Bøker av Stuart Hylton

The Home Front as seen by the wartime media, highlighting community and social ties

Full of information you didn't know about Berkshire

Explore the fascinating town of Reading in this fully illustrated A-Z guide to its history, people and places.

It is hard, from a distance of nearly two centuries, to imagine the impact the coming of the railways must have had at the start of the nineteenth century. Their physical impact was dramatic enough - great mechanical horses, breathing fire and smoke and drawing impossibly heavy trains at unimaginable speeds, across a landscape transformed by the embankments and cuttings, viaducts and tunnels their passage demanded. However, they would also transform the way war was conducted and peace was maintained; prove to be one of the drivers of the dramatic industrial growth of the nineteenth century; create opportunities for many to become enormously wealthy, but impoverish many more, who invested unwisely; cause the state to think again about the policy of laissez-faire that was its default position; transform our leisure; radically re-shape our towns and cities and change our very notions of time and how we measured it. In this book, Stuart Hylton looks at the changes wrought in the British Isles during the first century of the railway age and answers the question, what did the railways do for us?

From Victorian manufacturing town, famous for the 'three Bs' - beer, bulbs and biscuits - to its current status as a major centre for service industries and cutting-edge technology, Reading has a proud and distinctive identity. This extraordinary history is embodied in the buildings that have shaped the town. Reading in 50 Buildings explores the history of this rich and vibrant community through a selection of its greatest architectural treasures. From the medieval Abbey Gateway to the modern Oracle shopping centre, this unique study celebrates the city's architectural heritage in a new and accessible way. Well-known local author Stuart Hylton guides the reader on a tour of the city's historic buildings and modern architectural marvels.