Biography

The Haynes 2024 Desk Diary comes in the size of a Haynes manual with week-to-view presentation on high-quality paper and featuring original Terry Davey line drawings. It’s the perfect gift for car enthusiasts! It also includes: Year planner for both 2024 and 2025 A brief history of Haynes UK distance chart Conversation factors Number plate registration area identification letters

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'Brilliant biography of an undersung late-blooming treasure . . . subtly profound as well as wickedly entertaining, this biography does its subject scintillating justice' MojoCruel to Be Kind is the definitive account of Nick Lowe's uncompromising life as a songwriter and entertainer, from his days at Stiff Records, to becoming the driving force behind Rockpile, to the 1979 smash hit 'Cruel To Be Kind'.Nick's original compositions have been recorded by the best in the business, from enfant terrible of the New-Wave, Elvis Costello, to 'The Godfather of Rhythm and Soul', Solomon Burke; from household names, including Engelbert Humperdink, Diana Ross, and Johnny Cash, to legendary vocalists such as Curtis Stigers, Tom Petty, and Rod Stewart.His reputation as one of the most influential musicians to emerge from that most formative period for pop and rock music is cast in stone. He will forever be the man they call the 'Jesus of Cool'.'Nick's poise as a singer, his maturity, and his use of tone is beautiful. I can't believe it's this guy I've been watching since I was a teenager' Elvis Costello, 2013'The master of subversive pop' Nick Kent, NME, 1977'Nick Lowe is such a f*cking good songwriter! Am I allowed to say that?' Curtis Stigers, 2016

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'A compelling personal account of the dramas of a singular British band' Neil TennantThe trajectory of Suede - hailed in infancy as both 'The Best New Band in Britain' and 'effete southern wankers' - is recalled with moving candour by its frontman Brett Anderson, whose vivid memoir swings seamlessly between the tender, witty, turbulent, euphoric and bittersweet. Suede began by treading the familiar jobbing route of London's emerging new 1990s indie bands - gigs at ULU, the Camden Powerhaus and the Old Trout in Windsor - and the dispiriting experience of playing a set to an audience of one. But in these halcyon days, their potential was undeniable. Anderson's creative partnership with guitarist Bernard Butler exposed a unique and brilliant hybrid of lyric and sound; together they were a luminescent team - burning brightly and creating some of the era's most revered songs and albums.In Afternoons with the Blinds drawn, Anderson unflinchingly explores his relationship with addiction, heartfelt in the regret that early musical bonds were severed, and clear-eyed on his youthful persona. 'As a young man . . . I oscillated between morbid self-reflection and vainglorious narcissism' he writes. His honesty, sharply self-aware and articulate, makes this a compelling autobiography, and a brilliant insight into one of the most significant bands of the last quarter century.

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Exploring beyond the banal newspaper headlines that have caricatured our future king over the years, Robert Jobson's biography provides a fresh insight into the extraordinary life of HRH Charles, Prince of Wales as he passes his seventieth birthday at a watershed in the history of the modern British monarchy. Based on extensive fresh material and resources, the book debunks the myths about the man who will be king, telling his full, true story. The author has met Prince Charles on countless occasions, and draws on the knowledge and memories of a number of sources close to the prince who have never spoken before, as well as members of the Royal Household past and present who have served him during his decades of public service. The book also reveals the truth about the Prince's deeply loving but not always conventional relationship with his second wife and chief supporter, Camilla. The result is an intriguing new portrait of a man on the cusp of kingship.Charles: Our Future King explores the Prince's complex character, his profoundly held beliefs and deep thinking about religion - including Islam - politics, the armed services, the monarchy and the constitution, providing an illuminating portrait of what kind of king Charles III will be.

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'I'm lucky to have an inexhaustible appetite for life. I've had many amazing adventures in Hollywood and beyond, but some stories I have only ever shared with my friends. After all, you've got to have a bit of mystery, so I hide a knowing smile behind my shoulder pads. Until now! So, read on for the tales I tell my friends . . .'In her new book, Dame Joan Collins returns in dazzling form to share the most memorable moments from her eclectic and vibrant life, in and out of the limelight. Taking us on an incredible journey from her early years as a young star in the golden era of Hollywood to stamping her stilettos in Dynasty; from the glittering heights of St Tropez to the busy Oscars season in LA over the years.Joan writes movingly about her grief and adventures with her sister Jackie, delving deeper into the ups and downs of love and relationships, and her happiness with husband Percy. Filled with a cast of household names, including the late Queen Elizabeth, Diana, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Caine, Warren Beatty, and many more, Behind the Shoulder Pads is a spectacularly entertaining tour de force bound to delight and shock in equal measures.Hilarious, intimate and completely spellbinding, Joan invites you into her life like never before, sharing the stories she had previously reserved for her closest of friends.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, from the co-host of the podcast WHAT THE MIDWIFE SAID________________No sleep for twenty hours. No food for ten.And a ward full of soon-to-be mothers...Midwives are there for us at some of the most challenging, empowering and defining moments of our lives. From heart-wrenching grief to the pure joy of a new-born baby, midwife Leah Hazard has seen it all.But life on the NHS front line, working within a system at breaking point, is more extreme than you could ever imagine.Moving and compassionate, funny and unexpected, Leah shares her experiences in this extraordinary love letter to new mothers and fellow midwives everywhere._____________________'The stories in Hard Pushed highlight the bravery of our midwives, and the women they care for.' CHRISTIE WATSON, author of The Language of Kindness'Heart-rending, inspiring and funny, Hard Pushed brings alive the world of midwifery in all its complexity and radiates love and respect for women.' PROFESSOR LESLEY PAGE CBE, former president of the Royal College of Midwives'It is Leah Hazard's capacity to love and give so personally to the many thousands of women she has worked with which imbues this book with its power.' JULIA SAMUEL, author of Grief Works'Not only powerful but well written too . . . a worthwhile addition to a genre fast becoming as crowded as a busy maternity unit.' DAILY EXPRESS'A riveting read: heartwarming and heartbreaking' SHEENA BYROM OBE, midwifery consultant and author of Catching Babies'A beautifully written, intimate portrait of the extraordinary work that midwives carry out each and every day.' CAROLINE ELTON, author of Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors

