Stephen Bates – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION'METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED ... A GLORIOUSLY ENGAGING ROMP' JANICE HALLETT, THE SUNDAY TIMES'IMMERSIVE AND COMPELLING' DAVID KYNASTON'A PAGE-TURNER' ROBERT LACEYA brilliant narrative investigation into the 1920s case that inspired Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.On a bleak Tuesday morning in February 1921, 48-year-old Katharine Armstrong died in her bedroom on the first floor of an imposing Edwardian villa overlooking the rolling hills of the isolated borderlands between Wales and England.Within fifteen months of such a sad domestic tragedy, her husband, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, would be arrested, tried and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic, the only solicitor ever to be executed in England.Armstrong's story was retold again and again, decade after decade, in a thousand newspaper articles across the world, and may have also inspired the new breed of popular detective writers seeking to create a cunning criminal at the centre of their thrillers.With all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery, the case is a near-perfect whodunnit. But who, in fact, did it? Was Armstrong really a murderer?One hundred years after the execution, Agatha-Award shortlisted Stephen Bates examines and retells the story of the case, evoking the period and atmosphere of the early 1920s, and questioning the fatal judgement.'CAREFUL AND COMPELLING' KATE MORGAN'YOU WILL READ IT IN ONE SITTING' MARC MULHOLLAND'A REAL-LIFE GOLDEN-AGE CRIME NOVEL' SEAN O'CONNOR

Paying for a peerage - an illegal practice - feels like a very modern form of corruption, one that both the Labour and Conservative parties have been accused of indulging in at times during the early twenty-first century. Except, of course, it was happening almost a century ago.Meet Maundy Gregory, actor, journalist, publishing proprietor, conman, embezzler, MI5 spy - and the man you went to see if you had the money to pay for a peerage in the post-First World War years.Cutting a dash across high society of the 1920s - he was in attendance at the wedding of the future George VI - the immaculately oiled and overdressed Gregory would happily pocket thousands for playing Mr Fixit for wannabe knights and lords, and swell the coffers of Lloyd George's Liberal Party to millions of pounds.Business was brisk, and business was brazen. Visitors to his lavish office on Parliament Street, with a direct line to 'Number 10', would be wined and dined and, after paying up, leave satisfied that they would be next on the list for a knighthood or barony. Nothing could be guaranteed, of course, and it was a strictly no refunds business.But Gregory was also suspected of being something else, to add to his impressive list of accomplishments: a murderer. As the political winds changed, the debts mounted up and the walls closed in around him, he somehow managed to inherit his mistress's not inconsiderable savings when she scribbled a new will on the back of a menu and was suddenly taken ill ...In The Man Who Sold Honours, Stephen Bates lifts the lid on the truth about this long-forgotten character who remains the only person ever to be prosecuted under the sale of honours act of 1925. A powerful preview of the scandals to come in Britain in recent years, this is the story of the original honours tout - a riches-to-rags tale of greed, corruption and murder in the interwar years.

A gripping account of the murders committed by Dr William Palmer, the 'Prince of Poisoners', and his dramatic trial in 1855.In 1856, a baying crowd of over 30,000 people gathered outside Stafford prison to watch the execution of a village doctor from Staffordshire. One of the last people to be publicly hanged, 'the greatest villain who ever stood trial at the Old Bailey,' as Charles Dickens described him, Dr William Palmer was convicted in 1855 of murdering his best friend, but was suspected of poisoning more than a dozen other people, including his wife, children, brother and mother-in-law - cashing in on their life insurance to fund his crippling gambling habit.Highlighting Palmer's particularly gruesome penchant for strychnine, his trial made news across Europe; he was a new kind of murderer - respectable, middle class, personable, and consequently more terrifying - and he became Britain's most infamous figure until the emergence of Jack the Ripper.The first widely available account of one of the most notorious, yet lesser-known, mass-murderers in British history, The Poisoner takes a fresh look at Palmer's life and disputed crimes, ultimately asking 'just how evil was this man?' With previously undiscovered letters from Palmer and new forensic examination of his victims, Stephen Bates presents not only an astonishing and controversial revision of Palmer's entire story, but takes us into the very psyche of a killer.

The Anglican Communion is in turmoil. One of the great historic pillars of Christianity, embraced by 70 million people in 164 countries, faces the real and immediate possibility of dismberment, as the spectre of schism looms ever closer. Yet why is gay sexuality the tinderbox that could rip the Anglican Communion apart, and put an end to a century-old and hugely-prized international unity, when such contentious issues as the ordination of women, or unity discussions with other churches, failed to cause a split? In answering this question, Stephen Bates will show that unity has been coveted by some above integrity, and has been the cause of vicious infighting and internal politics. In the run-up to publication of A Church At War the author will be in the front line, as he files regular reports on the twists and turns of battle. His eagerly awaited book will be the only one to assess the current state and historical context of the row, the strengths and weaknesses of the protagonists' positions, and the tactics that they are employing to win the day.A Church At War promises compelling insights into a power struggle between factions seemingly united only by their mutual antipathy, and conducted, paradoxically, in the name of true communion.'

