The Boy From The Black Country

Author : Anthony Poulton-Smith
Publisher : The History Press
ISBN 13 : 0750953438
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Black Country Ghosts written by Anthony Poulton-Smith and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2008-11-03 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Local author Anthony Poulton-Smith takes the reader on a fascinating A—Z tour of the haunted places of the Black Country. Contained within the pages of this book are strange tales of spectral sightings, active poltergeists and restless spirits appearing in streets, inns, churches, estates, public buildings and private homes across the area. They include the ghost of a murdered woman in Dudley's Station Hotel cellar, the tragic lovers of Cradley Heath's Haden Estate, Walsall's notorious Hand of Glory and Coseley's enormous black dog forecasting death. This new collection of stories, a product of both historical accounts and numerous interviews conducted with local witnesses, is sure to appeal to all those intrigued by the Black Country's haunted heritage.

Author : Hugh James Rose
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN 13 : 3385249171
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Untrodden Spain, and her Black Country written by Hugh James Rose and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Author : Liz Berry
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1448182891
Total Pages : 80 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Black Country written by Liz Berry and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2014 *PBS Recommendation 2014* ‘When I became a bird, Lord, nothing could not stop me...’ In Black Country, Liz Berry takes flight: to Wrens Nest, Gosty Hill, Tipton-on-Cut; to the places of home. The poems move from the magic of childhood – bostin fittle at Nanny’s, summers before school – into deeper, darker territory: sensual love, enchanted weddings, and the promise of new life. In Berry’s hands, the ordinary is transformed: her characters shift shapes, her eye is unusual, her ear attuned to the sounds of the Black Country, with ‘vowels ferrous as nails, consonants / you could lick the coal from.’ Ablaze with energy and full of the rich dialect of the West Midlands, this is an incandescent debut from a poet of dazzling talent and verve.

Author : Alex Grecian
Publisher : G.P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN 13 : 0425267733
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Black Country written by Alex Grecian and published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When members of a prominent coal-mining family go missing, Scotland Yard's Murder Squad teammates Inspector Walter Day and Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith investigate dark secrets and realize that the family's village is slowly sinking into underground mines.

Author : Stanley Underhill
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781527296626
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Coming Out Of The Black Country written by Stanley Underhill and published by . This book was released on 2018-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up in the highly industrialised, economically impoverished region of the Black Country in the 1920s and 1930s, Stanley Underhill found himself in a society shaped by cultural ignorance, (working) class-consciousness and ideals of masculinity which seethed as insidiously as the 'satanic mills' that dominated the landscape of his childhood. As a gay man, this experience led Stanley to a struggle with his own sexuality that was to consume most of his life. In his early 50s, in spite of the ubiquitous homophobia and hypocrisy of the Church and State, he gave in to that inner voice that had persisted since he was a teenager and was ordained a priest. Coming Out of the Black Country is a story of survival, forgiveness, and a testament to the power of personal faith and love. Towards the end of Stanley Underhill's autobiography, he quotes the advice that Polonius offers to his son, Laertes, in Shakespeare's Hamlet: 'This above all, to thine own self be true.' He could hardly have anticipated that this advice would precipitate in himself a lifetime of self-examination and searching as he grappled to reconcile his faith and sexuality. Stanley Underhill was born in 1927, in the Black Country. When he was only a toddler, his family was plunged into poverty. On leaving school on his fourteenth birthday, he became a compositor at a printing works in Birmingham. In 1945, he was called up and served in the Royal Navy as a Naval nurse. After demobilisation in 1948, he studied and qualified as an accountant and practised until 1976, when he joined the Anglican Society of St. Francis. After five years with the Society, he was ordained and served in the dioceses of Southwark, Lichfield and Canterbury, and finally as a Chaplain in the Diocese of Europe. In 2003, he became a Brother at the London Charterhouse where, in his mid-eighties, he began writing his autobiography: Coming Out of the Black Country

Author : Alice Randall
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1668018403
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book My Black Country written by Alice Randall and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-04-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author with a “lively, engaging, and often wise” (The New York Times Book Review) voice, offers a lyrical, introspective, and unforgettable account of her past and her search for the first family of Black country music. Country music had brought Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music history: she is the first Black woman to cowrite a number one country hit, Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s”. Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country music: DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Herb Jeffries who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and sometimes profound eccentricity. What emerges in My Black Country is a celebration of the most American of music genres and the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture. As country music goes through a fresh renaissance today, with a new wave of Black artists enjoying success, My Black Country is the perfect gift for longtime country fans and a vibrant introduction to a new generation of listeners who previously were not invited to give the genre a chance.

