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Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt
Par John Grindrod. 2017
'Evocative and intelligent' Guardian Discover the secret history of our green belts.The first book to tell the story of Britain's…
green belts, Outskirts is at once a fascinating social history, a stirring evocation of the natural world, and a poignant tale of growing up in a place, and within a family, like no other.'Illuminating and enjoyable' David Kynaston, SpectatorGreen belts are part of the landscape and psyche of post-war Britain, but have led to conflicts at every level of society - between conservationists and developers, town and country, politicians and people, nimbys and the forces of progress.Growing up on 'the last road in London' on an estate at the edge of the woods, John Grindrod had a childhood that mirrored these tensions. His family, too, seemed caught between two worlds: his wheelchair-bound mother and soft hearted father had moved from the inner city and had trouble adjusting. His warring brothers struggled too: there was the sporty one who loved the outdoors, and the agoraphobic who hated it. And then there was John, an unremarkable boy on the edge of it all discovering something magical.In the green belts John discovers strange hidden places, from nuclear bunkers to buried landfill sites, and along the way meets planners, protestors, foresters and residents whose passions for and against the green belt tell a fascinating tale of Britain today.Fear: Our Ultimate Challenge
Par Ranulph Fiennes. 2016
Explorer and adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes explores the concept of fear, and shows us through his own experiences how we…
can push our boundaries in everyday life.Sir Ranulph Fiennes has climbed the Eiger and Mount Everest. He's crossed both Poles on foot. He's been a member of the SAS and fought a bloody guerrilla war in Oman. And yet he confesses that his fear of heights is so great that he'd rather send his wife up a ladder to clean the gutters than do it himself.In FEAR, the world's greatest explorer delves into his own experiences to try and explain what fear is, how it happens and how he's overcome it so successfully. He examines key moments from history where fear played an important part in the outcome of a great event. He shows us how the brain perceives fear, how that manifests itself in us, and how we can transform our perceptions.With an enthralling combination of story-telling, research and personal accounts of his own struggles to overcome fear, Sir Ranulph Fiennes sheds new light on one of humanity's strongest emotions.The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End
Par Katie Roiphe. 2016
The last days of five great thinkers, writers and artists - as they come to terms with the reality of…
approaching deathKatie Roiphe's extraordinary book is filled with intimate and surprising revelations. Susan Sontag, consummate public intellectual, finds her rational thinking tested during her third bout with cancer. Seventy-six year old John Updike's response to a fatal diagnosis is to begin a poem. Dylan Thomas's fatal collapse on the floor of a Greenwich Village tavern is preceded by a fortnight of almost suicidal excess. Sigmund Freud understands his hastening decline. Maurice Sendak shows his lifelong obsession with death in his beloved books.The Violet Hour - urgent and unsentimental - helps us to be less afraid in the face of death.Iron Ambition: Lessons I've Learned from the Man Who Made Me a Champion
Par Larry Sloman, Mike Tyson. 2017
The story of the relationship between the most devastating heavyweight boxer in history and the mentor who made him.When legendary…
boxing trainer Cus D'Amato saw thirteen-year-old Mike Tyson spar in the ring, he proclaimed 'That's the heavyweight champion of the world'. D'Amato played a huge role in Tyson's formative years, legally adopting him at age sixteen, and shaping him both physically and mentally after years of living in poverty. He would train the young boxer for several years, dying just months before Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history.In Iron Ambition, Tyson shares the life lessons that D'Amato passed down to him and reflects on how the trainer's words of wisdom continue to resonate with him outside the ring. The book also chronicles Cus's courageous fight against the mobsters who controlled boxing, revealing more than we've ever know about this singular cultural figure.The Circling Sky: On Nature and Belonging in an Ancient Forest
Par Neil Ansell. 2021
From a 2018 Wainwright Prize shortlisted author, THE CIRCLING SKY is part childhood memoir, blended with exquisite nature observation, and…
the story of one man's journey over a year to one of the UK's key natural habitats, the New Forest of HampshireIn the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom, and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities. It is also part polemic on our collective and individual responsibility for the land and world in which we live, and how we care for it.As Neil Ansell concludes so eloquently, 'Evolution has no choice in what it does, but we do, as a species, if not always as individuals'.Vessels: A Memoir of What Wasn't
