Search results for ""gibson square""

In this bittersweet collection of daily moments of pleasure, conflict and disappointment, Liz delves into everything from an agonisingly slow shopper, to falling in and out of love. Her wry wit and honest observations cast a poignant light on all the big and small things that make up everyday life.Endlessly entertaining and approachable, We All Have Our Moments is a book for those who love verse, and for those who normally wouldn't.

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Wittgenstein said that if people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever happen. In this compelling A-Z of modern ignorance, Stephen Bayley gathers silly, curious and sometimes shocking facts on everything that makes our world tick. Why does Judeo-Christianity love mountains? Why was fear of drinking from skulls the original reason for cremation? And where does the word f*** come from (hint: think berets)? You'll be surprised how much you never knew!

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From the Iron Age to the High Middle Ages, the ancient Celts were an engine of change for the whole of Europe. Here, Simon Young travels back in time to the moments when this ancient people defined indelibly the ancient, medieval and modern world. On this entertaining voyage, the reader will visit the hills of ancient Rome in the company of violent mohicaned warbands, pass into Dark-Age Christendom and witness Celtic monks' peculiar customs of curses and talking to animals. And move on to later medieval France, Germany and England where the ruthless vagabond-hero Arthur was to cast his spell over Britain's and Europe's aristocracy. While modern Celtic culture is an eighteenth-century invention, Simon Young shows that the real Celts turned upside down an area from the New World to Turkey and beyond. Leaving their mark on history, they were no less important than the Romans, Greeks and Etruscans.

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Is the internet changing the relationship between the sexes? While eighty per cent of those interviewed in polls say that affairs are wrong, for example, the percentage who admit to having had an affair has doubled every ten years to 2010. Looking at the latest data, social scientist Catherine Hakim traces new faultlines between men and women and how they are shifting in our increasingly sexualized culture in this landmark study of modern love and marriage.

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Few military organisations have had a greater importance than the Wagner Group: at a cursory glance no more than a disreputable private mercenary group dedicated to committing war crimes yet also, astonishingly, the challengers of the Kremlin on 23-24 June, 2023—unheard of in over two decades of Vladimir Putin’s rule. From its inception in 2014 this nebulous organisation operating from Russia was intentionally cloaked in questions. How was it able to operate alongside Russia’s top government officials? How could it deploy the logistical systems of the Russian army up to and including ordering air attacks with fighter planes of the Russian Federation, despite the deep antipathy of Russia’s powerful defence minister Sergei Shoigu? Why did the Kremlin provide such an ample helping hand to its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, for over a decade? In this compelling book, former Financial Times journalist Owen Wilson investigates the Wagner Group and their ties to Vladimir Putin. It skilfully sets out its history and the dramatic death of Yevgeny Prigozhin to cast a searching light on the person who ultimately stands behind the group.

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In 1982, eight young Guards officers in their twenties found themselves suddenly on the way to the Falklands 8000 miles away from Britain. Some four decades later, they realised that no one had written the history of this unique war in Britain's history from their side - including coming under Argentine fire on Sir Galahad on 8 June, the most dramatic day in Britain's military history since the second world war. Crispin Black tells their story and casts a startling new light on what happened to them, using the latest official documents. Even basic facts have remained hidden to this day.

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At the age of twenty-one, the future Prince Philip wrote to a relative: 'I know you will never think much of me. I am rude and unmannerly.' This affectionate compendium, brings together many known and less well-known stories about the prince, giving an insight into the royal world where he 'traipses around' rather than being professionally qualified in 'something'. From his constantly forthright speech-making, to his fearless mocking of official ceremonies, to his teasing of Her Majesty herself, here is a truly rude celebration of daily life in royal circles.

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Professor Ashton has lifelong hands-on experience and a deep scholarly understanding of the science of public health, a discipline invented in Britain. In this scathing critique he notes that nothing that the UK government has done to deal with COVID-19 is recognisable against two centuries of knowledge. Instead, it is designing untested methods at exceptional expense that have created a public-health and economic crisis never seen before. The government should urgently return to the science as set out in Blinded by Corona. From February, Professor Ashton has applied its precepts to Bahrain, where he was appointed special COVID-19 adviser, and the country topped the WHO league in August. It also suffered the least disruption of the economy and social life and did not have a general lockdown.

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Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre's all-American childhood came to an abrupt end by sexual abuse at the age of 7. After her mother exiled her to a school for troubled youth, she ran away to a life on the streets. The FBI rescued her when she was 14 from a violent pedophile and her life seemed to return to normal with a job as spa attendant at Donald Trump's exclusive Mar-a-Lago in Florida. It was there that the teenager was approached by the elegant jet-setter Ghislaine Maxwell who said her millionaire partner Jeffrey Epstein would like to sponsor her to become a professional masseuse... This is the first book to tell Virginia's own extraordinary, tale as an abused penniless high-school drop-out and how she was able to outsmart her rich underage-sex predators and forced an end to their crimes.