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This is the story of how the Mackeson brothers of Deal bought a brewery in the small Kent town of Hythe and transformed it into a producer of one of the biggest brewing success stories of the twentieth century – milk stout. The drink was a favourite in pubs and shops across the country and famously found its way into the snug in Coronation Street’s ‘Rover’s Return’.The family’s journey was not a smooth one. From 1801, four generations struggled with economic depression and recession; war; a suicide; bankruptcies; lawsuits; wastrel and importunate relatives; and premature deaths. But there were triumphs along the way, too: transporting the Koh-i-Noor diamond to Queen Victoria, discovering a new dinosaur and finally the reward of a baronetcy.

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The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnuwit Atawish Nch’inch’imamí is a treasure trove of material for those interested in Native American culture. Author Virginia Beavert grew up in a traditional, Indian-speaking household. Both her parents and her maternal grandmother were shamans, and her childhood was populated by people who spoke tribal dialects and languages: Nez Perce, Umatilla, Klikatat, and Yakima Ichishkíin. Her work on Native languages began at age twelve, when she met linguist Melville Jacobs while working for his student, Margaret Kendell. When Jacobs realized that Beavert was a fluent speaker of the Klikatat language, he taught her to read and write the orthography he had developed to record Klikatat myths. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, Beavert went on to earn graduate degrees in education and linguistics, and she has contributed to numerous projects for the preservation of Native language and teachings. Beavert narrates highlights from her own life and presents cultural teachings, oral history, and stories (many in bilingual Ishishkíin-English format) about family life, religion, ceremonies, food gathering, and other aspects of traditional culture.

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In 1611, thirty-four-year-old Nur Jahan, daughter of a Persian noble and widow of a subversive official, became the twentieth and favourite wife of the Emperor Jahangir who ruled the Mughal Empire. An astute politician as well as a devoted partner, she issued imperial orders; coins of the realm bore her name. When Jahangir was imprisoned by a rebellious nobleman, the Empress led troops into battle and rescued him. The only woman to acquire the stature of empress in her male-dominated world, Nur was also a talented dress designer and innovative architect whose work inspired her stepson’s Taj Mahal. Nur’s confident assertion of talent and power is revelatory; it far exceeded the authority of her female contemporaries, including Elizabeth I. Here, she finally receives her due in a deeply researched and evocative biography.

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A Voice out of Poverty: The Power to Achieve through Adversity is an inspiring memoir that shows how beauty can be found in improbable places, and how achieving success is not just about making it through. Rather, it is the act of reaching back to bring others with you. As a young girl, Jillian Haslam, the author, saved a life. Herself tiny and aching from malnutrition, she stood for hours at a tea shop, begging for a ladle of milk to try and prevent her new-born sister from dying of starvation. This tenacious act was the first glimmer of a lifelong drive to empower others to rise from adversity. Now a renowned humanitarian and motivational speaker, Jillian Haslam, bestowed with the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award, The True Legend Award from The Telegraph, the Asian Woman of the Year Award by The Independent (to name a few), shares her astonishing story to light the way for people to realise that their destiny is greater than their circumstances. Jillian offers talks on overcoming adversity to corporates, educational institutions and others to help achieve their set objectives.

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The Return to Me after ME is the incredible story of how a once superfit distance runner and Personal Trainer became too ill to walk even just a few steps having been diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). But refusing to accept that she faced an incurable and lifelong condition she embarked on a journey to regain her health. Trinity Buckley talks about her experiences of being a successful athlete with a thriving business and then suddenly finding herself at the other extreme. Trinity's journey takes us through her search for answers to the unanswerable question of how to recover from an incurable illness and illustrates her determination to not give up on the life she once had and wanted to return to. This is an inspirational account of how it was possible for Trinity to resume her life as a marathon and ultra-distance runner, not only completing a marathon a little over eight months since her full recovery but also eventually completing a challenge of running three 145-mile races within three months.

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NOW A NETFLIX SERIES STARRING MARGARET QUALLEY & ANDY MACDOWELL.BARACK OBAMA'S SUMMER READING PICK, 2019.BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK.Educated meets Nickel and Dimed in Stephanie Land's memoir about working as a maid. A beautiful and gritty exploration of poverty in the western world. Includes a foreword by international bestelling author Barbara Ehrenreich. 'My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter.'As a struggling single mum, determined to keep a roof over her daughter's head, Stephanie Land worked for years as a maid, working long hours in order to provide for her small family. In Maid, she reveals the dark truth of what it takes to survive and thrive in today's inequitable society. As she worked hard to climb her way out of poverty as a single parent, scrubbing the toilets of the wealthy, navigating domestic labour jobs as a cleaner whilst also juggling higher education, assisted housing, and a tangled web of government assistance, Stephanie wrote. She wrote the true stories that weren't being told. The stories of the overworked and underpaid. Written in honest, heart-rending prose and with great insight, Maid explores the underbelly of the upper-middle classes and the reality of what it's like to be in service to them. 'I'd become a nameless ghost,' Stephanie writes. With this book, she gives voice to the 'servant' worker, those who fight daily to scramble and scrape by for their own lives and the lives of their children.