Par Daniel Raeburn. 2016
An unforgettable portrait of a marriage tested to its limits.When Dan, a writer with a passion for underground comics, and…
his wife Bekah, a potter dedicated to traditional Japanese ceramics, met through a mutual friend, they swiftly fell in love. "Of all the women I've ever met," Dan told a friend, "she's the first one who felt like family." But at Christmas, as they prepared for the birth of their first child, tragedy struck.Based on Daniel Raeburn's acclaimed New Yorker essay, Vessels: A Memoir of What Wasn't is the story of how the couple clashed and clung to each other through a series of unsuccessful pregnancies before finally, joyfully, becoming parents. In prose as handsomely unadorned as his wife's pottery, Raeburn recounts a marriage cemented by the same events that nearly broke it.Vessels is an unflinching, enormously moving account of intimacy, endurance and love.West With The Night (Virago Modern Classics #269)
Par Beryl Markham. 1942
WEST WITH THE NIGHT appeared on 13 bestseller lists on first publication in 1942. It tells the spellbinding story of…
Beryl Markham -- aviator, racehorse trainer, fascinating beauty -and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and 30s.Markham was taken to Kenya at the age of four. As an adult she was befriended by Denys Finch-Hatton, the big-game hunter of OUT OF AFRICA fame, who took her flying in his airplane. Thrilled by the experience, Markham went on to become the first woman in Kenya to receive a commercial pilot's license.In 1936 she determined to fly solo across the Atlantic -- without stopping. When Charles Lindbergh did the same, he had the wind behind him. Markham, by contrast, had a strong headwind against her and a plane that only flew up to 163 mph. On 4 September, she took off ... Several days later, she crash-landed in Nova Scotia and became an instant celebrity.Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir
Par Carrie Brownstein. 2015
Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as…
it was becoming the setting for one of the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as "America's best rock band" by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock.Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era's flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later.With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one's true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.Boys in the Trees: A Memoir
Par Carly Simon. 2015
#1 New York Times BestsellerA People Magazine Top Ten Book of the Year'A sensational memoir . . . brilliantly well…
written. Carly Simon is incapable of writing a boring sentence . . . you can forgive anything for the unparalleled brilliance of her writing' - Lynn Barber, Sunday Times'Hugely affecting memoir . . . heartfelt and remarkable' - Fiona Sturges, IndependentCarly Simon is a household name. She was the staple of the '70s and '80s Billboard charts and was famously married to James Taylor with whom she has two children. She has had a career that has spanned four decades, resulting in thirteen top 40 hits, including the Number 1 song 'You're So Vain', numerous Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for her song 'Let the River Run' (from the film Working Girl). Boys in the Trees is a rhapsodic, beautifully composed memoir of a young woman's coming of age amongst the glamorous literati and intelligentsia of Manhattan (her father was Richard Simon, co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster), a reflection on a life begun amidst secrets and shame, and a powerful story of the strength to leave that all behind and forge a path of art, music and love in the Golden Age of folk and rock.At once an insider's look into a life in the spotlight, a lyric reflection on a particular time in our culture's history, and a beautiful memoir about the pains and joys of love and art, Boys in the Trees is the story Carly Simon has long been waiting to tell the world.Praise for the US edition:'One of the best celebrity memoirs of the year' Hollywood Reporter'Intelligent and captivating' People'Compelling' Rolling StoneJourneys to the Other Side of the World: further adventures of a young David Attenborough
Par Sir David Attenborough. 1963
'With charm, erudition, humour and passion, the world's favourite natural history broadcaster documents some of his expeditions from the late…
