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I'll Tell Me Ma: A Childhood Memoir
Par Brian Keenan. 2009
Local rather than international, the dramas and privations described in this memoir are not the stuff of headlines. This is…
the story of an ordinary boy growing up in Belfast after the war; an ordinary boy who would go on to become world-famous as a hostage in Beirut and author of the extraordinary testimony of imprisonment and survival that was An Evil Cradling. Brian Keenan has captured the vanished world of 1950s Belfast in all its vivid vernacular and grey, post-war austerity. I'll Tell Me Ma is an affectionate story of a disaffected childhood. At the centre is a shy, self-conscious boy of unusual moral integrity; a boy puzzled by religion and sectarianism, in love with books and music and full of curiosity about the world outside. It is also a book about coming-to-terms with the past: a resounding, thrilling record of redemption.I'll Be Watching You: True Stories of Stalkers and Their Victims
Par Richard Gallagher. 2002
What drives one person to become obsessed with another - someone they may never even have met? And what happens…
when the obsessions of unbalanced misfits, desperate loners and aggrieved ex-partners spiral out of control? Stalking is on the increase - and it isn't only celebrities who become the targets of irrational individuals. Men and women with everyday jobs who lead ordinary lives can just as easily become someone else's obsession. Each year, hundreds of people fall victim to terrifying harrassment by people they may have never met. Richard Gallagher has researched this disturbing phenomenon to provide a serious investigation into this unsettling but intriguing crime. Featuring interviews with victims, police, psychologists - and those who "stalk stalkers" - he has unearthed accounts of obsession and delusion.Jack The Ripper and the East End: Introduction by Peter Ackroyd
Par Various. 2008
In 1888, Whitechapel - at the heart of the inner East End - was the most (in)famous place in the…
country, widely imagined as a site of the blackest and deepest horror. Its streets and alleys were seen as violent and dangerous, overflowing with poverty and depravity. This book aims to uncover the reality of East End life. Sections look at slum housing, immigration, attitudes to women, poverty, violence and crime. The book examines how the brutal killings were reported and how the police tried to identify the murderer. A final section shows how Jack the Ripper has shaped our vision of London, and influenced our popular culture.Jack the Ripper and the East End coincides with an exhibition organised by the Museum of London at their Museum in Docklands. Key surviving documents from the National Archives and the London Metropolitan Archives will be on display - in addition to material from the collections of the Museum of London such as photographs of the Whitechapel Mission. The illustrations for the book will include rare and unpublished photographs, sections of the 'master' Booth Map of Poverty, detectives' reports and original letters.The introduction will be written by Peter Ackroyd, who is the acknowledged expert on London, its darker aspects and how its history has seeped into its very stones. Leading historians and curators will provide additional insights. This is a book which will be valued for years to come for its enduring and important portrait of the Victorian East End.Inside Alcatraz: My Time on the Rock
Par Jim Quillen. 2015
Each day we saw the outside world in all its splendour, and each day that view served as a reminder…
that we had wasted and ruined our lives. Jim Quillen, AZ586 - a runaway, problem child and petty thief - was jailed several times before his twentieth birthday. In August 1942, after escaping from San Quentin, he was arrested on the run and sentenced to forty-five years in prison, and later transferred to Alcatraz. This is the true story of life inside America's most notorious prison - from terrifying times in solitary confinement to daily encounters with 'the Birdman', and what really happened during the desperate and deadly 1946 escape attempt.I Fought at Dunkirk: Seven Veterans Remember Their Fight For Salvation
Par Mike Rossiter. 1999
SURVIVOR STORIES FROM DUNKIRK, NOW THE SUBJECT OF A MAJOR FILM FROM CHRISTOPHER NOLANWhen Britain declared war against Germany in…
September 1939, thousands of young men sailed across the English Channel to fight for their country. Among them were the seven soldiers who share their stories in this book. Some joined up out of patriotism, others for adventure or the prospect of a secure wage. They were fit, trained and proud to wear the armband of the British Expeditionary Forces. For many, the first months were strangely peaceful, but when the Germans invaded in May 1940 they advanced with shocking speed. The German armoured columns sliced through neutral Holland and Belgium. The French Army collapsed and within a week the soldiers of the BEF were forced to retreat. Fighting tough and bloody rearguard actions, they endured relentless shelling and fearsome dive-bomb attacks. Constantly on the move, and facing a German onslaught on three fronts, they were soon exhausted, hungry and low on ammunition. They headed finally to their one chance of salvation: the beaches of Dunkirk. Mike Rossiter tells the stories of seven veterans who went through a hellish baptism of fire in the first battles on the front line, and fought in the last-ditch defence of Dunkirk. They saw their comrades bombed and drowned off the beaches. Their accounts give us a fascinating and privileged insight into the reality of the war and what it was really like to face the German Blitzkrieg in 1940. They take us from the confident, idyllic days of the phoney war in the French countryside to the sudden shock of battle, from the fear and confusion of retreat to the wait for an uncertain rescue. These are the compelling stories of seven men who are proud to say I Fought at Dunkirk.I Didn't Get Where I Am Today