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'A rollicking ride . . . What a life' SUNDAY TIMESEssential reading for anyone who secretly just wants the naughty bits . . .Susannah Constantine is famous as the noughties style guru on What Not To Wear, but this is the least interesting thing about her.Hers is a life filled to the brim with 70s glitz, 80s glamour and above all else an enlightening 50 years of f**k-ups, crisis and chaos.There's dating cricket royalty not to mention real life royalty, as well as lavatory dramas with Princess Margaret. Add in weekends at Balmoral witnessing Thatcher and the Queen battle for power, plus time for falling in love, Strictly dancing debuts and a spot of wild swimming. Juicy, hilarious, sometimes heart-breaking, and crammed with moments where life goes completely wrong, Ready for Absolutely Nothing is full of absolutely everything.'Wonderfully written, very funny, but more than anything completely genuine' LADY ANNE GLENCONNER, author of Lady in Waiting'A trooper with a filthy sense of humour' THE TIMES'A treasure trove of untold stories . . . riveting' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING'Sparkling' DAILY MAIL

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Palmer, a long-time friend of Bruce Lee and one of his youngest martial arts students, recounts Lee’s early years, when he would train a multicultural group of local toughs in empty parking lots and backyards around Seattle. Palmer spends a summer with Lee and his family in Hong Kong and provides fascinating insight into Lee’s personality, from his silly sense of humor and love of practical jokes to his uncanny ability to learn from different fighting traditions to hone his skills. Palmer’s stories paint a picture of a fun-loving, intense young man who worked hard to excel at his craft.

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The first biography of Henry VIII’s court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor ageIn some portraits of Henry VIII there appears another, striking figure—a gaunt and morose-looking man with a shaved head and, in one case, a monkey on his shoulder. This is William or "Will" Somer, the king’s fool, a celebrated wit who reportedly could raise Henry’s spirits and spent many hours with him, often alone. Was Somer an “artificial fool,” a cunning comic who could speak freely in front of the king, or a “natural fool,” someone with intellectual disabilities, like many other members of the profession? And what role did he play in the tumultuous and violent Tudor era? Fool is the first biography of Somer—and perhaps the first of a Renaissance fool.After his death, Somer disappeared behind his legend, and historians struggled to separate myth from reality. Unearthing as many facts as possible, Peter K. Andersson pieces together the fullest picture yet of an enigmatic and unusual man with a very strange job. Somer’s story provides new insights into how fools lived and what exactly they did for a living, how monarchs and courtiers related to commoners and people with disabilities, and whether aspects of the Renaissance fool live on in the modern comedian. But most of all, we learn how a commoner without property or education managed to become the court’s chief mascot and a continuous presence at the center of Tudor power from the 1530s to the reign of Elizabeth I.Looking beyond stereotypes of the man in motley, Fool reveals a little-known world, surprising and disturbing, when comedy was something crueler and more unpleasant than we like to think.

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THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE'Tender, wise and funny' Sunday Express'Beautifully observed, deadly funny' Max PorterBefore becoming an acclaimed musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living.Returning to the scene of her childhood, Thorn takes us beyond the bus shelters, the pub car parks and the weekly discos, to the parents who wanted so much for their children and the children who wanted none of it. With great wit and insight, Thorn reconsiders the Green Belt post-war dream so many artists have mocked, and yet so many artists have come from.

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‘A combination of all that is best in memoir, biography and history.’ – Caroline Moorehead 'In this remarkable book... Jauncey has performed the great service of reminding us of a wonderful figure from Scotland’s recent history.' – Alexander McCall Smith It would be impossible to invent Don Roberto today – a fantastic combination of Don Quixote and Sir Gawain, Indiana Jones and the Lone Ranger. He was so multi-faceted, so complex, that every chapter in his story reveals some new and contradictory aspect of his personality. He is best known as the co-founder, with Keir Hardie, of the Scottish Labour Party, and later as the founding president of the Scottish National Party. But in a long and extraordinary life he was many other things besides.

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How do you teach a mother to love her child, when she's still a child herself?Jeanie Doyle nurtures, teaches and cares for young and dysfunctional mums, showing them how to care for their newborn babies, sometimes even taking the mother into foster care before the baby is born.The first in a brand-new series of books by the 'foster super-gran', Wicked Girl is the shocking true story of the very first case Jeanie dealt with: a baby girl who was found abandoned on the steps of a church just before Christmas. While the 14-year-old mother was tracked down, Jeanie took her little daughter into her own care. But while she tried to help the two of them heal and bond, the terrible truth about the baby's father was revealed...A twist on the standard Cathy Glass books, Wicked Girl offers Jeanie's rare perspective of fostering young women alongside their babies. Will mother and daughter be reunited for good, or will the vulnerable young mother make the heartbreaking decision that they are both better off apart?

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The disturbing true story of the notorious Cecil Hotel in downtown LA, by its general manager for a decade and star of the controversial Netflix documentary series Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. When Amy Price took a temporary design job at an Art Deco hotel in Los Angeles to help a friend, she had no idea the path it would lead her down. Before long, she would become manager of the Cecil Hotel, seeking to make it more welcoming and correct its notoriety, not helped by sitting at the foot of Skid Row, or the fact that since its opening in 1927, there had been any number of deaths by suicide, and residents such as serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.She cared about guests and residents alike, though she faced challenges on many fronts, with over eighty people dying during her decade of service. Among them was Elisa Lam, whose tragic death became the subject of a Netflix documentary series that captivated millions and led to its own controversies and unwarranted personal attacks on Amy.For the first time, Amy delves into her experiences at the Cecil Hotel. Equal parts memoir, true-crime, and cultural history, Behind the Door is essential to understanding one of America’s most enigmatic hotels.

