Thomas Eugene Gifford (May 16, 1937 – October 31, 2000) was a best-selling American author of thriller novels. He was a graduate of Harvard University. He gained international fame with the crime novel The Glendower Legacy and later with the Vatican thriller The Assassini. The books posited George Washington as a British spy and the Roman Catholic Church as a criminal organization. The Glendower Legacy was made into a movie in 1981 under the name Dirty Tricks. Gifford also published under the names Dana Clarins and Thomas Maxwell.
Exactly one hundred years after the publication of George Sandeman's Calais under English Rule Susan Rose has produced a timely book-length overview of the history of this northern French town under English governance. The book takes a narrative approach to some two hundred years of English rule, beginning with Edward III's siege in 1347 and ending with the town's capture by the duc de Guise in 1558.
Officers and Gentlemen is the second book of the trilogy. It first appeared in 1955, three years after its predecessor. Critics immediately noticed its more sombre tone, which is partly attributable to the absence of Apthorpe. They also admired the awesome account of the Battle of Crete, an account which did not soften the debacle which that struggle became. It did not shirk the utter inadequacy of the British forces under pressure. An often very funny book.... Every bit as good as Men at Arms, whose splendid characterizations and fine writing led many in 1952 to predict that its author had begun the best English fictional account of World War II.
" Language scholars have traditionally agreed that the development of the English language was largely unplanned. Fisher challenges this view, demonstrating that the standardization of writing and pronunciation was, and still is, made under the control of political and intellectual forces."
A quiet holiday at a secluded hotel in Devon is all that Hercule Poirot wants, but amongst his fellow guests is a beautiful and vain woman who, seemingly oblivious to her own husband’s feelings, revels in the attention of another woman’s husband. The scene is set for murder, but can the field of suspects really be as narrow as it first appears
