{"title":"Handheld Research","description":"\u003cp\u003eDive into the fascinating world of Handheld Research, exploring diverse subjects through concise and insightful books. Perfect for curious minds seeking quick, informative reads on everything from history to science.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"conscientious-objector-s-wife-1916-1919-book-kate-macdonald-9781999881368","title":"The Conscientious Objector's Wife, 1916-1919","description":"Frank and Lucy Sunderland, English pacifists and fervent supporters of Labour politics and the New Town movement, were separated in 1916 when Frank was given his prison sentence as a conscientious objector. They wrote to each other from November 1916 until April 1919 while Frank was in prison at Wandsworth and at Bedford. Lucy looked after their three children at home in Letchworth, and earned enough to keep the family afloat be keeping hens, collecting insurance premiums and taking in sewing. Their letters record how their predominantly pacifist and Quaker circle in Letchworth supported the family during its ordeal, contrasting with the attitude of their own London families.  This unique collection of letters is important as a working-class record of wartime experience. The unsophisticated descriptions about heartfelt, practical concerns reveal the wife's voice as well as that of the conscientious objector: no other WW1 memoirs or diary gives these details of the wife struggling to keep the home going in her husband's absence. The letters have been selected and edited by Kate Macdonald, to reveal first-hand details of the British home front during the First World War, and the impact on Lucy's daily life of British politics, the New Town movement, feminism and women's emancipation, adult and workers' education, and Quakerism and pacifism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49645217218833,"sku":"GOR009434080","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52109204750609,"sku":"GOR009262070","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1999881362.jpg?v=1750869631"},{"product_id":"valentine-ackland-book-frances-bingham-9781912766406","title":"Valentine Ackland","description":"'One November evening in 1925, two young women from London arrived at the village of Chaldon, in Dorset. They brought with them two suitcases, a gramophone, and a wooden boxful of records; the bare necessities. Both wore trousers and had Eton-cropped hair. The taller of the two, Mrs Turpin, had come to the country to recover from a recent operation to remove her hymen.' Mrs Turpin was Valentine Ackland, on the run from her recent disastrous marriage. She was soon to meet the love of her life, Sylvia Townsend Warner, already a celebrity for her dashing debut novel Lolly Willowes. They would live in Dorset together in a passionate relationship until Valentine's death in 1969. Valentine was a dedicated poet, deeply involved with Communism during the 1930s, and an environmentalist and peace campaigner. Recently released MI5 files show that she was blacklisted for confidential work during the Second World War, and remained under long-term surveillance. Despite her commitment to Sylvia, Valentine had many affairs with women who fell for her androgynous beauty and her masterful conduct of an amour. She also struggled with alcoholism, but the relationship with Sylvia survived all challenges. Frances Bingham has written the definitive biography of this remarkable cross-dressing woman, poet and activist, recovering an important part of British lesbian history and creating a testament to queerness and gender identity in Valentine's transgressive life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737629860113,"sku":"NGR9781912766406","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49755039039761,"sku":"GOR011947342","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49763500425489,"sku":"GOR011592399","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50394028114193,"sku":"CIN191276640XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/191276640X.jpg?v=1750964504"},{"product_id":"dreaming-of-rose-book-sarah-lefanu-9781912766529","title":"Dreaming of Rose","description":"In 2003 the former Women's Press editor and critic Sarah LeFanu published her acclaimed biography of Rose Macaulay with Virago Press. 'A magnificent job ... imaginative and thoughtful, dense with distilled information ... LeFanu offers a skilled, visual, intellectual and emotional picture of a complex woman' -Independent 'A fine biography ... rich and perceptive ... Sarah LeFanu [is] an able and astute judge of Macaulay's writings' - Times Literary Supplement As well as writing the biography, LeFanu was keeping a detailed journal of her research trips and her processes as a biographer, arguing with herself over what to include, what to pursue, and what to leave behind. Her immersion in her research led to Rose intruding in her dreams, and fantastical imaginings of what Rose would say or do, at each fork in the road. Dreaming of Rose is a remarkable record of the art of biography, and the search for another woman's life. Research trips to Varazze in Italy to look for Rose's childhood, and to Trabzon in Turkey to find traces of The Towers of Trebizond, were remarkably intuitive ventures that found treasures in unexpected places.   