Author : Michael Pearson
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1526712954
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors written by Michael Pearson and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Country in the West Midlands is an important site for family historians. Many researchers, seeking to trace their ancestry back through the generations, will find their trail leads through it. And yet, despite the burgeoning interest in genealogy and the importance of the region in so many life stories, no previous book has provided a guide to the Black Country's history and to the documents and records that family historians can use in their research. In this accessible and informative introduction to the subject, Michael Pearson looks at the history and heritage of the region and gives a graphic insight into the world in which our ancestors lived. He concentrates on the role the Black Country played during the industrial revolution when the development of mining, industry and transport transformed the economic and social life of the area. This was a period when living and working conditions were poor, families were large, children worked from an early age, often in the mines, and life expectancy was less than 20. And it was the era in which the Black Country took on the distinctive identity by which it is known today. As well as retelling the fascinating story of the development of the Black Country, the author introduces the reader to the variety of records that are available for genealogical research, from legal and ecclesiastical archives, birth and death certificates to the records of local government, employers, institutions, clubs, societies and schools.

Author : Michael Pearson
Publisher : The History Press
ISBN 13 : 0750951788
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Little Book of the Black Country written by Michael Pearson and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did You Know? Butcher Keith Boxley of Wombourne made the longest continuous sausage in 1988. It was 21.12km in length! The first general strike in the Black Country took place in 1842. The widespread public unrest was regarded nationally as the first ever general strike. Hell Lane in Sedgley was described as the ‘most unruly place’ in the Black Country. A woman who lived in the lane was said to have been a witch and could turn herself into a white rabbit to spy on her neighbours. The Little Book of the Black Country is a funny, fact-packed compendium of frivolous, fantastic, and simply strange information. Here we find out about the region’s most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, quirky history, famous figures and literally hundreds of wacky facts. From royal visits and local celebrities, to the riotous Wednesbury protests and a particularly notorious reverend, this is a myriad of data on the Black Country, gathered together by author and local historian Michael Pearson. A handy reference and quirky guide, this engaging little book can be dipped into time and again to reveal something you never knew, making it essential reading for visitors and locals alike.

Author : Richard Wright
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 006302859X
Total Pages : 534 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] written by Richard Wright and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A special 75th anniversary edition of Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a new foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author’s grandson. When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that “if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy.” Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for “obscenity” and “instigating hatred between the races.” Wright’s once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him—whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and Blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he headed north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.” Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate. “To read Black Boy is to stare into the heart of darkness,” John Edgar Wideman writes in his foreword. “Not the dark heart Conrad searched for in Congo jungles but the beating heart I bear.” One of the great American memoirs, Wright’s account is a poignant record of struggle and endurance—a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.

Author : Michael Pearson
Publisher : The History Press
ISBN 13 : 0750951788
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Little Book of the Black Country written by Michael Pearson and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did You Know? Butcher Keith Boxley of Wombourne made the longest continuous sausage in 1988. It was 21.12km in length! The first general strike in the Black Country took place in 1842. The widespread public unrest was regarded nationally as the first ever general strike. Hell Lane in Sedgley was described as the 'most unruly place' in the Black Country. A woman who lived in the lane was said to have been a witch and could turn herself into a white rabbit to spy on her neighbours. The Little Book of the Black Country is a funny, fact-packed compendium of frivolous, fantastic, and simply strange information. Here we find out about the region's most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, quirky history, famous figures and literally hundreds of wacky facts. From royal visits and local celebrities, to the riotous Wednesbury protests and a particularly notorious reverend, this is a myriad of data on the Black Country, gathered together by author and local historian Michael Pearson. A handy reference and quirky guide, this engaging little book can be dipped into time and again to reveal something you never knew, making it essential reading for visitors and locals alike.