1950s onwards' Sunday ExpressFollowing the success of the original Zoo Quest expeditions, the young David Attenborough embarked on further travels in a very different part of the world.From Madagascar and New Guinea to the Pacific Islands and the Northern Territory of Australia, he and his cameraman companion were aiming to record not just the wildlife, but the way of life of some of the indigenous people of these regions, whose traditions had never been encountered by most of the British public before.From the land divers of Pentecost Island and the sing-sings of New Guinea, to a Royal Kava ceremony on Tonga and the ancient art of the Northern Territory, it is a journey like no other. Alongside these remarkable cultures he encounters paradise birds, chameleons, sifakas and many more animals in some of the most unique environments on the planet.Written with David Attenborough's characteristic charm, humour and warmth, Journeys to the Other Side of the World is an inimitable adventure among people, places and the wildest of wildlife.'Abundantly good' TLS'A wondrous reminder of Attenborough's pioneering role . . . full of delightful tales' Daily Express'An adventure that sparked a lifetime's commitment to the planet' The Lady'Attenborough is a fine writer and storyteller' Irish TimesLove Like Salt: A Memoir
Par Helen Stevenson. 2016
CHOSEN BY MAGGIE O'FARRELL IN THE GUARDIAN AS ONE OF HER BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR'It's a slice of a…
life . . . a complex, intelligent, beautiful, thoughtful, rather lyrical book' -Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love'A moving treatise on inheritance, not just of a disease like cystic fibrosis, but of our attitudes to living and loving, our sense of cultural and familial landscape, and how these intangibles pass down through generations. Stevenson picks apart her life like a strand of DNA to uncover just how we become the sum of our parts' Daily Telegraph'A beautiful memoir . . . [Stevenson] is a novelist and a translator and her memoir is about translation in the larger sense. Translating the world is what we all do but she reminds us that one can hope - with a mind as intricately well read and original as hers - to translate misfortune; to absorb and see beyond it . . . Stevenson makes of poetry, fiction and philosophy a protective shawl for her story . . . Although intense she has a carefree wit' Kate Kellaway, Observer'Love Like Salt is a human triumph ... Ultimately, Love Like Salt follows in the hallowed footsteps of Helen MacDonald's brilliant H is for Hawk or Cathy Rentzenbrink's The Last Act of Love. These are not misery memoirs but reminders that life comes in all shades - that in the darkest moments, beauty and humour can be found' Francesca Brown, Stylist'Did Clara taste salty when I kissed her? She did. She tasted of mermaids, of the sea.'Love Like Salt is a deeply affecting memoir, beautifully and intelligently written. It is about mothers and daughters, music and illness, genes and inheritance, writing and story-telling. It is about creating joy from the hand you've been dealt and following its lead - in this case to rural France, where the author and her family lived for seven years. And back again.'I had always written, and until the birth of Clara I wrote for a living. Once I knew the Cystic Fibrosis gene had unfolded itself in our daughter's body, like a paper flower meeting water, I felt that to write, even if I had had time, or been able, would have been to squander a kind of power which was needed for tending and nurturing. Every moment became a moment in which I protected my baby. Some of it I did in secret, like a madwoman muttering spells. I thought of her as a candle, cupping my hand around her.A beautifully written memoir, in the vein of H is for Hawk and The Last Act of Love, about motherhood, music and living the best life you can, even in the shadow of illness.Call the Midlife
Par Chris Evans. 2015
During his run into turning FIFTY, CHRIS EVANS is on a MISSION. To take stock of WHERE HE IS and…
WHERE HE'S AT in order to figure out how BEST to get the MOST out of what he BELIEVES are the BEST YEARS yet to come.His typically positive and upbeat journey involves ONE HUNDRED DAYS of contemplation, research, focus, frustration and DECISION MAKING while SECRETLY:*Training for The London MARATHON*Bringing back his cult Nineties TV show TFI FRIDAY*And the small matter of suddenly being asked to take over TOP GEAR.HEALTH, LOVE, MARRIAGE, SEX, DEATH and even RELIGION all come under his witty microscope as he poses the conundrum - MIDLIFE: CRISIS vs OPPORTUNITY ?There can only be one winner.The Complete Michael Palin Diaries
Par Michael Palin. 2009
Volume I: THE PYTHON YEARS (1969-1979)Michael Palin's diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name…