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For more than thirty years, Giora Even-Epstein flew fighters for the Israel Air Force, achieving recognition as a highly skilled military aviator and the highest-scoring jet-mounted ace with the most number of confirmed victories in the French Mirage. Having overcome numerous hurdles just to learn how to fly, he went on to compile a record of Arab MiGs and Sukhoi kills that bettered any other combat aviators’ tally in the entire world. This fast-moving autobiography details his experiences particularly in the intense conflicts of 1967, the Six Day War, and 1973, the Yom Kippur War. The reader shares the cockpit with him as he describes every action he undertook with 101 and 105 Squadron, including the greatest jet-versus-jet air battle in history with four MiG-21 kills in one engagement. His final score was seventeen aerial victories. After his last battle he became commander of the First Jet Squadron, 117, began civilian flying, retrained to command 254 MMR Squadron in the 1982 Lebanon War, and flew the F-16 at the age of fifty before retirement. Along the way he met numerous fighter pilot legends such as Douglas Bader, Al Deere, Pierre Clostermann and Randy Cunningham. Affable and enthusiastic, Giora gained the nickname ‘Hawkeye’ because of his amazing vision of more than 20/15, enabling him to pick out enemy aircraft long before his squadron mates. His story is of one man’s unfaltering dedication to his dreams and his country. As the leading jet ace it is one well worth telling and, critically, it can be told in his own words.

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Lord Chelmsford is not a bad man. He is industrious and conscientious so far as his lights guide him. But nature has refused to him the qualities of a great captain. He has suffered much and is entitled to certain commiseration. - Thomas Gibson Bowles, Vanity Fair General Lord Chelmsford's military career took him around the world; he served in the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the Abyssinian Expedition, before commanding the British invasion of the Zulu Kingdom in South Africa. In January 1879, disaster struck when Chelmsford divided his forces at Isandlwana in the face of the enemy and the Zulu overwhelmed his camp, killing more than 1,300 of its defenders. Such a defeat was almost unprecedented in a Victorian colonial campaign. Despite Chelmsford's later victories at Gingindlovu and Ulundi, he was humiliatingly relieved of his command. His responsibility for Isandlwana dogged him for the rest of his days, and he would forever be associated with this historic defeat. In this comprehensive new biography, Anglo-Zulu War specialist John Laband, explores the personal character and military career of Lord Chelmsford, providing a well-rounded, well-balanced and well-informed picture of this complex military figure.

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A TOP BOOK FOR 2024 IN: THE OBSERVER, INDEPENDENT, SUNDAY TIMES AND BOOKSELLER 'He understands only the women he invents – the others not at all' Thomas Hardy is one of the most beloved and most-read British authors. His influence on literature and the minds of his readers is singular. But how is it that the novelist who created some of the most memorable and modern female characters in literature had such troubled relationships with real women? In this highly innovative book, acclaimed biographer Paula Byrne re-examines Hardy’s life through the eyes of the women who made him – mother, sisters, girlfriends, wives, muses. The story veers from shocking scenes such as his obsession with the sight of a woman hanged, to poignant vignettes of unfulfilled passion, to fascinating details of working women’s lives in the nineteenth century. Hardy Women is the story of how the magnificent fictional women he invented would not have been possible without the hardship and hardiness of the real ones who shaped his passions and his imagination. It is only through understanding and witnessing these hardy women that we can truly enter the heart of this great novelist and poet.

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Bram Stoker: Author of Dracula is an affectionate and revealing biography of the man who created the vampire novel that would define the genre and lead to a new age in Gothic horror literature. Based on decades of painstaking research in libraries, museums, and university archives and privileged access to private collections on both sides of the Atlantic, the private letters of Bram and the reminiscences of those who knew him not only shed new light on Stoker's ancestry, his life, loves and friendships they also reveal more about the places and people who inspired him and how he researched and wrote his books. Bram wrote numerous articles, short stories and poetry for newspapers and magazines, he had a total of eleven novels and two collections of short stories published in his lifetime, but he would only become known for one of them - Dracula. Tragically, he did not live long enough to see it as a huge success. In his heyday as Acting Manager for Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre in the West End of London, Bram was a well-known figure in a golden age of British theatre. He was a big-framed, ebullient, genial, gentleman, with red hair and beard, who never lost his soft Irish brogue, was blessed with wit, and a host of entertaining stories fit for every occasion. Described as having the paw of Hercules and the smile of Machiavelli, above all he knew what it meant to be a loyal friend.

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Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. was a major figure of the Pacific War, both for his command in Alaska and in his key role heading Tenth Army during the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Buckner was the senior U.S. officer killed by enemy fire in World War II when Japanese artillery cut him down on June 18, 1945, one month shy of his 59th birthday. The shelling ended a remarkable life – son of a Confederate Lieutenant General and governor of Kentucky, the "Child of the Democracy" in the 1896 Presidential election campaign, educated at West Point, myriad service as a student and instructor at various Army posts and schools from 1917 to 1936, command in Alaska from 1940 to 1944, and ultimately of Tenth Army from 1944 to his death.General Buckner kept a diary covering the period from January 1, 1944 to June 17, 1945, which has never been fully published until now. Buckner made notes every day, often in great detail; his chief of staff thought Buckner wanted to write a memoir after the war, but the papers were scattered after his death. In addition to the Okinawa material, Buckner's diaries discuss his departure from Alaska and service in Hawaii as Tenth Army commander. Topics include his daily life in wartime Hawaii, troop training, comments on war events, gossip, notes on his travels to Guam and the Philippines, and his role in the Smith vs Smith controversy after the Battle of Saipan. The diary text is augmented by letters from General Buckner to his wife Adele during March to June 1945, and a letter from the Tenth Army Chief of Staff to Adele detailing Buckner's death. Tenth Army Commander is an important account from a too-long-silent voice among Pacific War leaders.

