Douglas Boyd
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On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a further 11 people on the ground. Only one man has ever been convicted of the crime: Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, though few believe that he acted alone. However, author Douglas Boyd conjects that it was Iran, not Libya, who...
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All you need for a plague to go pandemic are population clusters and travellers spreading the bacterial or viral pathogens. Many prehistoric civilisations died fast, leaving cities undamaged to mystify archeologists. Plague in Athens killed 30% of the population 430-426 BCE. When Roman Emperor Justinian I caught bubonic plague in 541 CE, contemporary historian Procopius described his symptoms: fever, delirium and buboes — large black swellings of...
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Forget the adventure stories of James Bond, Kim Philby, Klaus Fuchs and Co., espionage is not just a boys' game.
As long as there has been conflict, there have been female agents behind the scenes. In Belgium and northern France in 1914-18 there were several thousand women actively working against the Kaiser's forces occupying their homelands. In the Second World War, women of many nations opposed the Nazis, risking the firing squad or decapitation...
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Famous for Calvados apple brandy and Camembert cheese, Normandy is a green and pleasant land now dotted with thousands of British-owned second homes. Its coastline is also dotted with thousands of indestructible reinforced-concrete bunkers and gun emplacements that formed part of the Atlantic Wall of Hitler's Fortress Europe. Tourists passing through the ferry ports like Boulogne, Cherbourg and Dunkirk may wonder why there are so few old buildings....
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Nearing D-Day, Allied intelligence used thousands of young men hiding in France's forests and hill country to avoid compulsory labour service in Germany as bait to draw German forces away from the Normandy beaches. There are two principles of guerilla warfare: never to concentrate your forces or rush a pitched battle. But with RAF airdrops of pistols and Sten guns came British, American and French liaison officers who concentrated these untrained...
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Eleanor of Aquitaine was the only person ever to sit on the thrones of both France and England. In this account of the turbulent adventures of the extraordinary mother of Richard the Lionheart and King John, author Douglas Boyd takes us into the heart and mind of the woman who changed the shape of Europe for 300 years by marrying Henry of Anjou to make him England's Henry II. Brought up in the comfort- and culture-loving Mediterranean civilisation...
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Of the 2.3 million National Servicemen conscripted during the Cold War, 4,200 attended the secret Joint Services School for Linguists, tasked with supplying much-needed Russian speakers to the three services. The majority were in RAF uniform, as the Warsaw Pact saw air forces become the greatest danger to the West. After training, they were sent to the front lines in Germany and elsewhere to snoop on Russian aircraft in real time. Posted to RAF Gatow...
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When John Erickson, author of the Hank the Cowdog book series, saved up and purchased a tract of Panhandle property near Perryton, it set off a chain of discovery. Who lived in Texas over a thousand years ago? In Porch Talk, John Erickson and his archaeologist friend Doug Boyd investigate this question while explaining the art and science of archaeology for middle readers.
On the Perryton ranch, John and his friends unearthed a ghost town that...