From Dunfermline to London recounts the detailed memoirs of a nurse training in the 1950s with the NHS in its infancy. The book combines fascinating and often humorous insights into nursing with personal and touching accounts of patients from all walks of life. Jeanie Traynor Maltby acquired a reputation as a storyteller amongst her nursing friends and regaled her six grandchildren with colourful stories of her training and life as a nurse in Scotland and then London. With excellent detail, a sharp wit and a profound commitment to nursing, these stories contain both humour and poignancy. This informative book also provides a personal perspective on the beginnings of the NHS. From a fever ward in Dunfermline to a general hospital in Edinburgh, and from midwifery in Lewisham to residences of the rich and famous in London, these stories will captivate readers. Inspired by Bill Bryson and Jennifer Worth, From Dunfermline to London will appeal to readers interested in nursing.

Women have engaged in healing from the beginning of history, often within the context of the home. This book studies the role, contributions and challenges faced by women healers in France, Spain, Italy and England, including medical practice among women in the Jewish and Muslim communities, from the later Middle Ages to approximately 1800.

How was American culture disseminated into Britain? Why did many British citizens embrace American customs? And what picture did they form of American society and politics? This engaging and wide-ranging history explores these and other questions about the U.S.'s cultural and political influence on British society in the post-World War II period.

Lesser Feasts and Fasts had not been updated since 2006. This updated edition, adopted at the 79th General Convention (resolution A065), fills that need. Biographies and collects associated with those included within the volume have been updated; a deliberate effort has been made to more closely balance the men and women represented within its pages.

When the class became rowdy, my old maths teacher used to threaten us that 'Lochgelly will fly' and arguably the town's most famous son was the tawse, the story of which is included in this book. Amongst the streets featured are Bank Street, Auchterderran Road, Station Road, Motion Street and Main Road. The Minto Cottages at Brigghill are also illustrated, as is the village of Glencraig and several pits/mines, namely the Nelly Pit, the Jenny Gray Pit, Bowhill Colliery and the Brigghills Colliery.

Known for his black humor and expertise in military aviation, Derek Robinson is best renowned for his novels on the Royal Flying Corps. The Goshawk Squadron was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. World War One pilots were the knights of the sky, and the press and public idolised them as gallant young heroes. At just twenty-three, Major Stanley Woolley is the old man and commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron. He abhors any notion of chivalry in the clouds and is determined to obliterate the decent, gentlemanly outlook of his young, public school-educated pilots--for their own good. But as the war goes on he is forced to thrown greener and greener pilots into the meat grinder. Goshawk Squadron finds its gallows humor and black camaraderie no defense against a Spandau bullet to the back of the head.

In just three decades, Great Britain’s place in world politics was transformed. In 1945, it was the world’s preeminent imperial power with global interests. By 1975, Britain languished in political stasis and economic recession, clinging to its alliance with the United States and membership in the European Community. Amid this turmoil, British intellectuals struggled to make sense of their country’s decline and the transformed world in which they found themselves. This book assesses their responses to this predicament and explores the different ways British thinkers came to understand the new international relations of the postwar period.

In the mountains and jungles of occupied Burma during World War II, British special forces launched a series of secret operations, assisted by parts of the Burmese population. The men of the SOE, trained in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, worked in the jungle, deep behind enemy lines, to frustrate the puppet Burmese government of Ba Maw and continue the fight against Hirohito's Japan in a theatre starved of resources. Here, Richard Duckett uses newly declassified documents from the National Archives to reveal for the first time the extent of British special forces' involvement - from the 1941 operations until beyond Burma's independence from the British Empire in 1948. Duckett argues convincingly that `Operation Character' and `Operation Billet' - large SOE missions launched in support of General Slim's XIV Army offensive to liberate Burma - rank among the most militarily significant of the SOE's secret missions. Featuring a wealth of photographs and accompanying material never before published, including direct testimony recorded by veterans of the campaign and maps from the SOE files, The SOE in Burma tells a compelling story of courage and struggle in during World War II