The Moors Murderers

The Moors Murderers written by Chris Cook and published by Pen & Sword Books

- £25.00 - Hardback - Pages 304

Meticulously researched by C.G.C. Cook, The Moors Murderers gives readers a rare and fascinating look into the lives of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley – often referred to as the most evil couple in British history. After a torture and killing spree that lasted two years and left five innocent children dead, many aspects of their lives have been kept hidden from the public. Cook’s new release changes that – making unseen photographs, letters and accounts public for the first time. In the mid 1960s, the serenity of Saddleworth Moor was forever interrupted, even if people didn’t yet know it, as the area became a grave for the innocent child victims of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

The couple’s vile torture and killings have shaken up British history ever since, with the couple often considered two of the most evil people to have lived. However, the public still have many questions about who they were and how their dysfunctional relationship operated.

In this book, many artefacts become public for the first time, including photographs from Ian Brady’s ‘Tartan album’, police interviews and witness statements, which shed vital new light on Brady, Hindley and the dangerous cocktail their union became.

You would have to think that the vast majority of people have heard about Brady & Hindley and their sickening crimes, but I suppose the younger generation might not have heard of them and how their crimes affected a generation in the 60’s. Whilst this is a harrowing and upsetting story about two deranged individuals the story from a true crime perspective is fascinating. The book looks at the crimes from the very beginning, looking at these two growing up and their family background and then how they met up with each other. As experts will often say that you can predict what is to come from looking at someone’s character and upbringing and says how that individual will turn out. 

Although it is sickening to read about the crimes, torture and abuse which must have been terrifying for the victim. For the living, it’s also the way they buried their victims anonymously on the Saddleworth moors and then gave false hopes to victims' parents and relatives claiming to reveal where they were buried, but then never did. Denying parents’ the chance to bury their loved ones. The book is a really good book in that it is well written and balanced in its evidence and facts. A really good book that I would recommend especially for true crime fans or for people who have never heard of the case.

Scotland Yard's Casebook of Serious Crime

Scotland Yard’s Casebook of Serious Crime written by Dick Kirby published by Pen & Sword Books - £19.99 - Hardback - Pages 256

Times change and not always for the better. Dick Kirby, a former experienced Met detective and now best-selling author, maintains that the current politically correct culture coupled with an inept Crown Prosecution Service and aided and abetted by the Police & Criminal Evidence Act, has slowed the pursuit of criminals and justice to a snail’s pace.

As this gripping book clearly demonstrates it was not always so. During the 20th Century, uniformed officers were visibly part of the community, patrolling their beats and protecting the public’s property. Detectives detected, cultivated informants and, like their uniform counterparts, knew the characters on their manor. What’s more, they were backed by their senior officers, who had on-the-job experience.

Drawing on both celebrated and lesser known cases, the author vividly describes crime fighting against merciless gangsters, desperate gunmen, inept kidnappers, vicious robbers, daring burglars and ruthless blackmailers. Using his first-hand knowledge he highlights the often unconventional methods used to frustrate and outwit hardened criminals and the satisfaction gained from successful operations.

One chapter – “An Old Master” – accurately describes the theft of Goya’s portrait, The Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in 1961. This audacious heist was recently adapted into film: “The Duke” starring Jim Broadbent as the thief and Helen Mirren as his long-suffering wife.

Written by Dick Kirby, probably the third book of his I have read and I have to say what a brilliant writer he is and his background in the police probably makes him an even better writer due to knowing the system inside and out. He has an informative style that in my opinion helps grip the reader because I read this book in just a couple of nights and I really wanted to read more.

The book covers serious crimes over the second half of the 20th century and being serious crimes, your looking at crimes such as jewellery theft, robberies, blackmail, bank heists, forgery etc. The book is split into 28 chapters with each chapter covering a different crime and we see how crimes were solved, how evidence came about and often how the police were hampered by the system that was in theory supposed to help tackle crime. I enjoyed the punishment terms at the back of the book, quite enlightening. A really detailed and informative book certainly a book I would recommend and true crime fans would love this book.

Key Figures Aboard RMS Titanic

Key Figures Aboard RMS Titanic written by Anthony Nicholas and published

by Pen & Sword Books - £20.00 - Hardback - Pages 208

Titanic. The Marilyn Monroe of ocean liners. A sleek, sultry beauty, taken out way before her time. A kind of 21st century Flying Dutchman, with interiors by Cesar Ritz, still striving to achieve the waters of a port she can never reach.

Titanic is a brilliantly lit stage, carrying her cast of exotic, terminally endangered extras toward an abyss at once both unfathomable and inconceivable.

Here’s where any similarity with any other tome about the Titanic ends.

For the first time ever, a succession of key characters and groups of individuals come to the fore. Centre stage, over seventeen chapters, we meet the men whose decisions, actions and omissions combined like some slow burning powder trail to trigger a final, cataclysmic conclusion; the foundering, in mid-Atlantic, of the biggest moving object ever seen on the face of the planet.

One by one, a series of individuals take a bow. Seemingly omnipotent owners and hugely experienced ship’s officers. Engineers and designers. Would be rescuers and embattled wireless operators.