Par David Nobbs. 2003
As a small boy David Nobbs survived the Second World War unscathed, until his bedroom ceiling fell on him when…
the last bomb to be dropped on Britain by the Germans landed near his home. It was the nearest he came to the war, but National Service would later make him one of Britain's most reluctant soldiers. It was an unforgettable and often unpleasant experience.As a struggling writer, David was catapulted into the thrilling world of satire at the BBC when he rang THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS with a joke and got through to David Frost, who sent a taxi for the joke. He never looked back. His greatness as a modern comic writer was confirmed by the publication of THE FALL AND RISE OF REGINALD PERRIN, which he adapted into the immensely successful television series that has entered the fabric of British cultural life, through phrases, images and brilliant humour. A mesmerising, beautifully told tale of life in writing and comedy, I DIDN'T GET WHERE I AM TODAY is the hilarious, poignant and very personal story of David Nobbs' life, which also describes some of the most famous comedians of the last century and captures a golden age of British television.I Am Not A Gangster
Par Bobby Cummines. 2014
'I am not a gangster,' I spat. 'I'm a businessman trying to make a hard-earned crust. Understood?'I didn't give him…
time to reply. I took the barrel out of his mouth and smashed him in the face with the butt. His lip split, but he wasn't a dead man. He seemed to appreciate that his life had been spared.He spluttered his thanks: 'Ok, you’re not a gangster. You are not a gangster.'This is the gripping true story of how one man ruled his north London manor with an iron fist – and a sawn-off shotgun called Kennedy. It’s a shocking insight into a society where the rules are made by gangland leaders and if anybody dare break them, they have to deal with the consequences. Bobby was sent to prison for the first time in 1967, aged 16, and over the next decade he established himself as a hardened criminal running protection rackets and robberies against a backdrop of all-out gang warfare, where doorstep slayings and bloody shoot-outs were common. Eventually Bobby was sentenced to 12 years in Britain’s most notorious prisons, along with the Krays, Charlie Richardson and the Yorkshire Ripper. Inside, he was introduced to the Open University and on his release he soon got down to business again. Only this time his efforts saw him go from custody of Her Majesty’s Prison Service to meeting with the Queen herself... I Am Not A Gangster is an explosive account of life in the criminal underworld by one of Britain’s most dangerous men, but above all it’s a remarkable tale of redemption with the biggest turnaround in gangland history.I Am Justice: A Journey Out of Africa
Par Paul Kenyon. 2009
Eighty miles off the Libyan coast water is leaking rapidly into the bottom of a dilapidated wooden boat. Twenty-seven men,…
crammed in side-by-side, desperately attempt to bail it out, but the boat is sinking. In the distance one of their number spots a ship and, forcing the last moments of life from the engine, they move towards it. But the crew refuses to allow them on board. Instead the men scramble onto the floats of a huge industrial tuna net, and watch as their boat rolls over and disappears into the heaving Mediterranean.Like tens of thousands of others Justice set off from his rural village with an idealised vision of an new life in England - the 'home' country - desperate just to earn his way and help his orphaned brother and sister left behind. During his long journey to the African coast, he's captured, jailed and tortured, before escaping and heading northwards again. Once in Tripoli he's duped into handing over his life savings for a trip in a wreck of a boat across miles of open sea to almost certain death. But there is also compassion here and he meets old and wise souls along the way. The tuna net is not the end of Justice's story. It is an extraordinary tale of courage, and an important account of a life caught between cultures, on the edge of survival.Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography Volume 3 1956-1964
Par Dr Sarvepalli Gopal. 1957
The third and final volume of Sarvepalli Gopal’s biography of Jawaharlal Nehru covers the last eight years of his life…
and Prime Ministership. It deals with his efforts to sustain economic and social advance of the Indian people and not to lose hold of the principles of his foreign policy even while relations with China deteriorated, culminating the large scale aggression in both the western and eastern sections of the long boundary between the two countries.Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000 (Penguin History of Britain)
Par Peter Clarke. 2004
Peter Clarke brilliantly challenges the commonly held view of Britain in the twentieth century as a nation in decline. Adopting…
a wide perspective, he examines the political. social and economic changes that transformed Britain. He looks at how jobs and prices, food and shelter, and education and welfare, shaped society and explores such areas as architecture, sport and popular culture. Embracing a century of national experience, Hope and Glory superbly conveys the diverse aspects of three generations who lived through unparalleled change.The Hong Kong Diaries
Par Chris Patten. 2022