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Until now, little was known of John Wyndham. Despite his popularity, his obsessive need for privacy led to him being known as "the invisible man of science fiction". He redefined the genre with dystopian classics The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos. In Hidden Wyndham, Amy Binns reveals the woman who was the inspiration for his strong-minded heroines. Their secret love affair sustained this gentle and desperately shy man through failure, war, and, ultimately, success. Hidden Wyndham shows how Wyndham's own disturbing war experiences - witnessing the destruction of London in the Blitz then as part of the invading British army in France and Germany - inspired and underlay his dystopian masterpieces. It provides an insight into the lives of men and women who refused to live by the oppressive rules of society in the mid-20th century. Many extracts from his letters are included, along with his own photographs. "Put your hand on your heart sometimes, my lovely, and tell yourself that it is mine. An era had shut up its houses and gone away, perhaps forever. But we had that little much longer. How cruel the macrocosm, sweet, but how sweet the microcosm. Oh, my darling."

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The wife of King Henry I and the mother of the Empress Maud is a woman and a Queen forgotten to history. She is frequently conflated with her daughter or her mother-in-law. She was born the daughter of the King of Scotland and an Anglo-Saxon princess. Her name was Edith, but her name was changed to Matilda at the time of her marriage. The Queen who united the line of William the Conqueror with the House of Wessex lived during an age marked by transition and turbulence. She married Henry in the first year of the 12th century and for the eighteen years of her rule aided him in reforming the administrative and legal system due to her knowledge of languages and legal tradition. Together she and her husband founded a series of churches and arranged a marriage for their daughter to the Holy Roman Emperor. Matilda was a woman of letters to corresponded with Kings, Popes, and prelates, and was respected by them all. Matilda's greatest legacy was continuity: she united two dynasties and gave the Angevin Kings the legitimacy they needed so much. It was through her that the Empress Matilda and Henry II were able to claim the throne. She was the progenitor of the Plantagenet Kings, but the war and conflict which followed the death of her son William led to a negative stereotyping by Medieval Chroniclers. Although they saw her as pious, they said she was a runaway nun and her marriage to Henry was cursed. This book provides a much-needed re-evaluation of Edith/Matilda's role and place in the history of the Queens of England.

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The warm, rich and fascinating memoir of beloved broadcaster Tommie Gorman.When Tommie Gorman was growing up in Sligo in the 1960s, struggle was never far away but his household had a surplus of love and warmth. From modest beginnings as a local reporter at the Western Journal, where his deadlines were dependent on the bus schedule, Tommie landed at RTÉ, taking up the post of North-West correspondent in 1980. Over the next four decades he became a familiar presence in Irish homes, known for his coverage of Europe and Northern Ireland, as well as his unforgettable interviews with controversial figures including Gerry Adams, Roy Keane, Ian Paisley and Arlene Foster.While revelling in his life as a journalist, he was also coping with the cancer diagnosis he received in 1994 and seeking ways to access life-saving treatments for patients who shared his rare form of the disease.In this insightful and generous book, Tommie takes readers behind the scenes and shares some of his memories from Sligo to Stormont, via Brussels and Sweden, as he recounts forty extraordinary years of Irish history from his front-row seat and looks at what may lie ahead for the island.

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History, Metaphors, and Fables collects the central writings by Hans Blumenberg and covers topics such as on the philosophy of language, metaphor theory, non-conceptuality, aesthetics, politics, and literary studies. This landmark volume demonstrates Blumenberg's intellectual breadth and gives an overview of his thematic and stylistic range over four decades. Blumenberg's early philosophy of technology becomes tangible, as does his critique of linguistic perfectibility and conceptual thought, his theory of history as successive concepts of reality", his anthropology, or his studies of literature. History, Metaphors, Fables allows readers to discover a master thinker whose role in the German intellectual post-war scene can hardly be overestimated.

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The life of King James VI who united England and Scotland under one crown and became James I in 1603 is marked by contradictions. Generally praised as a good king of Scotland and a poor English one, James was a deep theological thinker, but he also inspired a superstitious frenzy which resulted in the North Berwick witch hunt and trials in the 1590s. Scholar and pedant, he was in his own view God's appointed ruler, yet also a foul mouthed sloven and forever tarnished with the title of the Wisest Fool in Christendom. The most glaring contrast in his personal life was between his image as a married family man and as a ruler who lavished indiscreet affection on a series of men whom he invested with considerable power. This book approaches James through the lens of his relationships with his major favourites. First was Anglo-French lord Esme D'Aubigny, then Scottish squire Robert Carr (later Earl of Somerset), and finally the consummate nobleman George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. 'A king will have need to use secrecy in many things,' the king wrote in one of his books. Although his private life was sometimes astonishingly visible, there are still many mysteries about James I as a man rather than a ruler. This work tracks the king's life from a barren childhood through a succession of plots, intrigues and conspiracies in Scotland which largely forged, or deformed, his character. Beyond his complex and disputed connection with these men the book looks at his relationship with his wife, sponsorship of the arts, and contains a reappraisal of the first and most neglected historical mystery of his first reign, the Gowrie Conspiracy.

