Books by John Christopher

Nobody knows how long it has been since the Tripods came. Nobody remembers life on Earth before they enslaved it. Humans live in scattered farms and villages, kept quiet and obedient by the mind-controlling Caps implanted when they reach their teens. Will Parker's time is fast approaching - but a chance encounter with a madman convinces him that it may still be possible to resist the alien masters. So begins an epic tale of survival and defiance - and Will's journey to the White Mountains.

Infinitely flexible, they have appeared in short, medium and long wheelbase variants, with a host of body styles and conversions for everything from sixwheeled fire engines to motor homes. It is more than sixty years since the prototype was built in 1948 and the Land Rover of today still resembles the original - although creature comforts may be more evident on the latest Defender models. Whatever form it takes, the Land Rover is one of the few vehicles that can be found on every continent of the world, and it is said that around 70 per cent of all Land Rovers ever made are still in daily use. Multiple Land Rover owner John Christopher tells the story of the 'proper' Landys, the Series I, II, IIA, III and the Defender. He also looks at the FCs, the military and emergency service vehicles, special projects, off-roading and the celebrity cars.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was Britain's greatest engineer, he was the man who built everything on a huge scale, he built Britain's biggest ship, some of Britain's most spectacular bridges, a tunnel under the Thames and the finest railway line in Britain, the London to Bristol route of the Great Western Railway. Everything he did was on a scale not seen before, not just in Britain, but in the world. Brunel left a legacy of industrial architecture and design, from the vaulted roof of Paddington station to the SS Great Britain, the first true ocean greyhound, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge to the Tamar Bridge, which bears his name on its approaches. His life was one of superlatives - bigger, wider, taller and faster. Nearly drowning in the Thames Tunnel, he eventually suffered a stroke aboard his Great Eastern, the world's largest vessel for almost half a century, and died two days before her maiden voyage. As the historian Dan Cruikshank put it, Brunel was quite simply 'a one-man Industrial Revolution'. Here, John Christopher tells the story of the man and his tunnels, bridges, railways, ships and buildings, with many new illustrations accompanying the old, showing the changes time has made to Brunel's greatest legacy - the things he designed and built that we still take for granted and use every day, over a century and a half since his death.

A thought experiment in future-shock survivalism' Robert MacFarlane'Gripping ... of all science fiction's apocalypses, this is one of the most haunting' Financial TimesWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT MACFARLANEA post-apocalyptic vision of the world pushed to the brink by famine, John Christopher's science fiction masterpiece The Death of Grass includes an introduction by Robert MacFarlane in Penguin Modern Classics.At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain, society starts to descend into barbarism. As John and his family try to make it across country to the safety of his brother's farm in a hidden valley, their humanity is tested to its very limits. A chilling psychological thriller and one of the greatest post-apocalyptic novels ever written, The Death of Grass shows people struggling to hold on to their identities as the familiar world disintegrates - and the terrible price they must pay for surviving.John Christopher (1922-2012) was the pen name of Samuel Youd, a prolific writer of science fiction. His novels were popular during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably The Death Of Grass (1956), The World in Winter (1962), and Wrinkle in the Skin (1965), all works depicting ordinary people struggling in the midst of apocalyptic catastrophes. In 1966 he started writing science-fiction for adolescents; The Tripods trilogy, the Prince in Waiting trilogy (also known as the Sword of the Spirits trilogy) and The Lotus Caves are still widely read today.Ifyou enjoyed The Death of Grass, you might like John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

Paddington is part of a hub of underground stations and is home to the world's most famous bear, named after the station. Revel in the selection of images of Paddington Through Time and see how Brunel's masterpiece has stood the test of time. 'I am going to design, in a great hurry, and I believe to build, a station after my own fancy,' stated Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1851. That station, the second to bear the name 'Paddington', was to be another Brunel masterpiece. His delight at the prospect of building a replacement and permanent station at Paddington is self-evident. The new station was to be built on the plot of land just south of the Bishop's Road Bridge, defined by Eastbourne Terrace and Praed Street on two sides, and by London Street and the canal on the northeast side. Because the new station would be located almost entirely within a cutting, there would be no grand exterior, and instead, Brunel impressed with his immense roof of iron and glass. Paddington is currently in the middle of a huge redevelopment that has seen it retain much of its nineteenth-century design, but updated to suit traffic flows of today. Millions pass through the station weekly, both to the West and Wales and to Heathrow on the Heathrow Express.