We meet them as individuals, not supermen. Their histories, backgrounds and life experiences are assessed for the first time ever, putting their actions on the night that Titanic sank into a context, a light as stark as that of the distress rockets, arcing into the sky…

This book to me is about the writing and the stories of those involved in the events that happened that fateful night in 1912. We all know that the Titanic was one of the biggest cruise liners in the world and through a number of mistakes, it would hit an iceberg and would slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean. As I said firstly was the excellent writing by the author Anthony Nicholas, the book is split into 17 chapters but each one looks at a figure in the building, commissioning and working on the liner. Some of the figures and stories you have a lot less sympathy for and some of them show a great deal of fortitude and bravery. But the writing conveyed by the author is great and really had me engrossed in the book which I spent a long evening reading. I would definitely recommend this book to others for its great detail and writing.

Secrets & Scandals of Regency Britain

Secrets & Scandals of Regency Britain written by Violent Fenn and published by 

Pen & Sword Books - £20.00 - Hardback - Pages 216

This book takes an entertaining peek at the secrets and scandals of Regency Britain, a period in which the heir to the throne was making merry with his mistress whilst his ailing father attempted to keep a grip on both his crown and his finances. From Princess Caraboo to the Peterloo Massacre, the Regency was a period of immense upheaval in both personal and public lives as well as in politics. We’ll see how the advent of the modern media brought ‘spin’ to scandal and focus on stories of those people and events who encapsulated the age.

I do enjoy a book written by author Violent Fenn, she writes a good and informative book with good humour and is easy to read. This book looks at various scandals during the regency period covering many different things especially around love, royalty, politics, crime, scandal and sex. The book is split into 25 chapters all of which are good entertaining reads with the excellent Fenn humour. The things that went on back in the regency period of Britain would be great for today’s media, or even better. An entertaining read I would heartily recommend.

House of Tudor - A Grisly History

House of Tudor - A Grisly History written by Mickey Mayhew and published by Pen & Sword Books - £20 - Hardback - Pages 200

Gruesome but not gratuitous, this decidedly darker take on the Tudors, from 1485 to 1603, covers some forty-five ‘events’ from the Tudor reign, taking in everything from the death of Richard III to the botched execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and a whole host of horrors in between. Particular attention is paid to the various gruesome ways in which the Tudors despatched their various villains and lawbreakers, from simple beheadings, to burnings and of course the dreaded hanging, drawing and quartering. Other chapters cover the various diseases prevalent during Tudor times, including the dreaded ‘Sweating Sickness’ – rather topical at the moment, unfortunately – as well as the cures for these sicknesses, some of which were considered worse than the actual disease itself. The day-to-day living conditions of the general populace are also examined, as well as various social taboos and the punishments that accompanied them, i.e. the stocks, as well as punishment by exile. Tudor England was not a nice place to live by 21st century standards, but the book will also serve to explain how it was still nevertheless a familiar home to our ancestors.

This book follows the House of Tudor dynasty but we have just the grisly bits, kind of like the grown-up version of Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories. The book is split into 45 chapters and starts with the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, the following chapters are then titled along the lines of The Terrible Death of a Tudor Traitor, Hacking the Head of Margaret Pole, Henry VIII Horrible Leg, The Rough Wooings of Mary Queen of Scots and The Babington Plot: Tudor Honey Traps to name a few. Now the book is very well written and I loved the fact that the chapters were short, punchy and to the point. After all, this was about the best bits of Tudor history. 

There were however a couple of things that I wasn’t really keen on in the book and the first was all the popular culture or modern-day references made throughout the book. I don’t watch much television so the film and TV references kind of went over my head a bit. The second problem was the little mention about Henry VII other than I think the opening chapter, yet as usual plenty of mentions about Henry VIII. But other than that, I really did enjoy this book and especially the snappy little chapters, I would happily recommend this book to anyone wanting to get into Tudor history or students that would like to study the period.

The Battle Against Slavery

The Battle Against Slavery written by Paul L. Dawson published by Frontline Books - £20 - Hardback - Pages 280

On 13 December 1776, the Rev. William Turner preached the first avowedly anti-slavery sermon in the North of England. Copies of his sermon were distributed far and wide – in so doing, he had fired the first shot in the battle to end slavery had begun.

Four years later, Rev. Turner, members of his congregation and the Rev. Christopher Wyvill founded ‘The Yorkshire Association’ to agitate for political and social reform. The Association sought universal suffrage, annual parliaments and the abolition of slavery. In the West Riding, despite furious opposition, by 1783 nearly 10,000 signatures were collected in support of the aims of the Association. Slavery, or rather its abolition, was now on the political agenda.

The Battle Against Slavery charts the story of a group of West Riding radicals in their bid to abolish slavery both in the United Kingdom and abroad. Such became the influence of this group, whose Unitarian beliefs were illegal in Britain, that the general election of 1806 in Yorkshire was fought on an abolitionist platform. At a time when the rest of the world engaged in slavery, this small body was fighting almost single-handedly to end such practices. Gradually, their beliefs began to spread across the country and across the Channel to France, the principles of which found resonance during the French Revolution and even across the Atlantic to America.

At a time, today, when the history of slavery is the subject of considerable debate worldwide, this revealing insight into the abolitionist movement, which demonstrates how ordinary men and women battled against governments and the establishment, needs to be told. The Battle Against Slavery adds an important dimension to the continuing debate over Britain’s, and other nations’, involvement in the slave trade and demonstrates how the determination of just a few right-minded people can change world opinion forever.

This book was a really interesting read indeed, I have to admit I had never heard of this group all mainly from the Yorkshire area. Fighting for a good cause that was such a big issue, these guys were from a relatively unknown background. This book was really good and I’m hoping to read bit further from some of the information in the bibliography section at the back of the book. The book seemed quite detailed and I would have thought the book was very well researched by the author Paul L. Dawson. I would certainly recommend this book to others.