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For too long, Arthur Tudor has been remembered only for what he never became. The boy who died prematurely and paved the way for the revolutionary reign of his younger brother, Henry VIII. Yet, during his short life, Arthur was at the centre of one of the most tumultuous periods of England's history. At the time of his birth, he represented his father's hopes for a dynasty and England's greatest chance of peace. As he grew, he witnessed feuds, survived rebellion and became the focal point of an international alliance. From the threat of pretenders to West Country rebellions, the dramatic twists and turns of early Tudor England preoccupied Arthur's thoughts. At a young age, he was dispatched to the Welsh border, becoming a figurehead for a robust regional government. While never old enough to exercise full power in his dominion, he emerged as a figure of influence, beseeched by petitioners and consulted by courtiers. While the extent of his personal influence can only be guessed at, the sources that survive reveal a determined prince that came tantalisingly close to forging his future. Eventually, after years of negotiation, delay and frustration, the prince finally came face to face with his Spanish princess, Katharine of Aragon. The young couple had shared a destiny since the cradle. Securing the hand of this prestigious bride for his son had been a centrepiece of Henry VII's foreign policy. Yet, despite being 14 years in the making, the couple were to enjoy just five months together before Arthur succumbed to a mysterious illness. Arthur's death at the age of 15 was not just a personal tragedy for his parents. It changed the course of the future and deprived England of one of the most educated and cultivated princes in its history. Arthur would never wear the crown of England. But few Princes of Wales had been better prepared to rule. 'Arthur, Prince of Wales: Henry VIII's lost brother' shows that Arthur Tudor was more than a prince who died. He was a boy that really lived.

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This is the first biography of an intrepid young French woman, Lily Sergueiew, who led an adventurous life and became famous as one of the five D-Day spies. In 1939, her bicycle ride from Paris to Saigon was interrupted by the outbreak of war. Disgusted by the Fall of France in 1940, she took the courageous decision to personally help the Allies drive the Nazis out of France: she would get the Abwehr to train her as a spy and have herself sent to England. Once there, she would betray the Nazis and place herself at the disposal of the Allies. It took three emotionally exhausting years to achieve this. She arrived in England just in time to become TREASURE, one of the five spies who misled the Nazis into believing that the Allies would land in the Pas de Calais. This disinformation operation saved countless lives. But Lily found the English cold and ungenerous towards her. They knew that she had a fatal medical condition. She had also risked her life - and her parents' lives - every day she worked for the Nazis, yet the English would not let her bring the dog who was such a comfort to her. They told her that her work was vital to their cause, but for Lily their behaviour meant that it was not worth a dog. So she hid from them that the Nazis had given her a control code to prove that her radio messages were genuine: it gave her a sense of power to know that she could destroy her work - and the whole D-Day deception - with a single keystroke. She did not intend to use it, but once she had revealed it, she was dismissed straight after D-Day. This meant that she could join the Free French Forces and be sent to France to care for Displaced Persons left in the wake of the retreating Nazis. Working with liberated prisoners from Buchenwald, she married the American Major in charge of the region who had fallen in love with her. He took her to America where he hoped that her condition could be cured. It could not, and she died (largely forgotten) with her husband at her side in 1950.

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"Presidents are ranked wrong. In The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding, Ryan Walters mounts a case that Harding deserves to move up—and supplies the evidence to make that case strong. -Amity Shlaes, bestselling author of CoolidgeHe's the butt of political jokes, frequently subjected to ridicule, and almost never absent a "Worst Presidents" list where he most often ends up at the bottom. Historians have labeled him the "Worst President Ever," "Dead Last," "Unfit," and "Incompetent," to name but a few. Many contemporaries were equally cruel. H. L. Mencken called him a "nitwit." To Alice Roosevelt Longworth, he was a "slob." Such is the current reputation of our 29th President, Warren Gamaliel Harding. In an interesting survey in 1982, which divided the scholarly respondents into "conservative" and "liberal" categories, both groups picked Harding as the worst President. But historian Ryan Walters shows that Harding, a humble man from Marion, Ohio, has been unfairly remembered. He quickly fixed an economy in depression and started the boom of the Roaring Twenties, healed a nation in the throes of social disruption, and reversed America’s interventionist foreign policy.

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In November 1919, a year after the Great War, four Australian servicemen made a unique and epoch-making journey home. In the open cockpit of a twin-engine Vickers Vimy bi-plane, brothers Ross and Keith Smith and mechanics Wally Shiers and Jim completed the 18,000-kilometre flight from Britain to Australia. The 28-day journey, part of a competition sponsored by the Australian government, made the Smith brothers internationally famous and marked Australia's emergence into the air age. Ross Smith's fame would be short-lived: he would be killed in an air accident less than three years later on the eve of an attempt to make the first ever circumnavigation of the world by air.Born on a South Australian cattle station, Smith had a relatively privileged and cosmopolitan upbringing. He was, nonetheless, working in a warehouse in Adelaide in 1914, where he would have no doubt eked out a quiet and unremarkable life were it not for the war's outbreak. Enlisting in the light horse at 22 years of age, Smith survived arduous campaigns at Gallipoli and in the Sinai Desert before volunteering for the Australian Flying Corps. Smith's feats in the skies above Palestine during 1917-18 earned him a reputation as one of the great fighter pilots of the war. By the armistice he had received the Military Cross twice and the Distinguished Flying Cross three times; he was one of only three British Empire airmen to do so during the war. Smith's skill in the cockpit also saw him assigned the Middle East theatre's only twin-engine bomber during the war's final year, a machine he used to support T. E. Lawrence 'of Arabia's' campaign against the Turks in Jordan and, after the war, survey an air-route between Cairo and Calcutta.Anzac and Aviator is the story of this extraordinary Australian and the fascinating era in which he lived, one in which aviation emerged with bewildering speed to comprehensively transform both warfare and transportation. Born a decade before powered flight and going off to war on horseback, Smith finished the conflict in command of a bomber, the weapon that would come to symbolise the totality of warfare in the twentieth century.

