Due to the age and nature of the house, there is no disabled access to the upper floors. Help Support Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust At first I was really excited about this book, but just over half way I got quite fed up with it and found finishing it a struggle. Considering how I started with it I am left feeling quite disappointed.

Black Diamond Rings - Diamonds Factory Black Diamond Rings - Diamonds Factory

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. In this scenario Zakes Mda weaves a plot of shifting loyalties and the conflicting values that characterise the "new" South Africa, though it was already ten years old in the time the story is set, and is another fifteen years older now. The student reading room is found on your right hand when going up the moving walkway in the atrium of the library. The reading room is open to everyone who needs a place to read. The book gives a vivid picture of the yawning gap between the wealthy aristocracy and the workers who supported their lifestyle. Although the FItzwilliams were beneficent mine owners (unlike some of the purely corporate mining interests) the gap between the family and the miners was vast, and beginning in the 1920's with the rise of the Labour party, no amount of kindly charity from the big house was going to satisfy the workers' demands for a better life. Although the family survived the General Strike in 1926, the Depression and then World War II spelled the end of their financial empire. Kathleen Kennedy was featured in the book as well. There was a lengthy section on her romance with, and marriage to, a non-family member. After her husband’s death, she fell in love with Peter Fitzwilliam and died with him in a plane crash. I’d head for years about her tragic death (part of the famous Kennedy tragedies) but I had no idea that her story was part of Wentworth’s saga.Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. This book is primarily about an English Dynasty built on coal, but it is more about a period than about any one household. The family at the core of this book is one that is hard to get a good picture of because they have systematically burnt all their personal archives. Ms Bailey adds social and political events that were occurring during the period of the book (late 1800s to mid 1900s) to help flesh out the story of this dynasty. 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. This book was a little different for me than The Secret Rooms. With The Secret Rooms we jumped right into the story and the family history/scandal etc.

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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. 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. 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. Although he spent his early childhood in Soweto (where he knew political figures such as Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela) he had to finish his education in Lesotho where his father went into exile since 1963. This change of setting also meant a change of language for Mda: from isiXhosa to Sesotho. Consequently Mda preferred to write his first plays in English. 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.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 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. Listen to a conversation between Maureen Mahon and Bridgett M. Davis, sponsored by Greenlight Bookstore Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Catherine Bailey chronicles the rise and fall of the Fitzwilliam coal mining dynasty in Yorkshire England.

Black Diamonds: What You Need to Know - GIA 4Cs Black Diamonds: What You Need to Know - GIA 4Cs

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.What makes the book particularly good is that as the years pass the focus varies, even if the common denominator is the family’s wealth from the mining of coal. A book just on the nationalization of the British coal industry could easily be boring and dry. Here there are exciting events, personal tales and intriguing questions about the family to be investigated. Here follows one example. The father of the seventh earl, Lord Milton, died before the death of the sixth. So the grandson, not the son, of the sixth became the seventh earl. Am I confusing you? Don’t worry, it is very clear in the book. Circumstances under which the seventh was born are extremely peculiar. He was born in Canada in 1872 in an Indian settlement on Lake Superior. His father had epilepsy which made him an unacceptable heir; there was need for a male heir without the taint of epilepsy. The more you learn the more your interest is piqued. Has the baby who was to become the seventh earl been exchanged for a healthy male child? Something fishy was certainly going on! We are given the known facts; they certainly make for an intriguing mystery. Each reader must decide for them self. The story is engagingly told. My point is that as the years pass we encounter not one but several such captivating episodes. History comes in between so you have a solid base on which to stand, but the book does not put you to sleep. 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.

Black Diamond by Zakes Mda | Goodreads Black Diamond by Zakes Mda | Goodreads

The reading room is home to Central Administrative collection, which provides services for ministries, government agencies and departments, but the reading room is open to everyone. One major problem is the author's interest in perpetuating stereotypes and using descriptions or quotes that incorporate the most racist and sexist language. "Half-breeds" is used without examination, a "spinster is -- what else -- "pinch faced," and how many times do we have to hear that the heir is "fat"? Joe Kennedy's foul mouth is quoted, and even a racist slogan of a candy bar, apropos of nothing. 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. A social history of coal mining, told through the eyes of one family, the owners of Wentworth, reputedly the biggest country seat in Britain. I absolutely loved this. It had all my favourite ingredients for a good history: social context; gossip and scandal; dynastic shenanigans; and what's more, it managed a very rare thing, it swayed me at one point from my own natural socialistic inclinations onto the side of the aristocracy!Klarna has been a “Trusted Shops Authorized Partner” since 2011 and as an “authorized partner”, Klarna's processes are perfectly adapted to the Trusted Shops quality criteria. The Trusted Shops quality criteria are based on national and European laws that are important for online shopping. They take into account the current judgments and requirements of consumer protection organizations or go even further. Read more about the Trusted Shops seal of approval here.