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In February 2021, Joe Biden released the CIA report that concluded the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia 'was responsible' for the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi secret service lured him into the Saudi diplomatic mission in Istanbul on 2 October 2018, dismembered him, and packed him into five suitcases. Crime writer Owen Wilson has forensically gathered all the known facts about the slaughter, what we know happened exactly, and what prompted the most demonic conspiracy of the twenty-first century. Chilling to the core and informative about Middle Eastern politics.

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When MI5 receives a first-ever invitation to monitor turbulence in China's restive New Silk Road region, Tony Underwood is dispatched as part of a gesture of goodwill. He has no special knowledge of the part of China that touches the stans, or of China full stop; but MI5 is not about to be misled by Bejing's suppression of the area's Muslim Uighur majority as a religious insurgence. Alarm bells start ringing, however, while Tony's plane is still in the air. The Guoanbua - the Chinese secret service - capture a young British backpacker on suspicion of gun-running across the border. Press drums start beating and the fate of a British citizen expiring in a grim Chinese cell lies on Tony's less than experienced shoulders.MI5 isn't the only one with their eyes on the young Brit, however. American, Russian and Chinese agents seek to get whatever they can out of the backpacker, at whatever cost. Tony soon has to navigate a labyrinth of lies, history and twisting motives. As he walks a razor-sharp line between protecting a potential terrorist and condemning a British citizen, he finds that the rising flames of riots in China are driven by a plot with ever-growing consequences.

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After a messy struggle to maintain grip on government, the Home Secretary finds herself appointed as a surprise Prime Minister. Compounding the chaos, MI6 receives intelligence of a fanatical terrorist cell operating in Paris. A sophisticated insider attack on the Home Secretary is being plotted. Her sudden move into No 10 exponentially raises the stakes. Britain’s fate now depends on one man: Daniel Jacot. Seconded to the French Foreign Legion, he is handed the delicate task of investigating the leads. He has to tread carefully as France itself is riddled by the election of a new, inexperienced President. And Daniel has his own demons – the traumatic aftermath of combat injuries and a serious addiction that he has kept hidden from his superiors…

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Martin Peters finds himself in Berlin. Once a British spy involved in a controversial loyalist shooting in Belfast, he spent time in Berlin infiltrating the Punk scene just before the Wall came down. Now in his thirties, he is a detective in the local police force. He is struggling - two naked headless corpses were dredged from the Havel river. There are no clues apart from a single word tattooed in Cyrillic on their left arms and the fact they were found a week apart after Christmas at exactly the same spot. Visiting his favourite swingers club, the seedy Der Zug, he comes across the bloated Lothar Blucher. Pressing his former Cold-War informer for help, Peters is instead led to a video showing the horrifically violent murder of a man tied to a chair. Not long after, a former girlfriend, Heike, gets in touch. She has received the same video - and rapidly the dead bodies start piling up at the hands of a demonic serial killer. With crimes darker than The Killing and The Bridge, you will be riveted by this gripping Martin Peters story set in Berlin, Belfast and London.

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The massively publicised guide to anti-aging from the bestselling author of Two Lipsticks and a Lover.

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This engaging collection of letters gives a quirky picture of family life in Britain under fifteen years of rationing. Everyone and almost everything was affected, from pets to fashion, corsets and turn-ups, to cigarettes, restaurants, heating and petrol, and the availability of fruit, eggs, vegetables and bread, and much more. Millions of people coped with what they had. With direct candour, they wrote letters when they thought improvements could be made, right from the start of rationing, in 1939, until all restrictions were lifted in 1954. In these amusing, honest, surprising, poignant and occasionally hilarious letters you'll find anything from concerns about socks for the Home Guard, children holding up a banana skin for a refill at the greengrocer's, to fear of pets choking when rubber bands reappeared after the War. Slip back in time and enjoy!

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Through riveting inside accounts how Britain's maverick politicians exploit the behind-the-scenes struggles in the major parties, Newark takes us through the rise of protest voting in Britain. With entertaining portraits of the main players he exposes the astonishing feuds and raging rows that are happening behind the scenes.

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A compelling roman-a-clef about the rivalry between two brothers from inner-city Manchester

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The extraordinary testimony of OJ Simpson about the murder of his wife Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman that became an Oscar-winning Netflix series.

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Diana Mitford, the most glamorous of the Mitfords, rivetingly narrates her life populated with key characters of 20th century history. Evelyn Waugh and Oswald Mosley fell in love with her, while not only Winston Churchill but also Adolf Hitler adored her. She lived in the grandest houses as well as in Holloway Prison. Later the Duke and Duchess of Windsor entered her life, followed by Nelson Mandela... Meanwhile her mordant Mitford wit developed later into an elegant arch writing style as journalist and (auto)biographer.

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The first book on the tabloid news machine and its phone-hacking scandals in the mould of bestselling Flat Earth News.

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Meet Arshile Grekov. A Russian oligarch, he lives in Holland Park, London, as a recluse in exceptional opulence after successfully extricating his gigantic fortune from Russia. He is deeply worried. His doctors are confounded by his slowly failing health and then there is his beloved son, a loud, druggy, dissolute Etonian secretly involved with a white-Russian princess. As a former spy in Russia's elite military secret service, he knows he will always remain of intense interest to the paranoid Russian government. When Grekov's private security force is infiltrated by a potential spy, he turns to former MI5 agent Tony Underwood to prevent further mischief...

