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Showing 27881 - 27900 of 28341 items
By David Gymer and David Ball. 2011
After more than four decades on the air, A Question of Sport is firmly established as the final word in…
sports trivia. Now, after countless arguments, sporting debates and lost hours spent directing the action from the sofa, you can finally test your own knowledge to see if you can succeed where so many sporting greats have failed.With over 3,500 brand new questions, A Question of Sport Quiz Book will challenge you to put your money where your mouth is and put your knowledge of the sports world to the ultimate test. Play on your own or in teams to answer questions covering all eras of football, golf, cricket, motor racing, boxing, rugby, darts, snooker, the Olympics and so much more.With questions from your favourite rounds from A Question of Sport, here at last is your chance to take on the captain's challenge, or go head-to-head on the quick-fire buzzer round. What will be your score when the final whistle blows?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 Dante. 2007
In Purgatorio Dante, having described his journey into Hell, narrates his ascent of Mount Purgatory with Virgil, as he encounters…
penitents who toil through physical agonies, starvation and flames to assuage their earthly vices. Only by learning from them can he achieve his final enlightened transition to the lost Earthly Paradise at the mountain’s summit, where he meets his dead love, Beatrice, and prepares to ascend to Heaven. Depicting a realm of intense sensation and physical experience, Dante’s poem transformed the traditional Christian idea of Purgatory by showing how the free will of the aspiring soul could change wordly perversions into perfection. It is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human possibility, hope and redemption.By 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 Quentin Blake. 1994
Ever eaten Poodle Strudel? Slain a Jabberwock? Bathed in Irish Stew? Quentin Blake is one of the best loved of…
children’s illustrators. In this brilliant book he has selected and illustrated his favourite comic verse, making it pure entertainment for nonsense-lovers of all ages. His unique style of drawing brings a new perspective to every poem. Classic writers such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear are combined with more contemporary talents such as Roger McGough, Margaret Mahy and Russell Hoban. With fifteen wonderfully absurd sections, including Distracting Creatures, Sticky Ends, I Wish I Were a Jelly Fish, A Recipe for Indigestion and Chortling and Galumphing, here is a delightful collection of the topsy-turvy, the fantastical, the anarchic, the illogical and the utterly wonderful.By 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 Kahlil Gibran. 1923
A hugely influential philosophical work of prose poetry, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is an inspirational, allegorical guide to living, and…
this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Robin Waterfield.First published in the 1920's, The Prophet is perhaps the most famous work of religious fiction of the twentieth century, and has sold millions of copies in more than twenty languages. Gibran's Prophet speaks of many things central to daily life: love, marriage, death, beauty, passion, eating, work and play. The spiritual message he imparts, of finding divinity through love, blends eastern mysticism, religious faith and philosophy with simple advice. The Prophet became the bible of 1960s culture and was credited with founding the New Age movement, yet it still continues to inspire people around the world today. This edition is illustrated with Gibran's famous visionary paintings.Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) was a poet, philosopher and artist, who stands among the most important Arabic language authors of the early twentieth century. Born in Lebanon, he spent the last twenty years of his life in the United States, where for many years he was the leader of a Lebansese writing circle in New York. He is the author of numerous volumes, including The Garden of the Prophet, The Storm, The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart, The Vision, Reflections on the Way of the Soul, and Spirit Brides. If you enjoyed The Prophet, you might like Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'His work goes on from generation to generation'Daily Mail'To read it was to transcend ordinary levels of perception, to become aware ... of a more intense level of being'IndependentBy 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 William Wordsworth. 2004
First published in July 1850, shortly after Wordsworth's death, The Prelude was the culmination of over fifty years of creative…
