I am a Fellow of Liverpool Hope University, and of the Royal Society of Arts, and have a lifetime of experience in leading and teaching in all professional sectors. I have written 18 books on the history of Liverpool and its City Region, and am currently writing two more, for publication in 2022. I have also produced a series of TV documentaries and a set of audio CDs.
However, my second qualification is that I am a Liverpudlian born and bred, and I am deeply proud of both of these facts.
I love my city and its people (and its unique history and heritage) with genuine passion but no illusions, and I take the greatest pleasure in sharing this with as many people as possible in every medium available to me.
Beautifully and fully illustrated with photographs, sketches, charts, and maps, this tells the triumphant yet tragic tale of a genuine unsung hero of Liverpool and British architecture. Ellis was a many genuinely ahead of his time who built the first building with a steel frame and skeleton, encased in stone cladding. This enabled the creation of the first ‘skyscrapers. His work inspired this major development in building construction, yet he was scorned, castigated, and drummed out of his profession by fellow architects.
I love this book because it tells Ellis’s story fully, and celebrates his work, skill, craftsmanship, and inspiration.
I am a Fellow of Liverpool Hope University, and of the Royal Society of Arts, and have a lifetime of experience in leading and teaching in all professional sectors. I have written 18 books on the history of Liverpool and its City Region, and am currently writing two more, for publication in 2022. I have also produced a series of TV documentaries and a set of audio CDs.
However, my second qualification is that I am a Liverpudlian born and bred, and I am deeply proud of both of these facts.
I love my city and its people (and its unique history and heritage) with genuine passion but no illusions, and I take the greatest pleasure in sharing this with as many people as possible in every medium available to me.
Liverpool’s Architecture represents all schools, styles, and tastes, and this book captures exactly that using glorious colour plates for each of the 226 buildings in the book. Each image is supported by a readable but detailed write-up on the history of the building, and an analysis of its style and composition. It also talks about the respective architects, and gives dates and other statistical information where appropriate.
I love this book because it is a tour-de-force by a respected historian and architect who loved his work, and who loved his city. This shows in the book.
I’ve always had a fascination with the past and how it interacts with the present. I grew up playing in the house and grounds of a spooky old house that was a convalescent home for World War One soldiers and had stood there for centuries before that. At university my essays always strayed into the supernatural. I studied time slips and gothic fiction in English Literature and my history dissertation was about people who believed their children were fairy changelings. When I’m not combining my passion for historical mysteries and ghostly goings on in my writing, I collect old postcards and explore crumbling cemeteries for inspiration.
This is a brilliantly written fast-paced time travel adventure, mystery, and romance, all rolled into one. Conway’s descriptive writing style brings the characters and settings of 1912 and present-day vividly to life. The history field trip scene reminded me so much of my own university field trip to a local cemetery that I wondered if we’d been on the same course. However, this story is set in Birmingham rather than Liverpool, but the similarities were uncanny.
The author has really done his research too, but where a less skilled author might inform the reader through info-dumping, Conway conveys the sights, sounds, and historical details of Edwardian Moseley through action and dialogue. You feel as though you have travelled back in time with Rachel and Danny and are experiencing the story with them. There are so many twists and turns and unexpected reveals that you can’t help but keep reading. But…
One touch... and you're who knows when? A brilliant paranormal mystery that launches this bestselling saga with an Edwardian thriller that blends science fiction with historical adventure. 2018 UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION.
In a small corner of Birmingham, England, a pair of mismatched History students from opposite sides of the tracks find their lives thrown together when an old gravestone catapults them back into their neighbourhood’s dark Edwardian past, where they have just three days to prevent the murder of a teenage girl.
In 1912, they find that every action has an unforeseen consequence that can ripple through generations... and…
There’s a saying in England: It’s grim up north! Largely used pejoratively (by the south), it’s true to say it is generally colder and wetter, the landscape more unforgiving, the people – friendlier in my opinion – are more outspoken and candid. The cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, with their declining industries and rising unemployment, provide fertile ground for crime writers. So when I started my own series following the investigations of DS Adam Tyler and his cold case team it didn’t take long to settle on my adopted home of Sheffield as the setting. Be warned: we’re a long way from the sleepy villages of Agatha Christie here.
