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Showing 44241 - 44260 of 44651 items
By A. J. Symons. 1955
'What had happened to the lost manuscripts, what train of chances took Rolfe to his death in Venice? The Quest…
continued'One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar, eccentric novel that he cannot forget and, captivated by this unknown masterpiece, determines to learn everything he can about its mysterious author. The object of his search is Frederick Rolfe, self-titled Baron Corvo - artist, rejected candidate for priesthood and author of serially autobiographical fictions - and its story is told in this 'experiment in biography': a beguiling portrait of an insoluble tangle of talents, frustrated ambitions and self-destruction.The Queen of Spades, one of his most popular and chilling short stories, tells of an inveterate card player who…
develops a dangerous obsession with the secret of an old lady's luck, which he believes will bring him the wealth he craves. The Negro of Peter the Great, a story based on the life Pushkin's own great-grandfather, is a vivid depiction - and criticism - of both French and Russian society, while Dubrovsky is the Byronic tale of a dispossessed young officer. The Captain's Daughter tells of a young man sent to military service - based on the actual events of the rebellion against Catherine II, it demonstrates Pushkin's unparalleled skill at blending fiction and history. Together these four stories display the versatility and innovation that earned Pushkin his reputation as a master of prose and established him as the towering figure in Russian literature.By William Fotheringham. 2007
Discover the story of Britain’s ultimate cyclist and his ill-fated race during the 1967 Tour de France, from the bestselling…
author of Half Man Half BikeTom Simpson was an Olympic medallist, world champion and the first Briton to wear the fabled yellow jersey of the Tour de France. He died a tragic early death during the 1967 Tour. A man of contradictions, Simpson was one of the first cyclists to admit to using banned drugs, and was accused of fixing races, yet the dapper 'Major Tom' inspired awe and affection for the obsessive will to win which was ultimately to cost him his life. Put Me Back on My Bike revisits the places and people associated with Simpson to produce the definitive story of Britain's greatest ever cyclist. The fully revised and updated edition of William Fotheringham's classic biography features a new foreword and postscript further exploring the truth behind the legend.‘The best cycling biography ever written' Velo ‘A beautiful explanation of why Simpson's legend still exerts such a powerful hold’ Sunday TimesBy Peter Stringer. 2015
The long-awaited autobiography of Ireland's most beloved rugby player: Peter StringerWhen Peter Stringer played youth rugby, he was so small…
that people told his parents he shouldn't be allowed on the pitch. Fortunately for Munster and for Ireland, they paid no attention. Over 200 provincial caps and 98 international caps later, Stringer is a legend.Since making his Munster debut in 1998, his lightning-quick passing, sniping breaks and brave defending have electrified fans - never more so than when he deceived the entire Biarritz team at a scrum to sneak in for the try that brought Munster its first Heineken Cup in 2006. In Ireland's breakthrough season of 2009, his man-of-the-match performance at Murrayfield helped overturn a late deficit en route to the Six Nations Grand Slam.Now, for the first time, Peter Stringer tells his own story - a story of overcoming the odds, and a story every Irish rugby fan will want to read.'What gives the publication its grit is the scrum-half's no-holds-barred descriptions of fallings-out with various coaches ... All revelatory stuff' Liam Heagney, Irish Daily MailBy Gareth Thomas. 2014
**WINNER British Sports Book Awards SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR****Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award**Gareth…
Thomas had it all. He was a national hero, a sporting icon. He was a leader of men, captain of Wales and the British Lions. To him, rugby was an expression of cultural identity, a sacred code. It was no mere ball game. It gave him everything, except the freedom to be himself.This is the story of a man with a secret that was slowly killing him. Something that might devastate not only his own life but the lives of his wife, family, friends and teammates. The only place where he could find any refuge from the pain and guilt of the lie he was living was on the pitch, playing the sport he loved. But all his success didn’t make the strain of hiding who he really was go away. His fear that telling the truth about his sexuality would lose him everything he loved almost sent him over the edge.The deceit ended when Gareth became the world’s most prominent athlete to come out as a gay man. His gesture has strengthened strangers, and given him a fresh perspective. Gareth’s inspiring and moving story transcends the world of sport to tell a universal truth about feeling like an outsider, and facing up to who you really are.By Jesse Byock. 2005
