Pevsner wrote that "Leicestershire is not a county of extremes" and agreed that "no other county in England surpasses Rutland for unspoiled quiet charm". The large and the small Midland counties possess a varied and rewarding range of buildings. Church architecture encompasses the classical Normanton, preserved in remote isolation from the flood of Rutland Water, to Market Harborough with its elegant medieval steeple, and a fine group of Victorian churches in Leicester. The major country houses include Belvoir Castle, Staunton Harold and Burley-on-the-Hill, while the more modest homes of the late nineteenth century include notable work by Ernest Gimson, Voysey and a garden city at Leicester by Parker & Unwin. Leicestershire also possesses fine modern buildings, from its architecturally progressive schools to the justly renowned buildings of Leicester University, dominated by Stirling & Gowan's Engineering Building.

A new title in the successful County Avifaunas series, this is an in-depth study of the status and distribution of every birdspecies known to have occurred in the region, with a detailed review ofrarity records.

A full account of the part played by Leicestershire & Rutland airfields during the Second World War including Woolfox Lodge, Husbands Bosworth, Melton Mowbray, Castle Donington and Saltby. The history of each airfield is described with the squadrons and aircraft based at them and the main operations flown. The effects of the war on the daily lives of civilians, and the constant dangers from raids and night bombing are also detailed. Fully illustrated.

Most historians portray 19th-century county asylums as the exclusive realm of the asylum doctor, but Bartlett (law, U. of Nottingham) argues that they should be thought of as an aspect of English poor law, in which the medical superintendent had remarkably little power. He examines the place of the county asylum movement in the midcentury poor law debates and its legal and administrative regimes. Taking the Leicestershire asylum as a case study, he explores the role of poor law officers in admission processes, and relations between them and the staff and inspectors.

Watch out for a ghostly ship and its spectral crew off the coast of Cornwall Listen for the unearthly tread and rustling silk dress of Darlington's Lady Jarratt Shiver at the malevolent apparition of 50 Berkeley Square that no-one survives seeing Beware the black dog of Shap Fell: a sighting warns of fatal accidents England's past echoes with stories of unquiet spirits and hauntings, of headless highwaymen and grey ladies, indelible bloodstains and ghastly premonitions. Here, county by county, are the nation's most fascinating supernatural tales and bone-chilling legends: from a ghostly army marching across Cumbria to the vanishing hitchhiker of Bluebell Hill, from the gruesome Man-Monkey of Shropshire to the phantom congregation who gather for a 'Sermon of the Dead' ...

Presented in an illustrated format, this book traces the history of the area's railway lines from their opening in the 19th century and, in many cases, their closure in the 20th century.