The first book in Rob Parker’s excellent Thirty Miles Trilogy sees twenty-seven bodies discovered, vacuum-packed, and buried in a woodland trench. DI Brendan Foley and his newly established police force are the ones tasked with cracking the case but is it a coincidence that these bodies have been buried in Foley’s hometown? Set in the historic town of Warrington, located midway between Manchester and Liverpool, the book explores the murky underworlds of the two cities and the consequences of a war between two drug-dealing gangs as it spills out into the surrounding area.
Brendan Foley has worked to balance the responsibilities of a demanding job and a troublesome family. He's managed to keep these two worlds separate, until the discovery of a mass grave sends them into a headlong collision. When one of the dead turns out to be a familiar face, he's taken off the case.
Iona Madison keeps everything under control. She works hard as a detective sergeant and trains harder as a boxer. But when her superior, DI Foley, is removed from the case, her certainties are tested like never before.
With stories of the Warrington 27 plastered over the…
I was born in 1954, the same year as rock and roll. I am a product of the era that spawned me. I was that kid at school who would rather read his music mags than his school books. Over a rich and varied career, I have turned those passions into my profession. I have been a singer in a band, a music journalist, a broadcaster with the BBC national radio network, and have had several music related books published by major publishers. I have also been an academic specialist in my field and have managed to turn all those lifelong interests into a Ph.D. and an M.Phil.
Julian Cope writes like a fan. He doesn’t write like a musician or a music journalist. That’s why I like his books so much.
I find his views refreshing on everything from glam rock to living in Liverpool in the late 1970s. He may be best known for his music with The Teardrop Explodes and as a solo artist, but he doesn’t serve up a boring discography or describe what life was like on the road. He lets you into his head, and best of all, he doesn’t follow any party line.
Julian Cope's highly acclaimed autobiography and its long-awaited sequel in one extraordinary volume.
Julian Cope shot to fame with eighties band 'Teardrop Explodes' during the Punk era. Hailed as a visionary by those people who recognise his genius and a madman by those who find him perplexing, he has become a cult figure in the music world.
Head-On/Repossessed is written in Cope's own inimitable style and follows his journey through a time of incredible change within the music industry. Head-on is the highly acclaimed autobiography that The Observer viewed as "book of the year" when it was first released. Repossesed…
I became interested in social and family history when my Turkish friend, Ahmet Ceylan, told me amazing stories about his family. An academic by training, I used my expertise in the history of Turkey to explore the archives and uncover extraordinary details about the lives of the Robinsons. My field research took me to the wolds of Lincolnshire, the side streets of Istanbul, and the foothills of the Himalayas. I am keen to learn more about my own family, and for my next book, I am exploring the lives of people who owned/occupied the land/property where I live in Oxford, UK.
I found this to be an engrossing and detailed account of the life of the founder of arguably the first mosque in Victorian England in Liverpool. The author closely examines the adventures of the controversial and charismatic Quilliam and his family. Given his relationship with Hannah Rodda/Robinson, which is actually scarcely mentioned by Geaves, Quilliam is a key character in my book on the lives of the Robinsons. The lawyer and self-styled sheikh cultivated close ties with the Ottoman Sultan and was regarded with great suspicion by the British authorities.
This is the first full biography of Abdullah Quilliam (1856-1932), the most significant Muslim personality in nineteenth century Britain. Uniquely ennobled as the Sheikh of Islam of the British Isles by the Ottoman caliph, Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1893, Quilliam, as a charismatic preacher, created a remarkable community of Muslims in Victorian Liverpool, which included a substantial number of converts.A successful solicitor, Quilliam fought for the rights of the city's poor and, in the high noon of European colonialism, defended the Ottoman caliphate and independent Muslim states through his two international publications, "The Crescent" and "The Islamic World". After…
When I started writing mysteries, beginning with St. Martin’s Malice Award-winning Southern Fried,I wanted to get the medical, investigative, and courtroom details right. What better resource than good first-hand accounts from professionals who do those things every day? I must admit that, over several decades now, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. Real life is full of stories that, if told as fiction, would leave readers rolling their eyes in disbelief. The gruesome and cruel don’t interest me. I’m drawn to the storytellers who can capture the worst moments and turn them into finely written, compelling, accurate stories, showing us the complexity of life.
This collection features a range of stories, a range of time and places, written by many of the best true-crime writers. Goodman, himself a master storyteller, has pulled together a wide sampling of all manner of crimes stories, all well-told. Goodman wisely included his own likely solution to one of my favorite unsolved crimes, the Liverpool case of Julia Wallace, which has fascinated novelists from Raymond Chandler to Dorothy L. Sayers and P.D. James.
More than 32 accounts of murder by crime historians and fiction writers as well as analyses of how criminals are brought to justice, of how others get away with it, a section on executions and executioners, the perils of eye-witness evidence and a discussion of what makes a good murder.
I’ve been a life writer since I kept my first Mary Quant, Daisy diary in 1973. Reading and writing memoir, I’ve written thirty as a ghostwriter in the last six years and am working on my own. I’m fascinated by life stories. After an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, I won the Wasafiri Life Writing Prize, which led to a novel in biographical form, based on the life of my nan in the last century, Girl in the Mirror. I write stories, short and long, for adults and children, performing nationally and in London, was Writer in Residence for Talliston House, and have been published by Walker Books and Mslexia.
Mixing official documents with real, remembered events, Lemn Sissay’s memoir is a search for identity, for his true name. Left in a home in Liverpool for unmarried mothers, he is moved between a series of foster and care homes, until he is given access to all his records in 2015, after a thirty-year campaign to find them. He finds who he really is. It’s an honest, poignant, unsettling, and heartfelt journey, revealing how a small boy’s life is shaped by ‘the authority’ and the faceless state. Complimented with inspiring poems and useful resources, this is a hopeful and helpful book.
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, NEW STATESMAN, METRO, DAILY MAIL, SUNDAY EXPRESS and HERALD
How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This story is how.
At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and…
NLP at Work has led me to many different countries and experiences and, most of all, an ability to choose how I live my life. NLP; Neuro Linguistic Programming is a way of studying how we do what we do, especially when we do things that are outstanding. The difference that makes the difference is the strapline, and that difference is invariably some unconscious, intuitive act – often rooted in how we think and what we believe. I have sought to present both the tools to study in this kind of way and some of the results of that – the techniques that can be discovered with NLP.
Learning Provocative Therapy with Frank Farrelly over many years changed my life. Well, more truthfully it enabled me to release the humour and directness that is so very characteristic of the culture of my upbringing in Liverpool. I had studied NLP for several years when I met with Frank and he took ‘coaching and therapy’ to an entirely new level in a shockingly different way. There is very little written about this (I plan to address this in a future book!) and I do have a chapter on this approach in my own book. 'To provoke a healing response' - that is how Frank described it. He could also have added to provoke the truth, laughter, and learning. This book is a history of how this approach evolved inevitably filled with stories of the powerful results that this achieved. This can certainly contribute to growing to any age disgracefully (and…
Provocative Therapy will shock and provoke you as it challenges many traditional assumptions about the limits to be respected by professional communicatiors in the same provocative, earthy and humor-producing style that characterizes Provocative Therapy. This book is a rich source of examples with extensive commentary as it chronicles the adventurous, warm and humorous journey undertaken by Farrelly in his highly successful quest for tools. These tools have gained for him an ever-growing reputation as a highly effective and dramatic practitioner and teacher of his system of psychotherapy. These tools were forged in the experiences of more than 20 years of…
The first record I ever bought was Magical Mystery Tour when I was no more than twelve or so. It’s what made me want to be a musician myself. I’ve got every Beatle record and I am the kind of guy to study carefully who played what, who wrote what, and how they put it all together. Just before Covid shut down everything, I even went to Abbey Road studios where we recorded some of the songs for my novel (we wrote and recorded all the songs of the fictitious band Downtown Exit). Working in Abbey Road was a dream come true – to record in the same rooms that the Beatles used. Imagine that. It was wonderful.
The Love You Make is pure pop pablum. It’s almost tabloid-like in its recounting of the Beatle’s relationships, their drug use, and their many petty squabbles. Written by Brian Epstein’s assistant (Brian Epstein, of course, was the Beatles’ manager), Brown has some stories to tell. Full of photos too. This one’s a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.
Here is the national bestseller that Newsday called “the most authoritative and candid look yet at the personal lives…of the oft-scrutinized group.” In The Love You Make, Peter Brown, a close friend of and business manager for the band—and the best man at John and Yoko’s wedding—presents a complete look at the dramatic offstage odyssey of the four lads from Liverpool who established the greatest music phenomenon of the twentieth century. Written with the full cooperation of each of the group’s members and their intimates, this book tells the inside story of the music and the madness, the feuds and…