The diaries of the last British Governor of Hong Kong, published on the 25th anniversary of the handoverIn June 1992…
Chris Patten went to Hong Kong as the last British governor, to try to prepare it not (as other British colonies over the decades) for independence, but for handing back in 1997 to the Chinese, from whom most of its territory had been leased 99 years previously. Over the next five years he kept this diary, which describes in detail how Hong Kong was run as a British colony and what happened as the handover approached. The book gives unprecedented insights into negotiating with the Chinese, about how the institutions of democracy in Hong Kong were (belatedly) strengthened and how Patten sought to ensure that a strong degree of self-government would continue after 1997. Unexpectedly, his opponents included not only the Chinese themselves, but some British businessmen and civil service mandarins upset by Patten's efforts, for whom political freedom and the rule of law in Hong Kong seemed less important than keeping on the right side of Beijing. The book concludes with an account of what has happened in Hong Kong since the handover, a powerful assessment of recent events and Patten's reflections on how to deal with China - then and now.Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North
Par Ibn Fadlan. 2012
In 922 AD, an Arab envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper…
reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Viking customs, dress, table manners, religion and sexual practices, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation.Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.It's a Wonderful Word: The Real Origins of Our Favourite Words
Par Albert Jack. 2011
Did you know that an assassin is a hashish-eater and a yokel a country woodpecker? That Dr Mesmer mesmerised patients…
back to health or that Samuel Pepys enjoyed a good game of handicap? While we're at it, what have spondulics to do with spines or lawyers with avocados?In It's a Wonderful Word, bestselling author Albert Jack collects over 500 of the strangest, funniest-sounding and most delightful words in the English language, and traces them back to their often puzzling origins. While brushing up on your gibberish or gobbledygook, discover why bastards should resent travelling salesmen, why sheets should remain on tenterhooks and why you should never set down a tumbler before finishing your drink.From blotto to bamboozle and from claptrap to quango, Albert Jack's addictive anecdotes bring the world's most colourful language to life and are guaranteed to surprise and entertain.In The South Seas
Par Neil Rennie, Robert Louis Stevenson. 1998
IN THE SOUTH SEAS records Stevenson's travels with his wife Fanny and their family in the Marquesas, the Paumotus and…
the Gilbert Islands during 1888-9. Originally drafted in journal form while Stevenson travelled, it was then ambitiously rewrittento describe the islands and islanders as well as Stevenson's own personal experiences. IN THE SOUTH SEAS was published posthumously in 1896. Its combination of personal anecdote and historical account, of autobiography and anthropology, of Stevenson and South Sea Islands, has a particular charm.The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World
Par Avi Shlaim. 2014
Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World is the outstanding book on Israeli foreign policy, now thoroughly…
updated with a new preface and chapters on Israel's most recent leadersIn the 1920s, hard-line Zionists developed the doctrine of the 'Iron Wall': negotiations with the Arabs must always be from a position of military strength, and only when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours.This doctrine, argues Avi Shlaim, became central to Israeli policy; dissenters were marginalized and many opportunities to reconcile with Palestinian Arabs were lost. Drawing on a great deal of new material and interviews with many key participants, Shlaim places Israel's political and military actions under and uncompromising lens.His analysis will bring scant comfort to partisans on both sides, but it will be required reading for anyone interested in this fascinating and troubled region of the world.'The Iron Wall is strikingly fair-minded, scholarly, cogently reasoned and makes enthralling ... reading' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph'Anyone wanting to understand the modern Middle East should start by reading this elegantly written and scrupulously researched book' Trevor Royle, Sunday Herald'A milestone in modern scholarship of the Middle East' Edward Said'Fascinating ... Shlaim presents compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history' Ethan Bronner, The New York Times Book ReviewAvi Shlaim is Professor of International Relations at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) and War and Peace in the Middle East (1995).Iron, Steam & Money: The Making of the Industrial Revolution
Par Roger Osborne. 2013
In late eighteenth-century Britain a handful of men brought about the greatest transformation in human history. Inventors, industrialists and entrepreneurs…