Asquith's administration laid the foundation of Britain's welfare state, but he was plunged into a major power struggle with the House of Lords. The budget of 1909 was vetoed by the hereditary upper chamber, and in 1910 Asquith called and won two elections on this constitutional issue. The Lords eventually passed the 1911 Parliament Act, ending their veto of financial legislation. Asquith was Prime Minister on the outbreak of World War I, but his government fell in 1916 as a result of the 'Shells Scandal'.

Following Papers and Papers 2, the third volume in the series contains papers written by Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates between 2008 and 2014. Illustrated with photographs and drawings, the papers focus on some of the themes that are at the heart of the work of Sergison Bates architects and their approach to architectural practice, such as domesticity, typology and density. Text in German.

This book investigates a particular kind of architecture that thrived in the 1950s in Cadaqués, a small Spanish fishing village on the Costa Brava. It explores a number of holiday houses built between the mid-1950s and 1960s by a group of architects who shared bonds of friendship and architectural affinities, as well as connections with the international Modern movement (including José Antonio Coderch, Lluís Clotet, Federico Correa, Alfonso Milá, Oscar Tusquets, Manuel Valls). Observations on the common threads that link eight case studies are enriched by a photographic essay by David Grandorge and by detailed architectural drawings on a number of significant projects of the time. An interview with the authors Stephen Bates (Sergison Bates architects, London) and Fernando Villavecchia (Liebman Villavecchia Arquitectos, Barcelona) provides a background to their shared fascination with Cadaqués. A timeline contextualises the projects against the backdrop of historical events and the milestone in the lives of the clients and architects who made the village a unique locus in the history of architecture.Text in English and Spanish (Spanish in an inserted booklet).

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION'METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED ... A GLORIOUSLY ENGAGING ROMP' JANICE HALLETT, THE SUNDAY TIMES'IMMERSIVE AND COMPELLING' DAVID KYNASTON'A PAGE-TURNER' ROBERT LACEY'CAREFUL AND COMPELLING' KATE MORGAN'YOU WILL READ IT IN ONE SITTING' MARC MULHOLLAND'A REAL-LIFE GOLDEN-AGE CRIME NOVEL' SEAN O'CONNORA brilliant narrative investigation into the 1920s case that inspired Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.On a bleak Tuesday morning in February 1921, 48-year-old Katharine Armstrong died in her bedroom on the first floor of an imposing Edwardian villa overlooking the rolling hills of the isolated borderlands between Wales and England.Within fifteen months of such a sad domestic tragedy, her husband, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, would be arrested, tried and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic, the only solicitor ever to be executed in England.Armstrong's story was retold again and again, decade after decade, in a thousand newspaper articles across the world, and may have also inspired the new breed of popular detective writers seeking to create a cunning criminal at the centre of their thrillers.With all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery, the case is a near-perfect whodunnit. But who, in fact, did it? Was Armstrong really a murderer?One hundred years after the execution, Agatha-Award shortlisted Stephen Bates examines and retells the story of the case, evoking the period and atmosphere of the early 1920s, and questioning the fatal judgement.

This book investigates a particular kind of architecture that thrived in the 1950s in Cadaqués, a small Spanish fishing village on the Costa Brava. It explores a number of holiday houses built between the mid-1950s and 1960s by a group of architects who shared bonds of friendship and architectural affinities, as well as connections with the international Modern movement (includingJosé Antonio Coderch, Lluís Clotet, Federico Correa, Alfonso Milá, Oscar Tusquets, and Manuel Valls). Observations on the common threads that link eight case studies are enriched by a photographic essay by David Grandorge and by detailed architectural drawings on a number of significant projects of the time. An interview with the authors Stephen Bates (Sergison Bates architects, London) and Fernando Villavecchia (Liebman Villavecchia Arquitectos, Barcelona) provides a background to their shared fascination with Cadaqués. A timeline contextualises the projects against the backdrop of historical events and the milestone in the lives of the clients and architects who made the village a unique locus in the history of architecture.Text in English and German (German in an inserted booklet).

This book investigates a particular kind of architecture that thrived in the 1950s in Spain. A timeline contextualises the projects against the backdrop of historical events. Text in English and Spanish (Spanish in an inserted booklet).