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Your first child will change your life. But what if you have three at the same time! Eleven years ago, Ian Mucklejohn had triplet sons as a single father and was outnumbered three to one from the very beginning. Ian had to do it all by himself: juggle, organise, cook, keep sane, stay calm, and handle every obstacle. There was always one hand short, one child who felt left out or needed an extra hug. Ian has gathered the best stories of his sons over the years: the hilarious moments, the fights and crocodile tears, the tough questions to which there is no right answer. You may well recognise yourself - just multiply by three and deduct one parent! Lars, Piers and Ian Mucklejohn live in Newbury with their single father Ian. After studying English, Ian's first job was as a postman, after which he became a teacher.

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In Spoilt Rotten, social commentator Theodore Dalrymple (Our Culture or What is Left of It, 2009) grinds his axe at our sentimentality-centric culture where feelings have become the yardstick of everything we do: safe driving, education, taking of responsibility (none), sentimentality (everywhere). In this forensic polemic of maudlin popular culture from X-factor to Super Nannies, Dalrymple wields his scalpel at all our modern sacred cows. Children will be speechless, for once, parents will hang their heads in shame!

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Dim and dimmer? You decide! Spares Prince Harry and Prince Andrew have rarely been out of the news since 2019. They both have proved to have a rare knack for creating a royal soap opera and turning their humdrum lives into a major embarrassment to their family. Royal author Nigel Cawthorne unravels their princely lives in this dual portrait and asks. Join this frank and hilarious celebration of this royal double act. Covering all the stations of the cross for royal pain from wives, money, relatives, having to scrounge for millions, being turfed out of the HRH club.

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A short, hilarious primer to modern France. Dental hygienists are illegal, yet the French exchange a staggering 184 billion kisses every year and many more crazy little French quirks.

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The very best outrage from the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser, the newspaper that coined the phrase 'Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells' for grumpy complaints.

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Far from becoming classless, Britain's elite is increasingly formed by a select group of professional egalitarians. Rather than aim to raise popular aspirations, they exploit mass taste, mass gullibility, mass spending power for their personal advancement.

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Like many people Carla McKay thought that yoga sounded a bit too good to be true, and a bit to happy, and to bit too much for skinny yummie mummies. Things changed, however, when a friend persuaded her to give it try for a laugh after she separated from her husband.

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Kenneth Murphy's brother was one of the last US soldiers to be killed during the Vietnam. Travelling through Vietnam, he captures its ancient culture and what remains after French and US imperialism and the onslaught of the 21st century finance; and gradually falls in love with the country where his brother is burried.

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John Fleming and Hugh Honour were giants of the art world. To Susanna Johnston, however, they were simply John and Hugh, an inseparable couple and two of her closest friends. They had met in the 1950s at Gli Scafari, the opulent villa on the Italian Riviera of the blind writer Percy Lubbock - one of Henry James' inamoratos and Iris Origo's step father - when she was twenty one, on holiday and penniless. Originally part of the Anglo-Italian world orbiting Bernard Berenson's I Tatti and Harold Acton's La Pietra in Tuscany, John Fleming and Hugh Honour were bemused by being lionised themselves by the super-rich who beat a path to their Villa Marchio. This candid memoir, full of private anecdotes, illuminates these two celebrated, passionate, and very English geniuses, through a close-up of a well-seasoned friendship of over 60 years.

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Throughout her life, until her untimely death in 1997, Diana frequently gave interviews and shared her thoughts with many people. In this fresh portrait over almost 20 years, Nigel Cawthorne gathers her most salient words - some known, some forgotten. They show a remarkable woman who is still able to inspire us two decades on.

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Delightful peeves from Victorian Britain to the Second World War, gathered together as an alternative history of Britain through moans and grumbles.

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The must-have Brando biography by Brando's closest friend.

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Light-hearted and moving story of the beautiful friendship between John Fleming and Hugh Honour, the last great British eccentrics, and Susanna Johnston, centring around the Villa Marchio in Tuscany where they had made their life

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For a balanced life, everyone needs a place where they can be happy in their own skin. However, modern pressures often get in the way of having a home that serves as a stable haven for all who live there. Based on two years of research and interviews, Angela Neustatter looks at ways people in very different circumstances are improving the balance of their lives through their homes. Her search for answers ranges widely, from her own family life to council estates in Manchester and London, to the Australian home of Elisabeth Murdoch; from a lesbian houseshare in small-town Texas to an eco-village in Wales. A Home for the Heart provides eleven ways in which people are balancing the demands of the modern world with the demands of their homes, showing how a nurturing home can once again become of root of happiness.

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Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine came from nowhere...? Felshtinsky and Stanchev's gripping history of Putin's attempts to take Ukraine reveals his first deadly attack came as early as 1999. As early as 2015 the authors predicted that the Russian invasion was a matter the Russian army's 6-year planning cycle and would happen in 2021 (not knowing the pandemic would happen). They argue how Putin must be resisted in order to avoid a potential nuclear conflict that could drag the world into a global war. An authoritative must-read to understand the causes of the crisis and what to do when.

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