for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner . . .Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate ways, later to re-form for stage shows and the celebrated films THE HOLY GRAIL and LIFE OF BRIAN. Living through the three-day week and the miners strike, and all the trials of a peripatetic life are also essential ingredients of these perceptive and funny diaries.Volume II: HALFWAY TO HOLLYWOOD (1980-1988)After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, The Pythons made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE. Writing and acting in films and television then took over much of Michael's life, culminating in the smash hit A FISH CALLED WANDA (for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor), and the first of his seven celebrated television journeys for the BBC. He co-produced, wrote and played the lead in THE MISSIONARY opposite Maggie Smith, who also appeared with him in A PRIVATE FUNCTION, written by Alan Bennett. Such was his fame in the US, he was enticed into once again hosting the enormously popular show Saturday Night Live, in one edition of which his mother makes a highly successful surprise guest appearance. He filmed several journeys for television and became chairman of the pressure group, Transport 2000. His family remains a constant as his and Helen's children enter their teens.Volume III: Travelling to Work (1988-1998)TRAVELLING TO WORK is a roller-coaster ride driven by the Palin hallmarks of curiosity and sense of adventure. Michael was not the BBC's first choice for the travel series AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, but after its success, the public naturally wanted more. Palin, however, had other plans. There was his film AMERICAN FRIENDS, a role in Alan Bleasdale's award-winning drama GBH, the staging of his West End play THE WEEKEND, a first novel, HEMINGWAY'S CHAIR, and a lead role in FIERCE CREATURES. He did find time for two more travel series, POLE TO POLE in 1991 and FULL CIRCLE in 1996, and wrote two bestselling books to accompany them. These ten years in different directions offer riches on every page.Hollywood Park: A Memoir
Par Mikel Jollett. 2020
**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**'Astonishing... precisely crafted, emotionally-sucker-punching prose.' Daily Telegraph'Dangerous, immediate and lyrical from the jump.' Wall Street…
JournalHOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country's most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.Mikel Jollett was born in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country's most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader's mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult's 'School'. After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic. In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician, forming the band The Airborne Toxic Event.My Name is Mahtob: The Story that Began in the Global Phenomenon Not Without My Daughter Continues
Par Mahtob Mahmoody. 2015
Two decades ago, Not Without My Daughter (a global phenomenon made into a film starring Sally Field) told of the…
daring escape of an American mother and her six-year-old child from an abusive and fanatical Iranian husband and father. Now the daughter tells the whole story, not only of her imprisonment and escape but of life after fleeing Iran: living in fear of re-abduction, battling recurring nightmares and panic attacks, taking on an assumed name, surviving life-threatening illness-all under the menacing shadow of her father.This is the story of an extraordinary young woman's triumph over life-crushing trauma to build a life of peace and forgiveness. Moving from Michigan to Tehran, from Ankara to Paris, Mahtob reveals the profound resilience of a wounded soul healed by her faith in God's goodness and his care and love for herNigel: my family and other dogs
Par Monty Don. 2016
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWhen Monty Don's golden retriever Nigel became the surprise star of BBC Gardeners' World, inspiring huge interest,…
fan mail and his own social media accounts, Monty Don wanted to explore what makes us connect with animals quite so deeply. In many respects Nigel was a very ordinary dog; charming, handsome and obedient, as so many are. He was a much loved family pet. He was also a star. By telling Nigel's story, Monty relates his relationships with the other special dogs in his life in a memoir of his dogs past and very much present. Since it was first released in 2016, Monty Don's Nigel: my family and other dogs has sold over a quarter of a million copies, with Nigel, who sadly passed away in 2020, ensuring his place in the hearts of readers and dog lovers everywhere. This life-affirming memoir of the importance of dogs in Monty's life and in all our lives, is never more true than now.'I have always had a dog, or dogs. I cannot imagine life without them. I am just as much a fan of Nigel as any besotted viewer. In the book I explore why we love dogs and what they mean to us emotionally and domestically. I look back on all the dogs in my life - all of which I have loved deeply and which have been an essential part of my life. So, this is the book of Nigel - but also the book of all our dogs in every British family and a celebration of the deep love we feel for them' Monty DonMuhammad Ali: A fresh and personal account of a boxing champion
Par Michael Parkinson. 2016
'A riveting read about an amazing man' THE SUNLegendary boxer Muhammad Ali visited Michael Parkinson's chat show sofa four times,…