The Prose Edda is the most renowned of all works of Scandinavian literature and our most extensive source for Norse…
mythology. Written in Iceland a century after the close of the Viking Age, it tells ancient stories of the Norse creation epic and recounts the battles that follow as gods, giants, dwarves and elves struggle for survival. It also preserves the oral memory of heroes, warrior kings and queens. In clear prose interspersed with powerful verse, the Edda provides unparalleled insight into the gods' tragic realization that the future holds one final cataclysmic battle, Ragnarok, when the world will be destroyed. These tales from the pagan era have proved to be among the most influential of all myths and legends, inspiring modern works as diverse as Wagner's Ring Cycle and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.Aeschylus (525–456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the…
status of high art. In Prometheus Bound the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. The Suppliants tells the story of the fifty daughters of Danaus who must flee to escape enforced marriages, while Seven Against Thebes shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the cursed family of Oedipus. And The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with events from recent Athenian history, depicts the aftermath of the defeat of Persia in the battle of Salamis, with a sympathetic portrayal of its disgraced King Xerxes.Philip Vellacott’s evocative translation is accompanied by an introduction, with individual discussions of the plays, and their sources in history and mythology.By Leontia Flynn. 2011
Celebrated as an unusually original poet - nervy, refreshing, deceptively simple - Leontia Flynn has quickly developed into a writer…
of assured technical complexity and a startling acuity of perception. In her third collection, Flynn examines and dismantles a fugitive life. The first sequence moves through a series of rooms, reflecting on aspects of the author's personal and family history. Using the idea of the haunted house or the house with a sealed-off room, and Gothic tropes of madness, doubles, revenants and religious brooding, the poems consider ideas of inheritance and legacy. The second section comprises a magnificent long poem written in the months leading up to the banking crisis and presidential election of October 2008. Taking as its occasion a flat-clearing, it assumes a more public voice (inspired partly by Auden's 'Letter to Lord Byron'), and reflects on aspects of the rapid social and technological change of the last decade. An extraordinarily moving reflection on mutability and mortality prompted by the spring-cleaning of a life's detritus, 'Letter to Friends' evolves from a private reliquary to a public obsequy. Its collapse back into private griefs, including the poet's father's decline into Alzheimer's disease, is pursued in the third section of the book. Here the theme of a tallying of private and public balance sheets, of different kinds of profit and loss, widens to include poems of motherhood and marriage, the possibilities of hope and repair.By Myles Palmer. 2008
Idealistic, passionate and scientific, Arsène Wenger led the modernisation of English football.A star-maker who identifies and nurtures talent, he also…
opened the door for foreign coaches like Houllier, Eriksson, Ranieri and Mourinho. He is Arsenal's most successful and longest-serving manager and the only manager in FA Premier League history to go through an entire season without a loss. Now completely revised and updated to include Arsenal's triumphant campaign to the 2006 Champion's League final, Wenger's induction into the English Football Hall of Fame and all the highlights from the 2007/08 season,The Professor tracks the highs and lows of Wenger's decade at Arsenal, his teams, his methods, his successes and failures, and asks what the future holds for the man who reinvented the beautiful game.By Dr Dave Alred Mbe. 2016
''If you are struggling with exams, vivers, job interviews, work presentations, with performing in a team or individual sport -…
or find it difficult to interact in social situations - then this is for you' - Amazon reviewThe book on how to handle pressure from the performance coach to Francesco Molinari and Jonny WilkinsonWhether it's the stress of hitting a deadline at work, passing an exam or an upcoming job interview, pressure is everywhere.So how can we turn this into our advantage?Dr Dave Alred MBE is widely acknowledged as one of the best coaches on the planet. A pioneer in performance psychology, he nurtured Jonny Wilkinson into rugby's most feared kicker, and has helped Premiership footballers, number one golfers and England cricketers deliver on the biggest stage.He believes that dealing with pressure is a skill like any other and in this book he shares his eight ground-breaking principles, distilling his life's work into an accessible and practical book with examples from the world of business, sport and the classroom.From writing down personal affirmations to understanding how to use language more effectively, The Pressure Principle will help you become your best self and stay calm when the heat is on.'Dave Alred is a genius. There is simply no-one around to match him in his field' Jonny Wilkinson CBE'Dave Alred is the coach who helped Jonny Wilkinson keep his cool. We can all learn from him' Matthew Syed, author of bestselling Black Box ThinkingBy Martyn Smith. 2007
