In a series of outstanding and heroic actions, often against seemingly overwhelming odds, he made his name fighting Napoleon's navy as one of the most dashing and daring frigate captains of his day, before embarking on a career as a mercenary admiral.

This edition presents the new IEEE 1364-2001 standard of The Verilog Hardware Description Language. It offers updated examples that illustrated the new features of the language as well as a cross- referenced guide to the new and old features.

State Trials, Volume I (first published in 1972) contains cases concerned with treason and the freedom of press gathered from the full edition of State Trials completed in 1826. The author has selected some of the most interesting and important trials for this volume.The book includes a general introduction, explaining the significance of State Trials as a whole. Each selected case is then introduced by a short essay, which explains the events surrounding the trial and its importance in relation to legal history. State Trials will always be one of the most vivid and fascinating accounts of English life in all documentary literature. Tales of murder, treason, bigamy, adultery, political conspiracy, the scandals of the prison system, and the brutality of imperial conquest are told through the words of the great and the humble. Murderers, pornographers, conquerors, and heroes, all come alive in their own words. This book will be a fascinating read for students and researchers of law and history, and general readers interested in the topic.

State Trials, Volume I (first published in 1972) contains cases concerned with treason and the freedom of press gathered from the full edition of State Trials completed in 1826. The author has selected some of the most interesting and important trials for this volume.The book includes a general introduction, explaining the significance of State Trials as a whole. Each selected case is then introduced by a short essay, which explains the events surrounding the trial and its importance in relation to legal history. State Trials will always be one of the most vivid and fascinating accounts of English life in all documentary literature. Tales of murder, treason, bigamy, adultery, political conspiracy, the scandals of the prison system, and the brutality of imperial conquest are told through the words of the great and the humble. Murderers, pornographers, conquerors, and heroes, all come alive in their own words. This book will be a fascinating read for students and researchers of law and history, and general readers interested in the topic.

State Trials, Volume II (first published in 1972) contains cases concerned with witchcraft, the scandals of the prisons, and colonial administration gathered from the full edition of State Trials completed in 1826. The author has selected some of the most interesting and important trials for this volume.The book includes a general introduction, explaining the significance of State Trials as a whole. Each selected case is then introduced by a short essay, which explains the events surrounding the trial and its importance in relation to legal history. State Trials will always be one of the most vivid and fascinating accounts of English life in all documentary literature. Tales of murder, treason, bigamy, adultery, political conspiracy, the scandals of the prison system, and the brutality of imperial conquest are told through the words of the great and the humble. Murderers, pornographers, conquerors, and heroes, all come alive in their own words. This book will be a fascinating read for students and researchers of law and history, and general readers interested in the topic.

Censorship of the written word has proved a constant source for debate and argument. To cut or not to cut is a question with a long and fascinating history. First published in 1969, A Long Time Burning is an account of the political, religious, and moral censorship of literature, in the context of English literary history. It is principally concerned with the evolution of a modern pattern of censorship between the abolition of licensing in 1695 and the late Victorian period. The author outlines the motives and methods of censorship, illustrating these by more detailed discussion of such cases as those involving Edmund Curll, John Wilkes, Thomas Paine, William Hone, Richard Carlile, William Dugdale and Henry Vizetelly. The unofficial trade in banned books and the campaigns of the Proclamation Society; the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the National Vigilance Association are described with the aid of some previously unpublished material.The book includes an anthology of illustrative material, quoting extracts from publications banned at various times and for various reasons. Pages from such books as Venus in the Cloister are reprinted for the first time in more than two centuries, while the other documents range from the Blasphemy Act of 1698 to a prosecution brought under the Race Relations Act of 1965.

Censorship of the written word has proved a constant source for debate and argument. To cut or not to cut is a question with a long and fascinating history. First published in 1969, A Long Time Burning is an account of the political, religious, and moral censorship of literature, in the context of English literary history. It is principally concerned with the evolution of a modern pattern of censorship between the abolition of licensing in 1695 and the late Victorian period. The author outlines the motives and methods of censorship, illustrating these by more detailed discussion of such cases as those involving Edmund Curll, John Wilkes, Thomas Paine, William Hone, Richard Carlile, William Dugdale and Henry Vizetelly. The unofficial trade in banned books and the campaigns of the Proclamation Society; the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the National Vigilance Association are described with the aid of some previously unpublished material.The book includes an anthology of illustrative material, quoting extracts from publications banned at various times and for various reasons. Pages from such books as Venus in the Cloister are reprinted for the first time in more than two centuries, while the other documents range from the Blasphemy Act of 1698 to a prosecution brought under the Race Relations Act of 1965.

