Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty

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An extraordinary tale of family feuds, forbidden love, civil unrest and the downfall of a mining dynasty I can't remember why I got this book from the library - I think another goodreader mentioned it in a review and it sounded interesting. And it was. I have a bit of a fascination with mining, coal in particular - try reading "Rose" by Martin Cruz Smith - excellent book - and the peculiarities of the English aristocracy. I cannot praise this book enough. I enjoyed this book so much. I found myself not being able to put it down from the moment I started reading it. This is how it mostly felt when reading the book. The storyline has so much potential but it just falls so desperately short. There’s very little done to build up things; the plot takes continuous, dramatic and unexpected turns. This is especially towards the end. The ending felt so rushed, so much is happening and nothing is fleshed out.

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Our goal is to make shopping easier and safer - smooth. That is why we take drastic measures to protect you as a buyer against fraud and unreliable online retailers. Whenever you see the Klarna logo in an online store, you can be sure that the store is trustworthy and meets our strict requirements. I had only recently finished reading Mda's memoir Sometimes there is a Void and so was aware that a lot of the book is based on his own real-life experiences. It is social satire, and the story is rather sad, but Mda also sees the funny side of it. I'm amazed at the obsession with having a male heir, as well as the apparent extraordinary difficulty in producing one. But when all possible male descendants are extinct, the Earldom disappears. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and while I approached it thinking it would have the Downton Abbey vibe to it and be light and gossipy, I knew Catherine Bailey would bring her own twist to the story and enlighten and educate the reader along the way. The is a book where classes collide after years of miners and workers being oppressed. While the author informs us that vast amounts of Fitzwilliam papers and historical documents were destroyed she manages to weave together a very convincing and well thought out account from memories of living relatives to employees of the family and papers that survived through the years. I listened to this one on audible which was narrated beautifully. but I really wish I had a hard copy to hard as I spent a lot of time googling people and places and especially the Kennedy element of the story.The wireless network is accessible to all users of the library and covers the entire library. To gain access to the network, you need to log on to 'eduroam' or 'KB-Guest' - the latter requires that you accept the conditions for use. The male Wentworth line ran dry and the title passed matrilineally to the FitzWilliams. Ludicrously rich, the money came from coal. The 'Estate' employed and housed the people who worked the coal; most boys went 'down't' pit'. I recall slag heaps and mine shafts scarring the countryside and an almost feudal mentality. The class system was alive and thriving. This is the extraordinary story of how the fabric of English society shifted beyond recognition in fifty turbulent years in the twentieth century. The upbringing of Lord Milton and his purposed and continued separation from the entire huge group of his siblings and central family because of his illness? And that journey to the wilderness of Canada for that birth! Also Billy's "eyes" of perceptions during the King and Queen home visit to Wentworth House in 1912 at the exact time of the horrendous mining implodes. And also the photographs in this book- awesome. Kristin Uys is a tough Roodepoort magistrate who lives alone with her cat. She is on a one-woman crusade to wipe out prostitution in the town for reasons that have personal significance for her. Although she is unable to convict the Visagie Brothers, Stevo and Shortie, on charges of running a brothel, she manages to nail Stevo for contempt of court and gives him a summary six-month sentence.

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For the record Bailey does not cover the rise of the Fitzwilliams. She takes great liberties assuming the reader is already familiar with the family and entirely omits the early chapters of their history without so much as a footnote of explanation. The title was created in 1716, but Bailey's chronicle doesn't begin until 1902 with the death of the 6th Earl Fitzwilliam leaving much of the family, not to mention the origins of their wealth and influence, shrouded in mystery. To me the problem is that towards the beginning there’s a perfect balance of family “gossip” and contextual history but the more you do into the book the “gossip” element gets less and the history part increases. Now obviously I’d expect and indeed enjoy some history/setting for all this but for me it just tips too far that way. There are a lot of ‘just’ history books about this period I could buy after all. I do know the author struggled from a lot of the documentation being destroyed but I would have rather had a shorter book than what feels at times like padding. Due to the age and nature of the house, there is no disabled access to the upper floors. Help Support Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust A fascinating book for fans of Downton Abbey, it's also a mystery: how can one of the wealthiest families in the UK die out over the course of 50 years? It is a social history of the time, as well as a history of a place, and the specific characters who inhabit it, While not evenly divided between storylines focusing on the Dukes and the locals, it does have the fresh voices of former employees adding color to the narrative. And it is an engrossing story. The demise of Wentworth and the Fitzwilliams is a riveting account of aristocratic decline and fall, set in the grandest house in England.