The Premiership in Focus celebrates 15 years that have changed the face of football. When Football Focus began life on…
BBC1 in 1968 as Football Preview, football in England was about old wooden terraces, grounds that were ankle deep in mud or covered in snow and a Bovril at half time. In 1992 came the Premier League and the sport changed forever. The Premier League was established as one of the most exciting, cosmopolitan and widely watched national sporting leagues in the world and fans are now able to watch hundreds of Premiership matches live as football has seemingly taken over much of national life. Why has this happened? How has it affected the clubs, fans, players and managers? How long can it be sustained? This book aims to examine these questions as well as celebrate 15 amazing years of football. It will look back at the great moments, outstanding matches, stunning goals, incredible saves, controversial decisions and the sheer excitement that has been the Premiership.By Sarah Maguire. 2007
Sarah Maguire's rich and lyrical poems have been highly praised for the ease with which they ground precise, sensual detail…
within the wider context of world events. In this remarkable new collection, her poems travel greater distances than ever before. The title poem laments the devastation visited upon Afghanistan following decades of war. Other poems consider the casualties of political unrest: would-be migrants in Tangiers gazing northwards at the longed-for phantasmagoria of 'Europe'; and packs of wolves on the loose in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. But there are intimate poems too, often using scientific vocabularies to offset a personal moment, as in 'Landscape, with Dead Sea' where the erosion of the poet's skin is connected to geological transformations at the earth's core.By Andrew Motion. 1936
When Edward Thomas died at Arras in 1917 few people thought of him as a poet. Yet in the two…
years before his death, after a lifetime writing prose, Thomas wrote some of the most enduring poems of his day: poems of war, nature, friendship, despair and exultation. Andrew Motion's pioneering study of Thomas' life and achievement is scholarly yet utterly absorbing, combining an account of his struggles as a writer with perceptive readings of individual poems.Andrew Motion's books include a biography, The Lamberts, George, Constant and Kil, and several prize-winning collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Love in a Life. He is currently writing the authorized biography of Philip Larkin.By Aristotle. 1996
One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of…
classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the Poetics introduced into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis ('purification'). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals. The Poetics has informed thinking about drama ever since.Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Malcolm HeathBy John Hartson. 2010
In July 2009, former Celtic and Wales soccer star John Hartson was diagnosed with testicular cancer, which had also spread…
to his lungs and brain. But before his treatment even began, John came to the brink of death after contracting pneumonia, ceasing to breathe and undergoing emergency brain surgery. Against all the odds, he pulled through, and in Please Don't Go he documents his incredible fight for life.Profoundly moving, John's own story is interwoven with the poignant recollections of his pregnant wife, Sarah, as well as with extracts from his sister Victoria's personal diary. This remarkable book covers the five-week period during which John's survival was most in jeopardy.John's truly inspirational account of how he has managed to overcome a very aggressive form of cancer will offer hope and courage to others affected by the disease. It is a touching and ultimately uplifting insight into the bravery of the popular football hero, who has fought back to full health in the face of adversity.By Anton Chekhov. 2002
At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by formulaic melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of…
drama that laid bare the everyday lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. Ivanov depicts a man stifled by inactivity and lost idealism, and The Seagull contrasts a young man's selfish romanticism with the stoicism of a woman cruelly abandoned by her lover. With 'the scenes from country life' of Uncle Vanya, his first fully mature play, Chekhov developed his own unique dramatic world, neither tragedy nor comedy. In Three Sisters the Prozorov sisters endlessly dream of going to Moscow to escape the monotony of provincial life, while his comedy The Cherry Orchard portrays characters futilely clinging to the past as their land is sold from underneath them.By Nasser Hussain. 2004
