THIS SIMON WEBB wrote the history of the 
1919 General Strike in Britain 

About the Author

Simon Webb is the author of a number of non-fiction books, ranging from academic works on education to popular history. He works as a consultant on the subject of capital punishment to television companies and filmmakers and also writes for various magazines and newspapers; including the Times Educational Supplement, Daily Telegraph and the Guardian.

British Concentration Camps: A Brief History from 1900-1975

by Simon Webb

For many of us, the very expression ‘Concentration Camp’ is inextricably linked to Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust. The idea of British concentration camps is a strange and unsettling one. It was however the British, rather than the Germans, who were the chief driving force behind the development and use of concentration camps in the Twentieth Century.

The operation by the British army of concentration camps during the Boer War led to the deaths of tens of thousands of children from starvation and disease. More recently, slave-labourers confined in a nationwide network of camps played an integral role in Britain’s post-war prosperity. In 1947, a quarter of the country’s agricultural workforce were prisoners in labour camps.

BLOWS AGAINST THE EMPIRE 

The Suffragette Bombers: Britain's Forgotten Terrorists

by Simon Webb

In the years leading up to the First World War, the United Kingdom was subjected to a ferocious campaign of bombing and arson. Those conducting this terrorist offensive were members of the Women's Social and Political Union; better known as the suffragettes. 

The targets for their attacks ranged from St Paul's Cathedral and the Bank of England in London to theatres and churches in Ireland. The violence, which included several attempted assassinations, culminated in June 1914 with an explosion in Westminster Abbey.

Simon Webb explores the way in which the suffragette bombers have been airbrushed from history, leaving us with a distorted view of the struggle for female suffrage. Not only were the suffragettes far more aggressive than is generally known, but there exists the very real and surprising possibility that their militant activities actually delayed, rather than hastened, the granting of the parliamentary vote to British women.

The Real World of Victorian Steampunk: Steam Planes and Radiophones

by Simon Webb

In the last few decades, steampunk has blossomed from being a rather obscure and little-known subgenre of science fiction into a striking and distinctive style of fashion, art, design and even music. It is in the written word however that steampunk has its roots and in this book Simon Webb explores and examines the real inventions which underpin the fantasy. In doing so, he reveals a world unknown to most people today.

The Real World of Victorian Steampunk shows the Victorian era to have been a surprising place; one of steam-powered airplanes, fax machines linking Moscow and St Petersburg, steam cars traveling at over 100 mph, electric taxis and wireless telephones. It is, in short, the nineteenth century as you have never before seen it; a steampunk extravaganza of anachronistic technology and unfamiliar gadgets. Imagine Europe spanned by a mechanical internet; a telecommunication system of clattering semaphore towers capable of transmitting information across the continent in a matter of minutes. Consider too, the fact that a steam plane the size of a modern airliner took off in England in 1894.

Drawing entirely on contemporary sources, we see how little-known developments in technology have been used as the basis for so many steampunk narratives. From seminal novels such as The Difference Engine, through to the steampunk fantasy of Terry Pratchett’s later works, this book shows that steampunk is at least as much solid fact as it is whimsical fiction.

The Analogue Revolution: Communication Technology 1901–1914

by Simon Webb

We are all familiar with the digital revolution that has swept across the developed world in recent years. It has ushered in an age of smartphones, laptop computers and ready access to the internet. A little over a century ago, a similar explosion took place in the field of information and communication technology. This revolution was not digital but analogue, and it saw the birth of mass media such as newspapers, cinema and radio.

In The Analogue Revolution, Simon Webb examines the impact that developments in printing, photography, wireless telegraphy, gramophones and moving pictures had in the years preceding the First World War, and shows how the modern world was shaped by the media used to record it. From the first mass-circulation newspapers to cameras so cheap that everybody could afford them, from early experiments in radio broadcasting to cinema films in color, The Analogue Revolution charts the history of the first information revolution of the twentieth century. The parallels with the modern world are uncanny, ranging from anxiety about the use of new technology to distribute pornography, to worries about children losing interest in reading because they prefer to watch films.

For anybody wishing to understand the modern world, this book is an essential primer in the nature of information revolutions and the way in which they affect the world.

Post-War Childhood: Growing up in the not-so-friendly ‘Baby Boomer’ Years 

by Simon Webb (Author)

Many British baby boomers are very nostalgic about a supposed golden age; a vanished world when children were generally freer, happier and healthier than they are now. They wandered about all day; only returning home at teatime when they were hungry. Nobody worried about health and safety or 'stranger danger' in those days and no serious harm ever befell children as a result.

In Post-War Childhood, Simon Webb examines the facts and figures behind the myth of children's carefree lives in the post-war years, finding that such things as the freedom to roam the streets and fields came at a terrible price. In 1965, for example, despite there being far fewer cars in Britain, 45 times as many children were knocked down and killed on the roads as now die in this way each year.

Simon Webb presents a 'warts and all' portrait of British childhood in the years following the end of the Second World War. He demonstrates that contrary to popular belief, it was by any measure a far more hazardous and less pleasant time to be a child, than is the case in the twenty-first century.