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A parent’s deeply moving love letter to a daughter who has always known exactly who she is.‘Stunning . . . Built like a thriller, moving, wise and illuminated on every page with love’ - Joanne Harris, author of ChocolatWhen Carolyn Hays’s child made clear to the family that they were all wrong, he was not a boy, but, in fact, a girl, the Hays shifted pronouns, adopted a nickname and encouraged her to dress as she felt comfortable.One ordinary day, a caseworker from the Department of Children and Families knocked on their door to investigate an anonymous complaint about the upbringing of their transgender child. It was this threat that instilled in them a deep-seated fear for their child’s safety in the Republican state they called home. And so they uprooted their lives to the more trans-accepting Northeast United States, though they were never far from the hate and fear resting at the nation’s core.Intimate and thought-provoking, A Letter to My Transgender Daughter is an ode to Hays’s brilliant, brave child, as well as a cathartic revisit of the pain of the past. It tells of the brutal truths of being trans, of the sacrificial nature of motherhood, and of the lengths a family will go to shield their youngest from the cruel realities of the world. Hays asks us all to love better, for children everywhere enduring injustice and prejudice just as they begin to understand themselves.A Letter to My Transgender Daughter is a celebration of difference, a plea for empathy, a hope for a better future, but moreover, it is a love letter to a child who has always known herself and is waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.Originally published as A Girlhood: A Letter to My Transgender Daughter

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Dame Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was one of the greatest British novelists and philosophers of the twentieth century. She read philosophy at Oxford where she met and later married John Bayley, a literary critic and fellow novelist. So began a forty-year, intense and unconventional but happy marriage, detailed in the classic bestselling memoir Iris. Despite Iris’ extramarital affairs with men and women throughout their long marriage - which John always suspected - their bond was unbreakable, and his memoir beautifully captures their child-like moments of bliss: walking in forests, swimming together in streams, and sharing hot cups of coffee on crisp mornings. These are touching but poignant stories with the knowledge that Iris and her grand intellect would eventually succumb to Alzheimer’s disease. John would care for her singlehandedly for five years, the last of which he writes about in Iris and the Friends that also describes her peaceful passing. Finally, he reflects on his bereavement and the void that is left when a soulmate departs in A Widower’s House. All three books are told by the person who knew Iris best, with gentle humour - at times unbearably moving - in his portrayal of a remarkable woman.

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The Sunday Times bestseller, revised and updated for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. ---- As heard throughout 2020 on Classic FM ---- You know the music... but do you know the man? ---- Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the world's best loved and most influential composers. His life - its dramas, conflicts, loves and losses - is played out in his music. ---- In this special edition to mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth - with a new section featuring his most celebrated pieces - John Suchet shows us the man behind the music. He reveals a difficult and complex character, struggling to continue his profession as musician despite increasing deafness, alienating friends with unprovoked outbursts of anger one moment, overwhelming them with excessive kindness and generosity the next, living in a city in almost constant disarray because of war with France. ---- This is the real Beethoven, and Suchet brings him faithfully and vividly to life. ---- This updated edition of Suchet's acclaimed biography contains new material, including a detailed guide to Beethoven's most important compositions, family tree and timeline.

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At once a narrative biography and a medical history, Manon’s World tells the story of a haunted young woman caught in the middle of a love triangle in interwar Germany. Manon Gropius (1916–1935) was the daughter of Alma Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler, and the architect Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, and the stepdaughter of the writer Franz Werfel. In Manon’s World, James Reidel explores the life and death of a child at the center of a broken love triangle. The story takes a unique course, describing a peripheral figure but in a context where her significance and centrality in the lives of her famous parents and circles comes into relief. Reidel reveals a neglected and fascinating life in a world gone by—Vienna, Venice, and Berlin of the interwar years. Not just a narrative biography, Manon’s World is also a medical history of the polio that killed Manon and a personal cultural history of the aspirations projected on her—and seen as lost by such keen observers as Elias Canetti, who devoted two chapters of his Nobel Prize–winning memoirs to his encounters with Manon and her funeral. That event led Alban Berg to dedicate his signature Violin Concerto “to an angel.” Reidel reveals a more complex image of a young woman who desired to be an actress and artist in her own right despite being her mother’s intended protégé, an inspiration to her father who rarely saw her, and her stepfather Franz Werfel, who obsessively wrote her into his novels, beginning with The Forty Days of Musa Dagh and as a revenant in all the books that followed.

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION'A major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade' New York Times Book ReviewIn 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah's birth, the house would become Ivory Mae's thirteenth and most unruly child.A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the 'Big Easy' of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority and power.

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'A deeply humane memoir of immense power - there is nothing more affecting than a first-hand experience finely told' - PHILIPPE SANDS'A fabulous memoir . . . a testament to [Malka's] skill and determination' - DAME MAUREEN LIPMANA Mother’s Courage is Holocaust survivor Malka Levine’s powerful and moving tribute to a determined and resourceful woman who refused to give up hope so long as her children needed her.Malka was two when the Nazi invaders forced her family into the Jewish ghetto in Volodymyr-Volynskyi, a small city in present-day Ukraine. It was the first step in a campaign of mass murder. Of the 25,000 Jews in the city in 1939, only thirty would survive. Malka’s father was shot in the first pogrom, but before he died he begged her mother Rivka to ‘save the children’.Rivka kept Malka and her two older brothers alive through eighteen terrifying months as the Nazis systematically killed the inhabitants of the ghetto. In the midst of the inhumanity, a few people risked their lives to help. A Wehrmacht officer saved them from being shot and a Polish dressmaker gave them sanctuary when the SS went hunting for victims.Rivka persuaded a grumpy Ukrainian farmer and his saintly wife, the Yakimchuks, to hide her and the children. The Yakimchuks agreed and kept their word, even after the SS commandeered the farm. They dug a pit under their barn, and there Malka’s family stayed through a freezing winter and into the summer until the Red Army came. At the end of the war, Rivka was forced to draw on her strength yet again as she set out to create a new life for herself and her children.A Mother’s Courage is Malka’s chance at long last to thank not only her brave mum, but also all the heroes who opened their hearts to her and her family.