Bradshaw's Guide provides a fascinating account of Victorian railway travel in the north-east of the UK. For the first time it is presented in a highly readable form in this new annotated volume, fully illustrated throughout with old and new colour images.

Intended for the British Army as a contract for a small, Jeep-like, air-portable vehicle, the Mini Moke was a failure at this role and found its success as a fun, sunshine toy, equally at home on the beach as in the mountains. Over 50,000 were made and many still survive. Its most famous role was in the cult TV series The Prisoner. The Moke was manufactured in Britain and later in Australia and Portugal. With Mini running gear, the Moke is a practical and fun vehicle for the summer and this explains why so many survive to the present day. John Christopher tells the story of the Moke and the varieties from development to preservation.

Cornwall marks the extreme south-western extent of Brunel's kingdom and the county is surprisingly rich in his works. The Royal Albert Bridge, which crosses the River Tamar, connected the broad gauge network with the Cornwall and West Cornwall railways - both engineered by Brunel - to take the trains coming from Paddington all the way to Penzance via a series of over sixty spectacular timber viaducts. The original viaducts have gone now, either modified or replaced over the years, but in many cases the masonry piers remain like rows of monolithic sentinels. As a result there is much to reward the Brunel hunter, including the branch line to Falmouth and many surviving examples of his railway stations. There are other connections, literally. His Great Eastern steamship was the first vessel to successfully lay a telegraphic cable to connect Europe and the USA - a story told at the historic Porthcurno Telegraph Museum near Land's End. John Christopher, an acknowledged expert on Brunel, takes us on a tour of Cornwall, exploring his works in the county. This is the latest in a series of books which are about rediscovering Brunel's works in your area.

Bournemouth Through Time is a wonderful collection of old and new photographs of Bournemouth. The older images are printed alongside a contemporary full colour photograph, which illustrates the same scene. The contrasting illustrations show how the area has changed and developed during the last 100 years. The photographs illustrate shops, schools, garages, churches, houses and street scenes.As you browse through the photographs, you will notice the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads and the number of residents, how shops and other businesses have evolved and the changes and developments in modes of transportation and the architecture of the area.

With its famous hotel, St Pancras is now the London terminus of the Eurostar, with a high speed rail link to the Kent coast and the Channel Tunnel. But it was not always so. Once nearly redundant and threatened with demolition, the station was the London terminus of the Midland Railway, and could proclaim at its opening the largest single span roof in the world. Over GBP800 million saw St Pancras restored and rebuilt for the modern day. Described now as the 'world's most wonderful railway station', St Pancras is a paragon of Gothic architecture. The St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel utilised large parts of the Midland Grand Hotel and opened in 2011, exactly 138 years after the original was opened. John Christopher tells the story of the rise, decline and rise again of St Pancras as London's international station.

The SS Great Britain Story is a concise account of one of the most famous steamships ever built. The great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel embraced the latest innovations, including an iron hull and a screw-propeller, to create an ocean liner that was decades ahead of its time.

LONDON needed rebuilding after the great fire of 1666. Eighty-eight churches had been destroyed and a grand plan to rebuild them was started by Sir Christopher Wren. In the end, he designed fifty-one new churches and the splendour that is St Paul's Cathedral. Of the fifty-one churches, many have been lost, either to a combination of Victorian indifference, fire, subsidence or German bombs. Twelve Wren City churches survive in their original form, while many of the remaining churches have been rebuilt or substantially altered. Wren left an amazing legacy and John Christopher takes us on a tour of the churches, showing them as built and showing us a comparison scene of today.

In the distant future, Harl and Ellen talk about their work and their lives. Their work as scientists is more important to them than love. Harl plans to leave Earth, on a long journey through space. Ellen plans to stay on Earth, to change the way the human mind works. When Harl returns to Earth, the world will be a very different place.