work. The great Romantic poem of human consciousness, it takes as its theme 'the growth of a poet's mind': leading the reader back to Wordsworth's formative moments of childhood and youth, and detailing his experiences as a radical undergraduate in France at the time of the Revolution. Initially inspired by Coleridge's exhortation that Wordsworth write a work upon the French Revolution, The Prelude has ultimately become one of the finest examples of poetic autobiography ever written; a fascinating examination of the self that also presents a comprehensive view of the poet's own creative vision.By Dinah Roe. 2010
The Pre-Raphaelite Movement began in 1848, and experienced its heyday in the 1860s and 1870s. Influenced by the then little-known…
Keats and Blake, as well as Wordsworth, Shelley and Coleridge, Pre-Raphaelite poetry 'etherialized sensation' (in the words of Antony Harrison), and popularized the notion ofl'art pour l'art - art for art's sake. Where Victorian realist novels explored the grit and grime of the Industrial Revolution, Pre-Raphaelite poems concentrated on more abstract themes of romantic love, artistic inspiration and sexuality. Later they attracted Aesthetes and Decadents like Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson, not to mention Gerard Manley Hopkins and W.B. Yeats.By Paul Durcan. 2012
Paul Durcan's twenty-second collection finds Monsieur le Poète on the road in Paris, New York City, Chicago, Brisbane, and Achill…
Island, meditating upon the sanctuary of home and what it means to feel truly at home. Regarded by many as the great poet of contemporary Ireland, Durcan is on top form here as he contemplates the fall of the Celtic Tiger, while railing against bankers and 'bonus boys'. There are poems of love lost and won, and poems in memory of friends and relatives who have passed on, but there is also joy to be found in the birth of a grandson, and there is praise, too, for the modest heroism of truckers, air traffic controllers and nurses, those 'slim, sturdy, buxom nourishers' of fallen mankind. If for Sartre 'hell is other people', for Durcan 'heaven is other people, especially women'.By Owen Sheers. 2009
Introduced and selected by the poet-presenter Owen Sheers, A Poet's Guide to Britain is a major poetry anthology that ties…
in with the BBC series of the same name.Owen Sheers passionately believes that poems, and particularly poems of place, not only affect us as individuals, but can have the power to mark and define a collective experience - our identities, our country, our land. He has chosen six powerful poems, all personal favourites, and all poems that have become part of the way we see our landscape. The anthology follows a similar format to the BBC series itself, while also offering paper chains of poems about the landscape and nature of Britain, transcripts of contemporary poet interviews, and a short introduction to each lead poem.By Sophie Hannah. 1990
The Poetry of Sex - a raucous, highly enjoyable anthology by acclaimed poet Sophie Hannah 'We've been at it all…
summer, from the Canadian border to the edge of Mexico . . .'It's hard to imagine a more fruitful subject for poets than sex, in all its glorious manifestations: from desire and hope, through disappointment and confusion, to conclusion and consequence. And little has changed over the centuries, as Sophie Hannah's anthology vividly demonstrates, from Catullus pleading with Lesbos to Walt Whitman singing the body electric. Moods and attitudes may vary but the drive persists as does the desire to write about it.Sophie Hannah's selection ranges from ancient Rome to modern New York, from gay to straight, but her principle has been to go low on the sugar and high on the excitement. It is essential reading for poetry lovers and romantics everywhere. Sophie Hannah has published five collections of poetry. Her fifth Pessimism for Beginners was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Award in 2007. Her Selected Poems is published by Penguin (revised edition, 2013). She is also the writer of bestselling psychological crime fiction, most recently The Carrier. Her novels have been translated into 24 languages. Born in Manchester, she now lives in Cambridge with her husband and children, and is a Fellow Commoner of Lucy Cavendish College.By Desmond Graham. 1981
Poetry of the Second World War brings to light a neglected chapter in world literature. In its chorus of haunting…
poetic voices, over a hundred of the most articulate minds of their generation record the true experience of the 1939-45 conflict, and its unending consequences. In keeping with its subject, it has an international scope, with poems from over twenty countries, including Japan, Australia, Europe, America and Russia; poems in which human responses echo each other across boundaries of culture and state. Auden, Brecht, Stevie Smith, Primo Levi, Zbigniew Herbert and Anna Akhmatova are set alongside the eloquence of unknown poets. The anthology has been arranged to bring out the chronological and cumulative human experience of the war: pre-war fears, air raids, the boredom, fear and camaraderie of military life; battle, occupation and resistance; surviving and the aftermath. Here at last, are the poems of the Holocaust, the Blitz, Hiroshima; of soldiers, refugees and disrupted lives. What emerges is a poetry capable of conveying the vast and terrible sweep of war.By Andrew Motion. 1969