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Foreword by Ben Shephard‘Everyone loves Kammy . . . Full of humour and endless blunders’ – The Times'What a man, what a life, what a story, and what a great read' – Paddy McGuinnessPresenter, commentator, (sometimes masked) singer, footballer, manager and campaigner, Kammy has done it all. His irrepressible enthusiasm – and a couple of legendary gaffes on Sky Sports – have seen him become broadcasting royalty.Now Kammy reveals all in this funny and moving autobiography. What happens when you double cross José Mourinho? What it’s like to play with Vinnie Jones? Who comes off better: Kammy or a rampaging gorilla? How did Kammy end up releasing his own top-ten record? What's the real story behind his infamous line, 'I don't know, Jeff!'?But despite the crazy tales, it hasn't all been plain sailing. Kammy had a tough upbringing, faced racism during his playing career and has, in recent years, dealt with a rare brain condition – apraxia – that has affected his speech and seen him say goodbye to Sky Sports. Relating his battle against the condition, Kammy shows how he’s met every challenge with courage, determination and his infectious smile.Packed with hilarious stories and featuring a cast of famous names, from Elton John to Channing Tatum, this is a book about friendship, courage and why it's always important to have a good laugh.'A talented (and daft) lad from the Boro who has entertained the nation for decades, on and off the pitch. So get the tissues ready – this book will make you laugh and cry in equal measure' – Steph McGovern

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For readers of Rachel Cusk, Lisa Taddeo and the essays of Zadie Smith, Bear Woman is a beautifully wrought memoir from one of Sweden's bestselling authorsA beautifully written and astonishing memoir of a woman - a writer - in the midst of motherhood, marriage and life.While struggling with the demands of family and career, the writer discovers a figure from history, Marguerite de la Rocque, a sixteenth-century noblewoman who was abandoned, pregnant, on a remote island in Nova Scotia. When she is finally rescued, her lover and her baby have died, but she has survived this inhospitable wilderness, alone, for two long years. It's a remarkable story of survival, but one that has been consigned to a footnote.Delving deeper into Marguerite's hidden life, the writer begins to question her ability to tell this story, the story of any women in history - or even her own.'The deeply personal journey of a writer, surprising and illuminating, and for me, familiar in the most reassuring way as she loses herself in this compelling story' - Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky

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After years of physical and mental abuse, Jade thought her kindly foster mother would be the answer to her prayers. She was wrong … this is her staggering true story. ‘This must be what prison is like,’ I thought as another hour crawled by. In fact, prison would be better … at least you knew your sentence. You could tick off the days until you got out. In the Bad Room we had no idea how long we’d serve. After years of constant abuse, Jade thought her foster mother Linda Black would be the answer to her prayers. Loving and nurturing, she offered ten-year-old Jade a life free of fear. But once the regular social-worker checks stopped, Linda turned and over the next six years Jade and three other girls were kept prisoner in a bedroom they called the ‘bad room’. Shut away for 16 hours at a time, they were starved, violently beaten, forbidden from speaking or using the toilet and routinely humiliated. Jade was left feeling broken and suicidal. This is the powerful true story of how one woman banished the ghosts of her past by taking dramatic action to protect the life of every vulnerable child in care.

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"admiring and ferocious" - France Inter "This first biography, fed by many first-rate witnesses... we laugh, we shudder, we admire." - Elle On the last morning of his life, Karl Lagerfeld's only companion was Sébastien, his bodyguard and right-hand man. The king of fashion insisted on being cremated, along with his universally recognisable 'gear' - the dark glasses and high starched collar that served as a bastion for his secrets. It is only now that witnesses have begun to talk. Thus emerges the story of Karl Lagerfeld: his father's past in the heart of wartime Germany, his rivalry with Yves Saint Laurent (enflamed by his only love, Jacques de Bascher) and the networks he forged with the biggest luxury manufacturers in the world as he compiled his vast fortune. Truly an unparalleled icon in the history of fashion, Lagerfeld's legacy lives on today.

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Renowned and loved for her refreshing candour on everyday issues, social, domestic and intimate, Stacey Solomon reminds us how important it is to embrace ourselves; the good, bad and the ugly. Stacey’s authenticity and her courage to say what others daren’t opens discussions on sensitive but significant topics; her lack of sex drive after having kids, her battles with anxiety, the lows of motherhood and even the importance of hairy legs. In Happily Imperfect, be moved to tears and laughter by joining Stacey in her journey so far, as she reveals how to stay positive despite the everyday pressure to be and look perfect. Told through hilarious, sometimes moving, and always charming anecdotes, discover how to get the best out of life by being positive, not following the crowd, and trusting your gut instincts. Covering how to navigate motherhood, deal with anxiety and prejudice, as well as the experience of getting older, Stacey has plenty of words of wisdom to share. With tips and tricks on how to apply a positive mindset within your own day-to-day life, become emotionally freer and happier with Stacey by your side.

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