Search results for ""Author Ben Thompson""

In 1964, Mary Whitehouse launched a campaign to fight what she called the 'propaganda of disbelief, doubt and dirt' being poured into homes through the nation's radio and television sets. Whitehouse, senior mistress at a Shropshire secondary school, became the unlikely figurehead of a mass movement for censorship: the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, now Mediawatch-uk.For almost forty years, she kept up the fight against the programme makers, politicians, pop stars and playwrights who she felt were dragging British culture into a sewer of blasphemy and obscenity. From Doctor Who ('Teatime brutality for tots') to Dennis Potter (whose mother sued her for libel and won) to the Beatles - whose Magical Mystery Tour escaped her intervention by the skin of its psychedelic teeth - the list of Mary Whitehouse's targets will read to some like a nostalgic roll of honour.Caricatured while she lived as a figure of middle-brow reaction, Mary Whitehouse was held in contempt by the country's intellectual elite. But were some of the dangers she warned of more real than they imagined? Ben Thompson's selection of material from her extraordinary archive shows Mary Whitehouse's legacy in a startling new light. From her exquisitely testy exchanges with successive BBC Directors General, to the anguished screeds penned by her television and radio vigilantes, these letters reveal a complex and combative individual, whose anxieties about culture and morality are often eerily relevant to the age of the internet. 'A fantastic read . . . I can't recommend it highly enough.' Lauren Laverne, BBC Radio 6 Music

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Bringing historical events to life with its laugh-out-loud stories and striking illustrations, "Badass" chronicles the asskicking age of antiquity to the fearless modern era in chapters that include the stories of: Ramses II - the greatest of the Egyptian Pharaohs, who once said look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair; Alexander the Great - Macedonian King who conquered the entire known world before his 33rd birthday; Blackbeard - the most feared cutthroat to ever sail the Caribbean; and, Bhanbhagta Gurung - Gurkha soldier who cleared out six enemy positions with grenades, a knife, and a healthy disregard for his own safety. From Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan to Bruce Lee and George S. Patton, this relentless onslaught of badassitude is the perfect addition to the canon of manliness that includes "The Truth About Chuck Norris" and "The Alphabet of Manliness".

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Although the Wright Brothers are now celebrated as heroes for their groundbreaking contributions to science and engineering as the first men to successfully manage powered, piloted flight, their eventual success was built on the back of a lot of nosedives. It took the self-taught engineers years of work and countless crashes before they managed to remain airborne for a mere twelve seconds! In this hilarious first installment of the Epic Fails series, Ben Thompson and Erik Slader take readers through the the Wright Brothers' many failed attempts at flight before achieving their groundbreaking success, laying the foundation for aviation as we know it today. The Epic Fails series explores the humorous backstories behind a variety of historical discoveries, voyages, experiments, and innovations that didn't go as expected but succeeded nonetheless, showing that many of mankind's biggest success stories are the result of some pretty epic failures indeed.

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SOON TO BE A LIMITED SERIES DIRECTED BY DANNY BOYLE_____________________Foreword by Chrissie HyndeWithout the Sex Pistols there would be no punk rock, and without Steve Jones there would be no Sex Pistols.It was Steve who formed Kutie Jones and his Sex Pistols, the band that eventually went on to become the Sex Pistols, with his schoolmate Paul Cook and who was its original leader. As the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of Punk - the influence and cultural significance of which is felt in music, fashion and the visual arts to this day - Steve tells his story for the very first time. Rising from the streets of Hammersmith, Steve Jones was once a lonely, neglected boy living off his wits and petty thievery. Given purpose by the glam art rock of David Bowie and Roxy Music, he became one of the first generation of punks taken under the wings of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. For the very first time Steve describes the neglect and abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather, and how his interest in music and fashion saved him from a potential life of crime.From the Kings Road of the early seventies, through the years of the Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and the recording of Never Mind the Bollocks (ranked number 41 in Rolling Stone magazine's Best Albums of All Time), to his self-imposed exile in New York and Los Angeles where he battled with alcohol, heroin and sex addiction - caught in a cycle of rehab and relapse - Lonely Boy, written with music journalist and author Ben Thompson, is the story of an unlikely guitar hero who, with the Sex Pistols, changed history.

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