State Trials, Volume II (first published in 1972) contains cases concerned with witchcraft, the scandals of the prisons, and colonial administration gathered from the full edition of State Trials completed in 1826. The author has selected some of the most interesting and important trials for this volume.The book includes a general introduction, explaining the significance of State Trials as a whole. Each selected case is then introduced by a short essay, which explains the events surrounding the trial and its importance in relation to legal history. State Trials will always be one of the most vivid and fascinating accounts of English life in all documentary literature. Tales of murder, treason, bigamy, adultery, political conspiracy, the scandals of the prison system, and the brutality of imperial conquest are told through the words of the great and the humble. Murderers, pornographers, conquerors, and heroes, all come alive in their own words. This book will be a fascinating read for students and researchers of law and history, and general readers interested in the topic.

The Post-Romantics, first published in 1990, provides a clear, introductory guide to the literary careers and reputations of five major Victorian poets: Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Swinburne and Clough. Heirs to the Romantics tradition, the predecessors of the moderns. This accessible and invaluable guide with help readers to develop an informed, individual response to the poetry of the post-romantics.

The Post-Romantics, first published in 1990, provides a clear, introductory guide to the literary careers and reputations of five major Victorian poets: Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Swinburne and Clough. Heirs to the Romantics tradition, the predecessors of the moderns. This accessible and invaluable guide with help readers to develop an informed, individual response to the poetry of the post-romantics.

For James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, leading the Light Brigade at Balaclava was but one incident in a life of sensation and notoriety. Donald Thomas’s biography, originally published in 1977, and based on new material when originally published, shows this most controversial Victorian against a panorama of regimental intrigue and aristocratic luxury.Dismissed from the army for ‘revolting’ conduct, Cardigan bought the command of the 11th Hussars (the ‘Cherry Bums’) for £40,000 a few years later. Regimental rivalries led to the ‘Black Bottle’ scandal of 1840 and to a duel in which he shot a brother officer. Charged with attempted murder, Cardigan was the only Victorian peer to be tried by the House of Lords. Nonetheless, his seductions of other men’s wives rivalled his regimental misdemeanours in press reports. He was jeered int he streets, hissed at the theatre and burnt in effigy. It took the glory and the folly of Balaclava to turn ‘this plague-spot of the British army’ into ‘the most popular soldier in England’. Greeted everywhere by cheering crowds, their new hero fought duels and libel actions against those who denied his bravery before the Russian guns. For all his misbehaviour, Cardigan remains warm-blooded, generous, impulsive and courageous, as well as obstinate, proud and sometimes ridiculous. Hated by numerous men, and adored by many women, his elopement with the beautiful Adeline Horsey de Horsey was a triumph of his old age.

For James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, leading the Light Brigade at Balaclava was but one incident in a life of sensation and notoriety. Donald Thomas’s biography, originally published in 1977, and based on new material when originally published, shows this most controversial Victorian against a panorama of regimental intrigue and aristocratic luxury.Dismissed from the army for ‘revolting’ conduct, Cardigan bought the command of the 11th Hussars (the ‘Cherry Bums’) for £40,000 a few years later. Regimental rivalries led to the ‘Black Bottle’ scandal of 1840 and to a duel in which he shot a brother officer. Charged with attempted murder, Cardigan was the only Victorian peer to be tried by the House of Lords. Nonetheless, his seductions of other men’s wives rivalled his regimental misdemeanours in press reports. He was jeered int he streets, hissed at the theatre and burnt in effigy. It took the glory and the folly of Balaclava to turn ‘this plague-spot of the British army’ into ‘the most popular soldier in England’. Greeted everywhere by cheering crowds, their new hero fought duels and libel actions against those who denied his bravery before the Russian guns. For all his misbehaviour, Cardigan remains warm-blooded, generous, impulsive and courageous, as well as obstinate, proud and sometimes ridiculous. Hated by numerous men, and adored by many women, his elopement with the beautiful Adeline Horsey de Horsey was a triumph of his old age.

The man the world knew as Lewis Carroll, author of the adventures of Alice, was known to his colleagues in the Christ Church Common Room as the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, a middle-aged Oxford don. His hobby was photography, especially of pubescent girls 'in their favourite dress of nothing to wear'. When evidence of the Reverend's pastime falls into the hands of Charles Augustus Howell, the infamous Victorian blackmailer, and a murder victim is fished out of the Isis, Inspector Swain is called to investigate the case that casts the shadow of doom over Dodgson. 'One of the most entertaining mysteries of the year' Julian Symons 'Catches the authentic whiff of steaming sexuality behind the Victorian whiskers' Guardian

In the slum alleys of Lambeth in 1891 a sinister silk-hatted figure lurks in the shadows - but trade is there for the taking and a girl must make a living. Now, one after another, the girls who work the Waterloo Road wake in the morning to feel the slow agony of the most vicious of poisons ...victims of the man called Fred. The police have only a string of 'catch me if you can' letters to taunt them, whilea whole mailing list of Victorian worthies find demands for money with menaces in their mail. Inspector Swain investigates ...'Original story told in a highly individual manner' Times Literary Supplement

Robert Louis Stevenson's strange and sinister tale of the gentle Dr Jekyll and the sadistic Mr Hyde is filled with oddities suggesting a dark reality behind a classic fiction. That dark reality is laid bare in the casebook of Inspector Swain. The 'parliamentary murder' of 1884 leads the inspector and his portly sergeant, Lumley, from plush drawing-room to madhouse cell in search of the link between a coward in the red-coated ranks at Isandhlwana, a killer in Cheyne Walk and the satanic persona of Edward Hyde.

