It is the summer of 1965 and things are looking up for ten-year-old Johnboy Taylor in the Townhead district of Glasgow. Not only has he made two new pals, but their dream of owning their own pigeon loft or 'dookit' and competing with the city's grown-up 'doo-men' in the sport they love, could soon become a reality. The only problem is that The Mankys don't have the dosh to pay for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Lady Luck begins to shine down on them when Pay Molloy, aka The Big Man, one of Glasgow's top heavies askes them to do him a wee favour. The Mankys are soon embroiled in an adult world of gangsters, police corruption, violence and crime.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

This work collects decades of the best published scholarship in English on the unequivocally most successful political party in Japanese history: the Liberal Democratic Party (the LDP). Governing Japan for almost the entirety of the post-war period, the LDP also has a claim to be the most successful political party in any post-war democracy. Seminal articles in this collection explore the key aspects of the LDP: the party’s evolution since its founding in 1955; key facets of the LDP’s internal organization including factions and koenkai; the LDP in policy-making, including its relationship with the bureaucracy and interest groups, as well as its policy-making committee apparatus; and, party leadership, including the premierships of Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe.