Martin Shough

If there's one thing that admirers and critics can agree on it's that Paul McCartney is a complex contradiction and hard to know. His huge output ranges from breezy singles to complex classical compositions. Sometimes in interviews he has come across as defensive, self-conscious, vague, a bit awkward; at other times he is sharp, articulate, modest and generous. One mirror shows him as an ambitious control freak, whilst another reflects him as ingenuous, childlike. The detractor knows not which McCartney to hate more, or the admirer which to love. Can someone so hard to see, so bafflingly multifaceted, possibly be authentic? Where is the 'real Paul'? What is authenticity in a work of art, in an oratorio or in a popular song? Why do we care about it? And can the answers help us to gain a better perspective on McCartney's cultural legacy after The Beatles?

Art, Authenticity and Paul Mccartney

Truant Boy

Chris Aubeck

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF UFOs People have always been fascinated by lights in the sky. Early astronomers and astrologers, medieval pamphleteers, scientists, navigators, and weather observers, all recorded sightings of strange phenomena. The question is: Were these the same as our modern UFOs? The authors of Return to Magonia have taken a serious, critical look at some of those sightings. Using modern resources and tools, they dissect more than 20 fascinating cases from the last 500 years, showing that reality can be more interesting than any popular catch-all theory. They discover that UFOs in history are as intriguing, as entertaining, and often as baffling as they are today. In this unique and challenging book you will read about: the flat "plate" seen over a 17th-century Swedish city, leaving witnesses stricken with an unknown sickness; a fiery object that landed beside a road in Ohio, piloted by a mysterious man in black; a weird blue ball of fire that devastated a British navy ship; the Minnesota doctor who saw a disk of "electric" light floating across the fields; and a formation of locomotive-sized "eggs" that descended on an Australian town shortly after World War II. Combining science, history, and a broad knowledge of the UFO field, Martin Shough and Chris Aubeck set a new standard for UFO research and shed light on one of the oldest recorded mysteries in human experience. CHRIS AUBECK is the founder of the historical research group Magonia Exchange, an international archival project, and the co-author (with Jacques Vallee) of Wonders in the Sky. MARTIN SHOUGH is a Research Associate for National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP)."

Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF UFOs People have always been fascinated by lights in the sky. Early astronomers and astrologers, medieval pamphleteers, scientists, navigators, and weather observers, all recorded sightings of strange phenomena. The question is: Were these the same as our modern UFOs? The authors of "Return to Magonia" have taken a serious, critical look at some of those sightings. Using modern resources and tools, they dissect more than 20 fascinating cases from the last 500 years, showing that reality can be more interesting than any popular catch-all theory. They discover that UFOs in history are as intriguing, as entertaining, and often as baffling as they are today. In this unique and challenging book you will read about: the flat "plate" seen over a 17th-century Swedish city, leaving witnesses stricken with an unknown sickness; a fiery object that landed beside a road in Ohio, piloted by a mysterious man in black; a weird blue ball of fire that devastated a British navy ship; the Minnesota doctor who saw a disk of "electric" light floating across the fields; and a formation of locomotive-sized "eggs" that descended on an Australian town shortly after World War II. Combining science, history, and a broad knowledge of the UFO field, Martin Shough and Chris Aubeck set a new standard for UFO research and shed light on one of the oldest recorded mysteries in human experience. CHRIS AUBECK is the founder of the historical research group Magonia Exchange, an international archival project, and the co-author (with Jacques Vallee) of "Wonders in the Sky." MARTIN SHOUGH is a Research Associate for National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP)."

Investigating UFOs in History

Return to Magonia

UNRAVELLING AERIAL MYSTERIES OF THE PAST Charles Fort published his first and most influential book, The Book of the Damned, a century ago in 1919, collecting together many historical reports of strange aerial phenomena. Since the birth of the UFO controversy in 1947 Fort’s writings have been cited in countless books and web pages. Yet this is the first time in a hundred years that researchers have systematically verified the sources and content of every one of these oft-recycled stories, correcting many errors, placing each case in its historical context, and submitting it to a careful scientific investigation in an attempt to find a conventional answer. What were these reported phenomena? Is it possible to find non-exotic explanations? With the advantage of modern knowledge, methods, and resources, in most cases the answer proves to be yes. Some of the solutions found may shock the general reader and surprise even specialists. Yet in the end a few well-documented events remain unexplained.

Martin Shough

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