Bøker av Stephen Channing

The humorous anecdotes, refined poems, astounding newspaper articles and other materials that are gathered here in The Margate Tales present a vivid picture of this seaside town as it rose to become one of Britain's most popular resorts. Just as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales help us get a feel for how the people in England behaved and thought in the Middle Ages, Channing's Margate Tales provide us with a unique insight into the people of Thanet as they were described in the 18th and early to mid 19th centuries. The illuminating and entertaining accounts range from furious battles in the letters pages, to hilarious pastiches, witty verse and surprising discoveries, illustrated with numerous contemporary drawings. The end result is that as with Chaucer, one realizes how little has in fact changed.

Surprisingly, one of the best sources of information on life in Margate in the early 19th century was a little town in Australia. Stewart Viney had attended school and later worked in Margate, living just a few doors away from where the artist Turner was staying with his mistress Mrs Booth, but then joined the Bendigo Gold Rush. Finding only mixed fortune there, he progressed into journalism and produced many fascinating articles about the place where he had grown up and the people who had surrounded him. These have been fortunately rediscovered and edited into a single volume of great interest to local people and social historians alike.

Bicycles are so much a part of everyday life nowadays, it can be surprising to realize that for the late Victorians these "velocipedes" were a novelty disparaged as being unhealthy and unsafe - and that indeed tricycles were for a time seen as the format more likely to succeed.Some people however adopted the newfangled devices with alacrity, embarking on adventurous tours throughout the countryside. One of them documented his 'rambles' around East Kent in such detail that it is still possible to follow his routes on modern cycles, and compare the fauna and flora (and pubs!) with those he vividly described.In addition to providing today's cyclists with new historical routes to explore, and both naturalists and social historians with plenty of material for research, this fascinating book contains a special chapter on Lady Cyclists in the era before female emancipation, and an unintentionally humorous section instructing young gentlemen how to make their cycle and then ride it.It features over 200 illustrations, and is complemented by a fully updated website.