Today pollution-free transport is high on the political agenda yet it is sometimes forgotten that electric vehicles ran on the streets of London from the early 1900s until 1962. This book tells the story of that period and describes both the vehicles themselves and the effect they had on the development of the suburbs. Local historian David Berguer has endeavoured to paint a picture of what life was like in the capital during this golden age, travelling and working on the trams and trolleybuses, and includes material based on newspaper reports, council and official minutes and oral histories from those involved. With many previously unpublished photographs and detail on the vehicles and routes themselves, there is even a chapter on the colourful pirate buses which competed against trams in the 1920s. Full of local interest and insights into daily life on north London trams and trolleybuses, this celebration of the glory days of electric street traction in the suburbs of North London is bound to capture the imagination of both transport and local historians alike.

From the lean days of Depression-era Texas to the thrill of being one of the few who flew Spitfires, from a death-defying crash landing in Occupied France to capture and torture by the Gestapo, imprisonment in the Great Escape camp, Stalag Luft III, and years spent becoming a serial escape artist, this is the wartime memoir of a true hero, a real-life "Cooler King." Recounted in a wonderfully honest and self-deprecating voice, William Ash's Under the Wire is a classic in the making--a riveting story of bravery by one of the last of his generation.

In 1918 Gerhard and Alma Jacobson and nine-month-old Doris sailed for China. The Chinese landscape, both geographic and spiritual, proved to be a harsh and foreboding one. The marks of the destructive claws of the Dragon dogged the missionaries- haunted houses, civil conflict, demonic attacks, Japanese threats- and death. Then it was 1941. "Pearl Harbor Attacked," the headlines blazed. In Shanghai, Gerhard Jacobson continued to broadcast the gospel one day: "Ah-llo, Ah-llo," a man's voice yelled suddenly into the receiver. "We cut station off air. We come get you. You stay home!" Gerhard ascended the stairs to the room, his thoughts running wild. Visions of Japanese torture chambers filled his mind. What did the future hold? And what about the Pearl, the Church in China? Try as he might, the Dragon has failed to destroy it.