David James Smith

The Sleep of Reason

Let Us Prey

Author David Smith's childhood near London, England, helped pave the way for the young boy to plough his own furrow in life. In Only Fraud and Horses, Smith narrates his story which includes pieces of history, police, and horsemanship. In this memoir, Smith offers a humorous and poetic account of his skills, training, and professional positions from cadet to London policeman and to Scotland Yard detective and specialist. Only Fraud and Horses also shares representative sports details, contrasts Smith's Scots ancestry, and links developing European history, the long dependence upon the horse, and his inherited skills as a competitive, natural horseman. With photographs and historical notes included, Smith reviews a lifetime collection of family records and shares his discoveries-starting from England with surnames of Smith and Brown and going back to the 1700s in the Highlands of Scotland before Mediterranean origins.

Only Fraud and Horses

Edwardian London in 1910, the notorious tale of Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve re-investigated by a prizewinning journalist. At a time when Edwardian Britain seemed a golden place, basking in its imperial glory, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife Belle lived among the suburban villas of North London, renting a house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. After supper on 31 January 1910, their friends went home and Crippen killed Belle with poison, dismembered her body and buried some of her remains beneath the brick floor of the coal cellar. Crippen never admitted killing his wife and took the secrets of the crime with him when he was hanged, following his conviction for murder. It is assumed that Crippen killed for the love of his mistress, Ethel le Neve. They began living together as man and wife, but under intense suspicion they fled disguised as father and son. The chase - indeed everything about the murder - was reported in fine detail, in Britain, in America and the rest of the western world. Crippen was finally arrested and with Ethel was brought back to England for trial. David James Smith has investigated afresh this celebrated murder case, and his researches have uncovered unexpected and startling information about 'Chamber of Horrors' stalwart Dr Crippen, Belle and Ethel.

The true story of one of the most notorious murderers of all time

Supper with the Crippens

The James Bulger Case

Mons Graupius. A Roman battle victory or, Only a Celtic Quarrel? Catti resisted, but relatives complied by joining the 9th Legio to retain Celtic land in Europe. Catti left, colonised and held land near the Grampians in Caledonia, resisted the Roman advance, and again quarreled with relatives in the 9th. Calgacus and his speech were invented by a historian with a motive. Historical Notes: Catti origins before building Stonehenge, mining Cornwall, founding Lud (London), Cato Gate (Scandinavia), Gadi (Cadiz), Batavia (Holland), Gadie burn near Bennachie in Old Pictland (Scotland).

Only a Celtic Quarrel

Ruthless revolutionary; passionate womaniser; activist; hothead. Meet the young Mandela. Nelson Mandela has been mythologised as a flawless hero of the liberation struggle. But how exactly did his early life shape the triumphs to come? This book goes behind the myth to find the man who people have forgotten or never knew - Young Mandela, the committed freedom fighter, who left his wife and children behind to go on the run from the police in the early 1960s. But his historic achievements came at a heavy price and David James Smith graphically describes the emotional turmoil Mandela left in his wake. After meticulous research, and taking a lead from Mandela's trusted circle, the author discovers much that is new, surprising, and sometimes shocking that will enhance our understanding of the world's elder statesman. For the first time, we have evidence of a specific personal motivation for Mandela's fight against apartheid, and this book sheds light on the significant extent to which Mandela relied on white activists - a part of South African history the ANC has ignored or tried to bury. Sanctified, lionised, it turns out that Mandela is a human being after all, only too aware of his flaws and shortcomings. With unique access to people and papers, culminating in a meeting with Mandela himself, Smith has written the single most important contribution to our knowledge of this global icon.

Young Mandela

Nelson Mandela är symbolen för kampen mot apartheid i Sydafrika och en idol för människor över hela världen. Men en gång i tiden stod han på USA:s lista över eftersökta terrorister. I Den unge Mandela berättar David James Smith om hur Mandela steg fram som en av de unga ledande gestalterna i kampen mot apartheid. Vi får följa hans utveckling till karismatisk befrielsekämpe när han lämnar sin familj för att som den förste i ANC:s ledning gå under jorden med uppdraget att bygga upp rörelsens väpnade motstånd. I hemliga dokument och intervjuer med Mandelas kamrater i ANC:s inre kretsar, familjemedlemmar och vita sydafrikaner som han samarbetade framträder mannen bakom myterna – en människa med svagheter och brister, men ett lejon i kampen, beredd att offra allt.

Den unge Mandela

Nelson Mandela is well-known throughout the world as a heroic leader who symbolizes freedom and moral authority. He is fixed in the public mind as the world's elder statesman -- the gray-haired man with a kindly smile who spent 27 years in prison before becoming the first black president in South Africa. But Nelson Mandela was not always elderly or benign. And, in Young Mandela, award-winning journalist and author David James Smith takes us deep into the heart of racist South Africa to paint a portrait of the Mandela that many have forgotten: the committed revolutionary who left his family behind to live on the run, adopting false names and disguises and organizing the first strikes to overthrow the apartheid state. Young Mandela lifts the curtain on an icon's first steps to greatness.

The Revolutionary Years

Sarajevo, 28 June 1914: The story of the assassination that changed the world. A historical account of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Using newly available sources and older material, David James Smith brilliantly reinvestigates and reconstructs the events which subsequently determined the shape of the twentieth century. Young Gavrilo Princip arrived at the Vlajnic pastry shop in Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the morning of 28 June 1914. He was greeted by his fellow conspirators in the plot to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Archduke, next in line to succeed as Emperor of Austria, was beginning a state visit to Sarajevo later that morning. Ferdinand was not a very popular character - widely thought of as bad-tempered and arrogant and perhaps even deranged. To the young students he embodied everything they loathed about imperial oppression. They planned to kill him at about 11 o'clock as he paraded down Appel Quay to the town hall in his open top car. What happened in those few hours - leading as it did to the First and Second World Wars - is as compelling as any thriller.

The true story of the assassination that changed the world

One Morning In Sarajevo

Comprising Practical Instructions in the Art of Dyeing Silk, Cotton, Wool, and Worsted and Woolen Goods ... Containing Nearly 800 Receipts; to which is Added a Treatise on the Art of Padding; and the Printing of Silk Warps, Skeins, and Handkerchiefs, and the Various Mordants and Colors for the Different Styles of Such Work

The Dyer's Instructor

Live the life of a Celt in Caledonia. A story of migration to the Scottish Highlands circa AD78. The Roman expansion north was resisted by a Celtic Confederation and by their relatives still in Germania causing a contraction that left a vacuum to be filled by other migrants from Saxony. Angles, Jutes, and more. followed.

David James Smith

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