Search results for ""author christopher sandford""

The combined forces invasion of the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on 23 April 1918 remains one of Britain’s most glorious military undertakings; not quite as epic a failure as the charge of the Light Brigade, or as well publicised as the Dam Busters raid, but with many of the same basic ingredients.A force drawn from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines set out on ships and submarines to try to block the key strategic port, in a bold attempt to stem the catastrophic losses being inflicted on British shipping by German submarines. It meant attacking a heavily fortified German naval base. The tide, calm weather and the right wind direction for a smoke screen were crucial to the plan.Judged purely on results, it can only be considered a partial strategic success. Casualties were high and the base only partially blocked. Nonetheless, it came to represent the embodiment of the bulldog spirit, the peculiarly British fighting élan, the belief that anything was possible with enough dash and daring.The essential story of the Zeebrugge mission has been told before, but never through the direct, first-hand accounts of its survivors – including that of Lieutenant Richard Sandford, VC, the acknowledged hero of the day, and the author’s great uncle. The fire and bloodshed of the occasion is the book’s centrepiece, but there is also room for the family and private lives of the men who volunteered in their hundreds for what they knew effectively to be a suicide mission.Zeebrugge gives a very real sense of the existence of the ordinary British men and women of 100 years ago – made extraordinary by their role in what Winston Churchill called the ‘most intrepid and heroic single armed adventure of the Great War.’

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The life and times of Middlesex and England wicketkeeper-batsman John 'JT' Murray, one of the acknowledged greats of English post-war cricket. Irresistibly cool, glamorous and apparently unapproachable, Murray was Christopher Sandford's consuming hero at the time the author was confined in an English seaside boarding school in the 60s. Twenty or more years later, the two became friends. In 2017 Murray eventually succumbed to a decade-long campaign and agreed to share in full his lifetime's reminiscences, recounting his experiences of a quarter of a century as a professional English sportsman. Murray proved unfailingly generous and humorous (if by no means uncritical) in his accounts of the great Tests, the tours and the parade of celebrities, sporting and otherwise, he encountered. This treasure trove of stories - described not just in the dry accountancy of scores and averages, but in droll anecdotal detail - lies at the heart of a unique cricket book illustrated by photographs, letters and notes from Murray's own collection.

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‘Meticulously researched.’ - Stewart Lamont, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre‘Sandford’s accomplished, well-crafted work brings Conan Doyle into sharp relief as a man of scrupulous fairness and great integrity.’ - Library Journal‘Adds a new dimension to our understanding of the creator of Sherlock Holmes.’ - Hugh Ashton, author and reviewerWhen Arthur Conan Doyle was a lonely 7-year-old schoolboy at pre-prep Newington Academy in Edinburgh, a French émigré named Eugene Chantrelle was engaged there to teach Modern Languages. A few years later, Chantrelle would be hanged for the particularly grisly murder of his wife, beginning Doyle’s own association with some of the bloodiest crimes of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.This early link between actual crime and the greatest detective story writer of all time is one of many fascinating and sometimes chilling connections. Using freshly available evidence and eyewitness testimony, Christopher Sandford follows these links and draws out the connections between Doyle’s literary output and true crime in a pattern that will enthral and surprise the legions of Sherlock Holmes fans. In a sense, Doyle wanted to be Sherlock – to be a man who could bring order and justice to a terrible world.

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Step back in time to 1964, a year of cultural upheaval and political transformation. From the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the United States to the global phenomenon of Beatlemania, this was the year that gave us bold fashion, unforgettable music and social change that continues to shape society across the world today.While Britain's new Labour government promised the white heat of technology', on the world stage 1964 saw the escalation of the Vietnam War, Nelson Mandela's sentence to life imprisonment and the continued brinkmanship of the global arms race. Brand-new subcultures clashed at Margate beach, where thousands of Mods and Rockers fought over their differing values, while London's Carnaby Street shone vibrantly in the country's capital and women flocked to Mary Quant's iconic designs, empowered by changing social sensibilities and rising hemlines.In this captivating blend of historical events, cultural trends and personal anecdotes, Ch

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The period after the First World War was a golden age for the confidence man. A new kind of entrepreneur is stirring amongst us,' The Times wrote in 1919. He is prone to the most detestable tactics, and is a stranger to charity and public spirit. One may nonetheless note his acuity in separating others from their money.' Enter Victor Lustig (not his real name). An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, by the age of 16 he had learned how to hustle at billiards and lay odds at the local racecourse. By 19 he had acquired a livid facial scar in an altercation with a jealous husband.That blemish aside, he was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke six languages and went under nearly as many aliases in the course of a continent-hopping life that also saw him act as a double (or possibly triple) agent. Along the way, he found time to dupe an impressive variety of banks and hotels on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape

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John F. Kennedy carried on a lifelong love affair with England and the English. From his speaking style to his tastes in art, architecture, theatre, music and clothes, his personality reflected his deep affinity for a certain kind of idealised Englishness.Setting his work against a backdrop of some of the twentieth century’s most profound events – the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War and its arms race – noted biographer Christopher Sandford tracks Kennedy’s exploits in Great Britain between 1935 and 1963, and looks in depth at the unique way Britain shaped JFK throughout his adult life and how he in turn charmed British society.

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The declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939 brought an end to the second (and as yet, final) Golden Age of English cricket. Over 200 first-class English players signed up to fight in that first year; 52 never came back. In many ways, the summer of 1939 was the end of innocence. Using unpublished letters, diaries and memoirs, Christopher Sandford recreates that last summer, looking at men like George Macaulay, who took a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket but was struck down while serving with the RAF in 1940; Maurice Turnbull, the England all-rounder who fell during the Normandy landings; and Hedley Verity, who still holds cricketing records, but who died in the invasion of Sicily. Few English cricket teams began their first post-war season without holding memorial ceremonies for the men they had lost: The Final Innings pays homage not only to these men, but to the lost innocence, heroism and human endurance of the age.

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An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, Victor Lustig was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke six languages and went under nearly as many aliases in the course of a continent-hopping life that also saw him act as a double (or possibly triple) agent. Along the way, he found time to dupe an impressive variety of banks and hotels on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape from no fewer than three supposedly impregnable prisons; and to swindle Al Capone out of thousands of dollars, while living to tell the tale. Undoubtedly the greatest of his hoaxes was the sale, to a wealthy but gullible Parisian scrap-metal dealer, of the Eiffel Tower in 1925. In a narrative that thrills like a crime caper, best-selling biographer Christopher Sandford tells the whole story of the greatest conman of the twentieth century.

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‘Meticulously researched.’ - Stewart Lamont, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre‘Sandford’s accomplished, well-crafted work brings Conan Doyle into sharp relief as a man of scrupulous fairness and great integrity.’ - Library Journal‘Adds a new dimension to our understanding of the creator of Sherlock Holmes.’ - Hugh Ashton, author and reviewerWhen Arthur Conan Doyle was a lonely 7-year-old schoolboy at pre-prep Newington Academy in Edinburgh, a French émigré named Eugene Chantrelle was engaged there to teach Modern Languages. A few years later, Chantrelle would be hanged for the particularly grisly murder of his wife, beginning Doyle’s own association with some of the bloodiest crimes of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.This early link between actual crime and the greatest detective story writer of all time is one of many fascinating and sometimes chilling connections. Using freshly available evidence and eyewitness testimony, Christopher Sandford follows these links and draws out the connections between Doyle’s literary output and true crime in a pattern that will enthral and surprise the legions of Sherlock Holmes fans. In a sense, Doyle wanted to be Sherlock – to be a man who could bring order and justice to a terrible world.

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In this compelling biography, Christopher Sandford explores the full, inside story of Kurt Cobain. From the disruptive childhood which had such a crucial impact on Cobain's personality to the ambitious career musician who, as a friend said, "lunged for success", and the worldwide breakthrough of Nirvana's Nevermind, Sandford also writes about Cobain's stormy marriage to Courtney Love, his heroin addiction, and how he became more and more of a recluse. Finally, he writes of the crisis when, in April 1994, Cobain turned a shotgun on himself and became a martyr for disaffected youth.The result is a saga of success and corruption which John Peel has called "the ultimate rock and roll morality story".

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Laker and Lock is the first dual biography of Surrey and England 'spin twins' Jim Laker and Tony Lock, who helped their county and Test teams to an unparalleled run of dominance in the 1950s. Besides their peerless achievements on the field, the two men had little in common. Laker, the elder by seven years, was Yorkshire born, cool, phlegmatic, known to sulk, and not greatly enamoured with the class distinctions then inherent in English cricket and society as a whole. Lock, a southerner, was dynamic, ebullient, indefatigable both on and off the field, and tended to wear his heart on his sleeve, an attitude no less at odds with the prevailing social order. Both men courted controversy. Laker's post-retirement autobiography caused such a furore that he was made unwelcome at Lord's and the Oval for years afterwards. Lock suffered the stigma of being labelled a 'chucker' and ultimately moved to Australia, where his retirement was clouded by allegations of sexual abuse. This is the full story of the pair's uneasy partnership.