Dreaming of Rose is also a memoir of a woman juggling the demands of teaching, research and writing while patching together a living. LeFanu's work on Rose was squeezed in between many other commitments and responsibilities: she wrote for the BBC and taught creative writing and English literature. Suffused with the tensions and dramas of everyday life, and the necessity for intellectual integrity, this is an important memoir of women and writing.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49740530417937,"sku":"NGR9781912766529","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49756656304401,"sku":"GOR011637951","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1912766523.jpg?v=1750932195"},{"product_id":"quaker-conscientious-objector-book-rebecca-wynter-9781912766277","title":"A Quaker Conscientious Objector","description":"In 1914 Wilfrid Littleboy (1895-1986) was a Quaker living in Birmingham. By 1918, he had served time in Wormwood Scrubs and in Dorchester Prison. Published for the first time, this private collection of his letters tells the story of how this middle-class accountant came to be imprisoned, and what happened to him inside. The letters follow Wilfrid's decision as an absolutist conscientious objector to voluntarily go to prison in 1917 rather than join the armed forces. He served his prison sentences cheerfully, with an abiding faith in his choice, and an increased awareness of working-class politics.  With an introduction and epilogue, Wilfrid's letters bring to life the realities of conscience, military discipline, and early twentieth-century prisons. The letters are uplifting and engaging, vividly telling the story of hope through faith, books and nature, alongside the daily endurance of prison conditions in wartime Britain.  Wilfrid Littleboy went on to hold national Quaker leadership positions. His experience as a CO helped sustain in British law the right to conscientiously object to war, and influenced Quaker discernment on conscription and conflict during the Second World War and beyond.  Focus markets: prison history, history of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, Birmingham, Dorchester, military history, First World War, Quakers and Quakerism, history of religion, pacifism and peace studies, conscientious objection, history of reading.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49907623821585,"sku":"GOR012605663","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1912766272.jpg?v=1751218739"},{"product_id":"akeing-heart-book-peter-haring-judd-9781999828035","title":"The Akeing Heart","description":"'This long-hidden treasure-trove of letters, with its many wonderful new photographs and illustrations, is a revelation. The \"other woman's\" voice is heard, and the shape of the Warner-Ackland-White love-triangle changes subtly. The Akeing Heart is the most important and startling addition in decades to what we know about these perennially fascinating writers.' Claire Harman, author of Sylvia Townsend Warner. A Biography and The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner The Akeing Heart is the long-lost story of the deep and passionate relationships between Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland and Elizabeth Wade White. Their intellectual and emotional integrity that endured over twenty years of heartache is revealed here in the rich correspondence preserved by Elizabeth from their relationship, and reconstructed by her godson, Peter Haring Judd. Valentine was the serial seducer, Elizabeth the passionate lover newly aware of her sexuality, while Sylvia kept faith in anger and despair. Elizabeth's long-term partner Evelyn Holahan emerges from the background to their story, as Sylvia's friend, and as a firm dash of realism to Valentine's romanticism. The correspondence over twenty years between the four women in this agonised relationship -in letters, poems, telegrams, keepsakes and notes -makes this book one of the finest collections of twentieth-century literary letters about love and its betrayals. Originally self-published by the author in 2013, this new edition of The Akeing Heart brings this supplement to Sylvia and Valentine's story to a wider readership.  `Judd's story is an engrossing one, and the best of the Warner letters evince her characteristic joy in language and observation. Most moving are her efforts to retain Elizabeth's friendship while allowing the affair to take its course.' 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