When John Posthumous Lerici, decadent poet, black magician and unacknowledged son of Lord Byron, is murdered, the family hire Inspector Swain. His investigations lead Swain through the familiar hunting grounds of Victorian Brighton and Pimlico. But as the truth of Lerici's criminal associations come to light, it reveals the corruption of Scotland Yard officers by two of the century's most skilful international swindlers and blackmailers, Harry Benson and Billy Kurr.

'Pretty Boy' Johnny McIver is a small-time crook thinking big. But when he and his girlfriend 'Solitaire' cross gangland chief Sonny Tarrant he is soon made to realise how small he really is. Forced on the run for a murder he did not commit, trying to lose himself among the post-war Bournemouth holidaymakers, Johnny McIver is a man in panic, a man 'dancing in the dark'. A man who could soon be dancing at the end of a rope...

It is 1936 - the year of the Abdication Crisis - and gangland capo Sonny Tarrant's money-laundering operation is being threatened by three small-time thieves thinking big.Would-be gangsters Sandboy, McGouran and Gillis have carried out a violent raid on the premises of furrier Pelly Pender. But Pender insists to the police that no attack took place, for he knows the trio will face a different justice in which the law plays no part. And Sandboy soon finds himself caught in a nightmare world in which Tarrant manipulates his victims with the deftness of a flick-knife. His last hope is Yvonne Manders, once the stage-dancer 'Lady Blue' . . .

The sensational events of the summer of 1907 - the disappearance of the Ascot Gold Cup from the Royal Enclosure, and the even more astonishing theft of the Irish Crown Jewels from a locked and guarded strongroom in Dublin Castle - remain mysterious but apparently random events. Only one man knows their secret. Captain Richard Gaudeans, cashiered officer, conman and cracksman, cuts a more appropriate figure among the fairground booths where he earns his living than the corridors of power. But the course of the year takes him into both. And in both he uses his skill and cunning to outmanoeuvre everyone in his path.

When Karl Rainer Andor came to Berlin for the last time it was sacrifice, not victory, that was uppermost in his mind. He intended to use the plutonium bomb he had elaborately planted to effect the reunification of Germany, but he didn't expect to survive. The 'allied' powers are concerned as much with scoring off each other as with finding the bomb - or with seducing or frightening Andor into telling them where it is. And eventually they are faced with the impossible task of evacuating the historic capital of Germany.

Two petrol bombs thrown on the Cakewalk promenade, a sports reporter and his bike rammed off a cliff, a policeman thrown through a plate-glass display window in the city centre and left to die. All this is 'a quiet summer weekend' in the dockland city of Canton and its Art Deco resort town of Ocean Beach. Chief Inspector Sam Hoskins links the investigation of these crimes, but political chicanery hampers him on both sides: on the left is ambitious young Eve Ricard riding to national fame and fortune on 'women's issues, media bias, and insensitive policing'; to the right is the monstrously corrupt councillor and aged razor-boy Carmel Cooney, with his girls and clubs and rackets ...'Strong on city life and the interplay between policemen and local politics' Independent

The Man had only once followed her home in the evening, after she had been to a Blue Moon concert with Claire and Viv. Still, Elaine was not frightened. It amused her to have an admirer who was far too timid to approach. On that evening, she had been tempted to give him a fright, to swing round and confront him. Or she might look down from the top of the bank and ask him if he had now seen everything he wanted. But that would be like breaking the rules of a private game. Then, perhaps, The Man might become dangerous ...'The book shows a bleak and unprepossessing gallery of villainous talent' Punch

Wednesday 5 January is a black day in the police calendar of dockland Canton and its Art Deco resort of Ocean Beach. It dawns in freezing mist and icy roads. It ends with a vanload of drugs hijacked, two policemen dead, and gunfire on the motorway. DCI Sam Hoskins and his sergeant, Jack Chance, are meanwhile embroiled in a fruitless investigation of Billy Catte, seaside arcade proprietor and club-owner.In a political storm that pits zealous social workers against municipal gangsters, as well as police against revenge and kidnap, Hoskins holds the tenuous thread on which several lives depend ...

For more than two decades, Sherlock Holmes played a vital, though secret, role in solving the major crimes and scandals of his day - some too damaging to the monarchy, the government or the security of the nation to be fully revealed at the time. Compiled in narrative form by Dr Watson soon after the great detective's death, Holmes's notes have been kept under lock and key at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. Now, seventy years later, we can finally open the secret casebook of Sherlock Holmes. 'Seven stories about the greatest of all fiction detectives ...all told by Dr Watson in a very credible imitation of the original style' Birmingham Post