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Shortlisted for the 2015 Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year Award.Shortlisted for the Cross British Sports Book of the Year 2015 (Cricket category). August 1914 brought an end to the ‘Golden Age’ of English cricket. At least 210 professional cricketers (out of a total of 278 registered) signed up to fight, of whom thirty-four were killed. However, that period and those men were far more than merely statistics: here we follow in intimate detail not only the cricketers of that fateful last summer before the war, but also the simple pleasures and daily struggles of their family lives and the whole fabric of English social life as it existed on the eve of that cataclysm: the First World War. With unprecedented access to personal and war diaries, and other papers, Sandford expertly recounts the stories of such greats as Hon. Lionel Tennyson, as he moves virtually overnight from the round of Chelsea and Mayfair parties into the front line at the Marne; the violin-playing bowler Colin Blythe, who asked to be moved up to a front-line unit at Passchendaele, following the death in action of his brother, with tragic consequences; and the widely popular Hampshire amateur player Robert Jesson, whose sometimes comic, frequently horrific and always enthralling experiences of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign are vividly brought to life. The Final Over is undoubtedly a gripping, moving and fully human account of this most poignant summer of the twentieth century, both on and off the field of play.

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In 1962 Mick Jagger was a bright, well-scrubbed boy (planning a career in the civil service), while Keith Richards was learning how to smoke and to swivel a six-shooter. Add the mercurial Brian Jones (who'd been effectively run out of Cheltenham for theft, multiple impregnations and playing blues guitar) and the wryly opinionated Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, and the potential was obvious. During the 1960s and 70s the Rolling Stones were the polarising figures in Britain, admired in some quarters for their flamboyance, creativity and salacious lifestyles, and reviled elsewhere for the same reasons. Confidently expected never to reach 30 they are now approaching their seventies and, in 2012, will have been together for 50 years. In The Rolling Stones, Christopher Sandford tells thehuman drama at the centre of the Rolling Stones story. Sandford has carried out interviews with those close to the Stones, family members (including Mick's parents), the group's fans and contemporaries - even examined their previously unreleased FBI files. Like no other book before The Rolling Stoneswill make sense of the rich brew of clever invention and opportunism, of talent, good fortune, insecurity, self-destructiveness, and of drugs, sex and other excess, that made the Stones who they are.

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The Cricketers of 1945 is the compelling, poignant, and above all human, story of the reawakening of English cricket in the immediate aftermath of the world''s most destructive war.The book brings to life the summer''s Victory Tests, played on home soil between England and Australia, as well as the personal stories of the players and their families, plus those of some of the hundreds of thousands of spectators who flocked to the matches to celebrate the return of something approaching normal life after the ordeal and sacrifice of the war years.This vivid account is illuminated by fresh archival research, encompassing the diaries and personal letters of both cricketers and cricket lovers, giving the reader a strong sense of what it was like to be alive at this unique time as much of the world awoke, or was still awakening, from the nightmare ordeal of the long years of conflict.

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A new, updated edition of Christopher Sandford's classic biography of the band, The Rolling Stones is a gripping account of the band's remarkable 60 years at the top of the rock industry. In 1962 Mick Jagger was a bright, well-scrubbed boy (planning a career in the civil service), while Keith Richards was learning how to smoke and to swivel a six-shooter. Add the mercurial Brian Jones (who'd been effectively run out of Cheltenham for theft, multiple impregnations and playing blues guitar), the wryly opinionated Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, and the potential was obvious.During the 1960s and 70s the Rolling Stones were the polarising figures in Britain, admired in some quarters for their flamboyance, creativity and salacious lifestyles, and reviled elsewhere for the same reasons. Confidently expected never to reach 30, the band is now celebrating 60 years together with a European tour, Sixty, to mark the occasion. Of the original line-up, only Jagger and Richards remain, along with 'new boy' Ronnie Wood, who joined the band in 1975. In The Rolling Stones, Christopher Sandford tells the human drama at the centre of the Rolling Stones story. Sandford has carried out interviews with those close to the Stones, family members (including Mick's parents), the group's fans and contemporaries - even examined their previously unreleased FBI files. Like no other book before The Rolling Stones makes sense of the rich brew of clever invention and opportunism, of talent, good fortune, insecurity, self-destructiveness, and of drugs, sex and other excess, that made the Stones who they are.

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