culminating in an iconic interview in 1971. Muhammad Ali: A Memoir is a fresh, revealing and personal account of the life of the most important and enduring cultural figures of our age. An icon of boxing who has inspired the biggest names in boxing, from Mike Tyson to Anthony Joshua, this is the story of boxing's biggest star. Muhammad Ali was God's Gift to the interviewer. Funny, articulate, outspoken with a fascinating life story, unparalleled talent and controversial views. These 4 interviews charted Ali's life, revealing significant phases at different times, charting the rise and fall of this kaleidoscope of a man.In Muhammad Ali: A Memoir Sir Michael Parkinson will bring his award-winning journalistic talents to bear on this extraordinary man. The book will mix personal recollections of the times they met with selected transcripts of the famous and, in the case of the 1974 meeting, infamous interviews all brought together and contextualised by a sober and honest assessment of the life and times of a figure that, it is certain, we will never see the like of again.Nobody Told Me: Poetry and Parenthood
Par Hollie McNish. 2016
'This book should be required reading for anyone thinking of having a baby, or even anyone who knows someone who…
is thinking of having a baby'Scotland on Sunday'Fascinating and honest'Mumsnet'Like talking to a friend'ObserverWinner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in PoetryThere were many things that Hollie McNish didn't know before she was pregnant. How her family and friends would react; that Mr Whippy would be off the menu; how quickly ice can melt on a stomach. These were on top of the many other things she didn't know about babies: how to stand while holding one; how to do a poetry gig with your baby as a member of the audience; how drum'n'bass can make a great lullaby. And that's before you even start on toddlers. But Hollie learned.And she's still learning, slowly. Nobody Told Me is a collection of poems and stories; Hollie's thoughts on raising a child in modern Britain, of trying to become a parent in modern Britain, of sex, commercialism, feeding, gender and of finding secret places to scream once in a while.Will This House Last Forever?: 'Heartbreaking, beautifully written' The Times
Par Xanthi Barker. 2021
'Completely original, raw and warm' Evening Standard Books of the Summer'Poignant... written with intelligence and tears' Ben Okri'Nuanced, absorbing and…
moving... extraordinary' Observer'Raw, poetic, beautifully formed' Daisy JohnsonWhen Xanthi Barker's father died when she was in her mid twenties, she could make no sense of her grief for a man who had been absent for most of her life. Her father, poet Sebastian Barker, had left Xanthi, her mother and her brother to pursue writing and a new relationship, when Xanthi was a baby. Growing up she had always struggled to reconcile his extravagant affection - a rocking horse crafted from scavenged wood, the endless stream of poems and drawings and letters, conversations that spiralled from the structure of starlight to philosophy to Bruce Springsteen - with the fact that he could not be depended upon for more everyday things. Though theirs was a relationship defined by departures, he always returned, so why should this farewell be any different, or more final?WILL THIS HOUSE LAST FOREVER? is a heartfelt and wholly original memoir about the pain of having to come to terms with a parent's mortality, the way grief so utterly defies logic, and about learning to see the flaws in those that we love, and let them go.On Sheep: Diary of a Swedish Shepherd
Par Axel Lindén. 2018
'Axel Lindén is a shepherd-philosopher with James Herriot's knack for mishap and an almost Chekhovian deadpan humour.' Observer'Endearing and liberating.'…
Idler Magazine'A sublime little book.' Cotswold Life_______Why do we keep sheep? Alex Lindén ruminates as he watches his sheep ruminating. Naive and inexperienced, he has ditched his doctoral studies in order to move to a fully working farm in the country with his family, where he is tasked with the responsibility of caring for a herd of sheep.Lindén records his new life in his diary, as he tries to manage life on the farm, the ever-escaping sheep and the trials and tribulations that come with being a shepherd - shearing, lambing and confronting the slaughterhouse. As time passes and he gradually settles into the rhythm of shepherding, his naivete fades away and is replaced with stark realisations about what is now his everyday life. He finds himself applying his experiences of animal husbandry to consider our place - as individuals and as a collective organism - in the universe. Is he really the one caring for the sheep, or are they the ones keeping him? Lindén finds both companionship in his flock and a sound, if complex, moral framework for examining the lives we lead.The result is a sensitive and entertaining meditation on the small wonders in our world.