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The Wentworth Estate is located between Rotherham and Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England, northeast of Sheffield. In 1902, when the historical narrative commences, it was the largest privately owned house in all of England. The fall of the Fitzwilliams’ dynasty spanned a mere fifty years. We start with the sixth earl and conclude with the tenth. That which we are promised in the book description is delivered. The nationalization and demise of the British coal industry is a central theme too. The book moves forward chronologically beginning with the funeral of the sixth earl in February 1902. The book covers the lingering smell of apartheid, small-time gangsters, big-time corrupt business, the reaction to a mixed race relationship, and how ex-freedom fighters find they are on the scrape heap and have gained little from all of their sacrifices.

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You can find the old reading room by continuing straight ahead from the moving walkway and turning right by the octagonal display case at the end of the hall. The reading room is open to everyone who needs a place to read. An aristocratic tale of epic proportions, this gripping novel cleverly interweaves interviews, letters and historical fact . . . Fascinating' Easy Living His first play, We Shall Sing for the Fatherland, won the first Amstel Playwright of the Year Award in 1978, a feat he repeated the following year. He worked as a bank clerk, a teacher and in marketing before the publication of We Shall Sing for the Fatherland and Other Plays in 1980 enabled him to be admitted to the Ohio University for a three-year Master's degree in theatre. He completed a Masters Degree in Theatre at Ohio University, after which he obtained a Master of Arts Degree in Mass Communication. By 1984 his plays were performed in the USSR, the USA, and Scotland as well as in various parts of southern Africa. The book brilliantly sets out the social differences of the time, the age old fight between capitalism and socialism. It also shows that wealth and titles really don't bring happiness. The weight of expectation surrounding the Fitzwilliam name, the in fighting to protect their name is shown in its brutal truth in this book. The research reading room is found on your left hand when going up the moving walkway in the atrium of the library. The reading room is generally for non-circulatory material - that is, material that may only be viewed in a reading room. In the reading room, you can also find a collection of reference books.

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But what I love about Bailey is that she always finds interesting aspects of British history. The scandal and the drama of real life plays out effortlessly in her writing. I find myself drawn in and captivated by what she is conveying.

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To give this a 3 star rating? Yes, I'm conflicted. My enjoyment in the reading was nearly a 5. But I love historical text and this work held much of that social mores, economics of changing industry, class conflict, and governmental parsing and perceptions far beyond it's title designation. I loved reading about the rich and famous of the British aristocracy, anything with the worlds elite is always interesting since it’s out of the realm of everyday life. Wentworth is today a crumbling and forgotten palace in Yorkshire. Yet just a hundred years ago is was the ancestral pile of the Fitzwilliams - an aristocratic clan whose home and life were fuelled by coal mining.I can highly recommend this book. It’s now one for my favourites shelf and I will source a hard copy for my real life book shelf to sit alongside Fey's war. You will find the entrance to the reading room on the 4th floor. Take the lift or use the moving walkway from the atrium, or the stairs by the Kirkeby Bridge. Wentworth in Yorkshire was surrounded by 70 collieries employing tens of thousands of men. It is the finest and largest Georgian house in Britain and belonged to the Fitzwilliam family. Fans of "Downton Abbey" are led to believe that the Crawley family wealth comes from the earnings of the bucolic farms that surround Downton Abbey. However, if Julian Fellowes were more honest, he'd let viewers know that, in all probability, their large income was derived from coal just as it was for the Carnavon family in whose Highclere Castle the show is set. This book is the story of an even wealthier aristocratic family, the Fitzwilliams, who at the beginning of the twentieth century were the wealthiest family in England and whose wealth was derived from the labor of men and boys (some as young as eleven) who toiled underground for twelve to fifteen hours a day. Their county estate in south Yorkshire was called Wentworth and it was England’s largest private home, with 1,000 windows, and its park wall running for nine miles. When the sixth Earl Fitzwilliam died in 1902 he left four sons and his dynasty and fortune seemed secure. But the class war of the twentieth century combined with the family's own follies, brought it all crashing down around them. So how does this extensive fortune and massive house end up on the real estate market in 2014 in need of mass repairs?