ushered in the age of powered machinery and the factory, and thereby changed the whole of human society, bringing into being new methods of social and economic organisation, new social classes, and new political forces. The Industrial Revolution also dramatically altered humanity's relation to the natural world and embedded the belief that change, not stasis, is the necessary backdrop for human existence.Iron, Steam and Money tells the thrilling story of those few decades, the moments of inspiration, the rivalries, skulduggery and death threats, and the tireless perseverance of the visionaries who made it all happen. Richard Arkwright, James Watt, Richard Trevithick and Josiah Wedgwood are among the giants whose achievements and tragedies fill these pages. In this authoritative study Roger Osborne also shows how and why the revolution happened, revealing pre-industrial Britain as a surprisingly affluent society, with wealth spread widely through the population, and with craft industries in every town, village and front parlour. The combination of disposable income, widespread demand for industrial goods, and a generation of time-served artisans created the unique conditions that propelled humanity into the modern world.The industrial revolution was arguably the most important episode in modern human history; Iron, Steam and Money reminds us of its central role, while showing the extraordinary excitement of those tumultuous decades.Irish: The Remarkable Saga of a Nation and a City
Par John Burrowes. 2003
Irish is the story of the mass migration from Ireland to Glasgow that took place in the wake of the…
Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century. It is an epic account of the coming together of a nation and a city. This is the tale of those who escaped a nightmare existence in the poorest and most deprived country in Europe and changed the city of Glasgow forever. Irish brings to life the horrot of those grim days and reveals the unimaginable suffering endured as a result of the Potatoe Blight. It describes in vivid detail the hazards and hardships faced by those fleeing Ireland in search of a better life overseas, including a startling account of one of the most deplorable maritime crimes ever committed, the voyage of the SS Londonderry. The coming of the Irish to Glasgow had a bigger impact on the city than other event. Now, for the first time, the truth about this most significant and stirring episode is vividly unfolded. It tells of the contribution made by Irish labourers in Glasgow to the Industrial Revolution; reveals that the legendary football clubs of Celtic and Rangers may never have existed were it not for the migrant's arrival; and describes the "Partick War", and the occasion of the first-ever Orange Walk.Ireland In The 20th Century
Par Tim Pat Coogan. 2003
Ireland's bestselling popular historian tells the story of contemporary Ireland - controversial, authoritative and highly readable. Tim Pat Coogan's biographies…
of Michael Collins and DeValera and his studies of the IRA, the Troubles and the Irish Diaspora have transformed our understanding of contemporary Ireland, and all have been massive bestsellers. Now he has produced a major history of Ireland in the twentieth century. Covering both South and North and dealing with cultural and social history as well as political, this enthralling work will become the definitive single-volume account of the making of modern Ireland.The Invention of Childhood
Par Hugh Cunningham. 2006
The Invention of Childhood will paint a vivid picture of the lives of children in Britain from pagan Anglo-Saxon times…
to the present day. Drawing heavily on primary sources, such as diaries, autobiographies, paintings, photographs and letters, the book will present a complete chronological history of the experience of children in Britain during the past 1500 years. We will learn the key elements that have shaped their lives down the ages and how this has differed as a result of gender, geography and ethnicity. The book will also relate children's lives to larger events in national and international history. Written by Hugh Cunningham the Professor of History at the Universtity of Kent at Canterbury, and an expert on childhood history - the book will accompany the Radio 4 series presented by the highly respected children's author Michael Morpurgo. Michael is contributing a lengthy foreword to the book. 'The Invention of Childhood' will expand on a number of key themes from the radio series, including the idea of childhood as a distinct stage of life. Opinions on when childhood should start and end, and how it differs from adulthood have changed considerably down the centuries. And these inventions and reinventions of childhood (hence the title) have had a profound effect on children's lives. The prolonged childhood we enjoy in Britain today was a luxury few could afford in the past. This fascinating study will draw attention to the ways in which we may find childhood and children in the past quite similar to the present and to ways in which childrens lives from the past seem to differ sharply from the lives children lead today.A History of Masculinity: From Patriarchy to Gender Justice
Par Ivan Jablonka. 2019
'Exhilarating . . . a work of scholarship, but also inspiration. . . Go and read Jablonka and change the…
world' Christina Patterson, Sunday Times'An unexpected bestseller in France. . . it has sparked conversations' ChallengesA highly acclaimed, bestselling work from one of France's preeminent historiansWhat does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend? In this insightful analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth century, Jablonka uncovers the origins of our patriarchal societies. He then offers an updated model of masculinity based on a theory of gender justice which aims for a redistribution of gender, just as social justice demands the redistribution of wealth. Arguing that it is high time for men to be as involved in gender justice as women, Jablonka shows that in order to build a more equal and respectful society, we must gain a deeper understanding of the structure of patriarchy - and reframe the conversation so that men define themselves by the rights of women. Widely acclaimed in France, this is an important work from a major thinker.