Poetry by Heart - based on the hugely successful nationwide schools competition, 200 magical poems to learn by heart'The poems…
we learn stay with us for the rest of our lives. They become personal and invaluable, and what's more they are free gifts - there for the taking' Simon ArmitageTwo years ago former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion had the idea of setting up Poetry by Heart - a nationwide annual competition for secondary schools which asked contestants to learn two or three poems and be judged on their recitations, first at school level, then regional, then in a national final held at London's National Portrait Gallery. It's proved a huge success, with hundreds of schools participating in the first year, and numbers up by 20% in the second. Coinciding with the start of the third year of competition, and published on National Poetry Day whose theme coincidentally in 2014 is Recitation, this Poetry by Heart anthology brings together the pool of poems - 200 altogether - from which contestants make their choices. Specially picked by Motion and his three co-editors, these poems make up a treasure house - of almost-unknown poems and familiar poems from the mainstream; love poems and war poems; funny poems and heartbroken poems; poems that recreate the world we know and poems written on the dark side of the moon. And all chosen with a view to their being recited out loud.From William Wordsworth to Wilfred Owen, Emily Brontë to Elizabeth Bishop this wonderfully enjoyable anthology will be enjoyed by all ages and includes the best poets from the past to the present day. In a groundbreaking feature, the book includes QR codes which allow readers to use their mobile phones to listen to recordings of the poems - many of them specially recorded by the poets themselves. Sir Andrew Motion was Poet Laureate from 1999 till 2009, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, London. Jean Sprackland'sTilt won the Costa Poetry award in 2008. She is a Reader in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. Julie Blake is co-Founder and Director of The Full English, an organization based in Bristol which provides support to teachers of English Literature. Mike Dixon is an educational consultant specializing in English in the classroom.By Gerard Benson, Judith Chernaik and Cicely Herbert, Gerard Benson, Judith Chernaik, Cicely Herbert. 2012
This wonderful new edition of Poems on the Underground is published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Underground in…
2013. Here 230 poems old and new, romantic, comic and sublime explore such diverse topics as love, London, exile, families, dreams, war, music and the seasons, and feature poets from Sappho to Carol Ann Duffy and Wendy Cope, including Chaucer and Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and Shelley, Whitman and Dickinson, Yeats and Auden, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott and a host of younger poets. It includes a new foreword and over two dozen poems not included in previous anthologies.By Thomas Hardy. 2006
Thomas Hardy wrote some of the most moving and personal poems in his era and this collection brings together the…
best of his verse on life and love.Hardy's poems are by turn haunting, intense, songlike humerous and tender. From snatched lovers' meetings to the wreck of the Titanic from the death of a Dorest drummer boy in the Boer War to memories of his dead wife Emma, from ghosts, loss and longing to pleasure in landscape and weather, they tell the story of one of our best-loved writers, and the people and places that inspired him.By Robert Burns. 2008
The farmer’s boy from Ayrshire who went on to be the most acclaimed of all Scottish poets, celebrated around the…
world, Robert Burns is a greater and more varied artist than those that know him only through annual Burns’ Suppers and choruses of his ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at New Year could imagine. This new selection by Ian Rankin of verses and lyrics from Scotland’s national poet, the ‘Heaven-taught ploughman’, reveals a writer capable of evoking tremendous sympathetic power from his readers and with an easy, astonishing command of the sounds and rhythms of both standard English and the evocative Scots tongue. It also reveals an artist of incredible range. His ‘Tam O’ Shanter’, with its midnight pursuit of witches from a grisly graveyard dance, is gripping, fantastical and funny in equal measure, ‘Is there for honest poverty’ beautifully expresses the egalitarian spirit by which Burns became a political hero for so many, and sentiments both romantic (‘Ae Fond Kiss’) and bawdy (‘The Fornicator’) co-exist in this canny selection of the best of the Scottish Bard.