'Silence, Chris discovered, is easy. If nobody asks, you never have to tell.' Christopher Bright is a well-respected conservation architect, good neighbour and friend. He has a devoted wife, two talented children and an old Rover. He plays tennis on Saturdays and enjoys a beer with his business partner after work. Life is orderly, yet an unresolved question has haunted him for as long as he can remember: Who was his birth father? Devotion to his adoptive parents has always prevented Chris from enquiring too deeply, but when his mother dies, information emerges that becomes the catalyst for changes he has never imagined. As light is cast on his father, attention turns to his birth mother, but when he goes in search of the person behind the photo, he encounters a conspiracy of silence. His quest for information, however, reveals not only the truth about his mother's life but exposes the fault lines in his own, and Chris finds the price of knowledge increasingly heavy. Nevertheless, the truth must be told ... Or must it?

Beginning with 1915 the Abstracts of decisions of the United States Customs court are included

A narrative history of the explosives industry in the United States and Canada that discusses the technical development of the industry as well its commercial history.

This work begins in August 1900 during the war in South Africa, when mounted Boer commandos ranging across the veldt superseded pitched battles of massed armies and heavy weaponry. Thanks to his flair for organisation, Baden-Powell is asked to create a mounted force with a combined military and police role, and will be answerable to the Commander-in-Chief and the civil High Commissioner. Rejecting Army models of command, Baden-Powell creates the South African Constabulary (SAC) with a small number of officers, dividing it into Troops of 100 men, then sub-dividing again into sections and the key working unit – the squad of six men under a corporal. To get the calibre of recruit he wants, the SAC will be better paid than the Army and he expects the men to be motivated by a code of honor, to be self-reliant and ‘handy men’ able to tackle any kind of work. Most recruits come from the UK, but in Canada, however, the Governor General intervenes and botches selection. The SAC’s effectiveness comes to light in this book – the first that deals with its creation and development; its wartime achievements and its peace-time transition into a community support helping local people returning to their homes. This work also highlights what Baden-Powell brought from the SAC and gave anew to the Scouts. Based on research using archive material in the UK, South Africa and Canada, it also includes images that have not previously appeared before in the public domain.