Nasser Hussain was acclaimed as England's best cricket captain since Mike Brearley. Under his leadership, a side more famous for…
its batting collapses and ability to seize defeat from the jaws of victory discovered its backbone. With coach Duncan Fletcher he put some steel into the side; they became a difficult team to beat.Hussain wore his heart on his sleeve: railing against complacency, defying critics of his place in the batting line-up and making a principled stand at the last World Cup when the ECB seemed incapable of it.Expect passion, integrity, insight and candour in his eagerly awaited autobiography.By David Tossell. 2003
A coach transported to the field in a hearse as he played dead. An English manager taken at gunpoint to…
an Argentinian jail after trying to sign that country's World Cup captain. The hero of 1966 who talked his team out of going on strike on the eve of a title decider. All are part of the British professionals' story of life in the North American Soccer League (NASL) in the 1970s and early '80s, when star turn and unsung journeyman alike had the chance to play alongside Pelé, Cruyff, Beckenbauer and Eusebio in the greatest galaxy of world stars ever assembled in one league. Playing for Uncle Sam recalls the British players and coaches who were part of an organisation that changed the face of football with its shoot-outs, offside rule and wacky marketing methods.It began with Stoke City and Wolverhampton Wanderers spending a bizarre summer posing as the Cleveland Stokers and Los Angeles Wolves in 1967. The late '70s saw the NASL, run by a former Welsh international, reach its peak, drawing crowds of 70,000 and featuring names like Banks, Moore, Hurst and Ball. Rodney Marsh pitched his tent in America by declaring famously that English football had become a grey game, while George Best used the NASL as an escape from the fishbowl of his life in Britain. Typically, the pair delighted and exasperated teammates and coaches in equal measure. Through approximately 60 interviews with members of the British contingent who accepted the offer of the Yankee dollar, Playing for Uncle Sam recalls one of the most fascinating episodes in football history: the remarkable rise and chaotic collapse of the NASL.By Tim Harris. 2009
It may be natural to play games, but the sports we love aren't natural at all. Each and every one…
of them has been invented, tweaked, pushed and pulled to come up with better rules, cleverer tactics and more effective techniques. There are no prizes for guessing who invented the Cruyff Turn or the Fosbury Flop - but who invented the header or the sliding tackle? The dive pass or the scrum? The lob or the smash? The sand wedge or the tee? The googly or the flipper?This book introduces 250 men, women and animals, each of whom has transformed at least one major sport. Famous or infamous, remembered or forgotten, god-like or god-awful, the game was never the same after them.In making his selection, Tim Harris, author of Sport, has drawn on years of passion, argument and research to produce a list that is at once personal and authoritative, provocative and challenging: the rogues, rulers and revolutionaries who shaped the games we play today.The St Andrews Old Course Starter's Box was sold in a controversial international auction on 10 September 2001, the day…
before the infamy of the Twin Towers attack. 'Play Away Please' recounts the glory of the little building in St Andrews, 'the home of golf', and tells the tale of those who used its services for 77 continuous years.Unlike many epics, the story does not centre on a rich dynasty or a heroic quest for the truth. Instead, it centres on the production of the perfect round of golf and the global marketing of the Box - one of the most celebrated buildings in the world of sport - as a brand and an icon. The book also chronicles the suspense and notoriety that greeted the Box after its voyage from Scotland to California, by way of the Panama Canal, and the role it assumed as an emotional balm for many in the aftermath of the 11 September atrocity.Alas, nothing is as simple as it seems and miracles are rare. The businessman who bought the Box was imprisoned before it reached Los Angeles, accused of stealing millions from the real-estate development that was to be its home. Eight years later, a happy ending was finally brought about, but only after a healthy dose of gut-wrenching fear and suspense became a part of the story.Supplemented with exclusive photographs, 'Play Away Please' is also a personal story of patronage and odyssey to assure the Box's preservation as the sporting world's consummate symbol of integrity and fair play. Along the way, the author brings to life the unforgettable local characters of Fife, celebrating their customs, lifestyle and unique command of the English language.