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Yes Sister, No Sister: My Life as a Trainee Nurse in 1950s Yorkshire
By Jennifer Craig. 2011
'What is your name?' she asks, staring at me.'Jennifer Ross.''Jennifer Ross, Sister. Well, Nurse Ross, you are dressed in the…
uniform of a nurse from the Leeds General Infirmary. Such a uniform is not worn with a cardigan. Take it off at once.''Yes Sister.' I can feel my face turn red.A trainee nurse in the 1950s had a lot to bear. In Jennifer Craig's enchanting memoir, we meet these warm-hearted yet naïve young girls as they get to grips with strict discipline, long hours and bodily fluids. But we also see the camaraderie that develops in evening study sessions, sneaked trips to the cinema and mischievous escapades with the young trainee doctors. The harsh conditions prove too much for some girls, but the opportunity to help her patients in their time of need is too much of a pull for Jenny. As she commits to her vocation and knuckles down to her exams, she is determined that when she reaches the heights of Ward Sister herself she will not become the frightening matron that struck fear into her student heart ...Rich in period detail, and told with a good dose of Yorkshire humour, Yes Sister, No Sister is a life-affirming true story of a life long past.Yeah, But Where Are You Really From?: A story of overcoming the odds
By Marguerite Penrose. 2022
'An engrossing, urgent, and entertaining read. I couldn't put it down' Roddy Doyle______Marguerite Penrose's is an extraordinary story of making…
a great life from complicated beginnings. Marguerite was born in a Dublin mother-and-baby home in 1974, the daughter of an Irish mother and a Zambian father. Severe scoliosis indicated a future of difficult medical procedures. She was a little girl who needed a break. And she got it at three when she was fostered - and later adopted - by a young couple, Mick and Noeline, and acquired a mam, dad, sister, Ciara, and loving extended family. Growing up, Marguerite's appearance was occasionally remarked on by strangers, but it wasn't until her teens that she understood that her skin colour was a provocation for some. The progressive city that she knew was revealed to have an unpleasant undercurrent. So, she became an expert in shaping her life around anything that marked her out as 'different'.Marguerite's story is one of facing some big questions - Who am I? How do I live in world made for people with bodies different to mine? Why does anyone care about my skin colour? - with intelligence, humour, courage and common-sense. She writes about coming to terms with the circumstances of her birth and, like so many in her position, looking for answers. About navigating the world as an active woman with a disability. About what it means to be both Irish and Black, particularly at a moment when the conversation is becoming mainstream in Ireland and she is thinking about it in new ways herself. Mostly, she writes about embracing life in a spirit of openness and positivity.Yeah, But Where Are You Really From? is a captivating, wise and inspiring memoir by a truly remarkable woman.___________'Beautiful, moving, tender and informative' SINÉAD MORIARTY'Wonderful' MIRIAM O'CALLAGHANIf there's one thing that everyone has an opinion about it's how to bring up a child - especially your…
child. Kate Konopicky found herself an embattled mother, knowing that however hard she worked everything was wrong. If she went back to full-time employment she was neglecting her child. If she stayed at home the child would be clingy and shy. So, she became a combination of teacher, nurse, nutritionist, psychologist, entertainer and mind reader. She didn't get weekends off and never phoned in sick when she wanted a lie-in. The boss was illogical, demanding, incapable of undertaking the simplest task. Yes, we've all had jobs like that but at least we got paid for them. Kate Konopicky is an anarchic voice in the face of regimented parenting books. With brilliant humour, she'll make you believe you're not a failure when your fairy cakes don't rise, and you'll slowly come to realise that you may not be perfect but that you are doing your best.'A wildly irreverent look at the parenting game. This riotous look back over her first five years of motherhood will come as a relief to imperfect parents everywhere - in other words, to all parents.' You MagazineThe Wilderness Family
By Kobie Kruger. 2001
When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of…
the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom. Yet, for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years spent in this spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical - and occasionally the most hair-raising - of their lives.Kobie recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences in this vast reserve - a place where, bathed in golden sunlight, hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River, storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats hung in the sausage trees.But as the Krugers settled in, they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. They soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected: the sneaky hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots, the sinister-looking pythons that slithered into the house, and the usually placid elephants who grew foul-tempered in the violent heat of the summer. And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him.Yet nothing prepared the Krugers for their greatest adventure of all, the raising of an orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him, was only a few days old and on the verge of death. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious and adored member of the fmaily. It is the rearing of this young king, and the hilarious endeavours to teach him to become a 'real' lion who could survive with his own kind in the wild, that lie at the heart of this endearing memoir. It is a memoir of a magical place and time that can never be recaptured.Whispering Back: Tales From A Stable in the English Countryside
By Adam Goodfellow, Nicole Golding. 2003
Adam Goodfellow and Nicole Golding run a stable in the Cotswolds and specialise in curing problem horses. It's never an…
easy task, and often requires changing the habits of the owner as much as the horse. The pair have travelled a long way to get where they are today - but they've been united by a common passion. After a chance meeting with Monty Roberts, they gave up everything to live out their dreams and show that it's possible for ordinary people to become 'horse whisperers'. Their world is extraordinary, particularly through their unusual methods of teaching, and as you meet the cast of characters, both animals and humans, that surround them, you'll find it impossible not to be won over by their life.Where Have I Gone?
By Pauline Quirke. 2012
Pauline Quirke was a skinny child, a slim teenager, a curvy woman, then - according to her bathroom scales (curse…
them) - just plain fat. Yes, the 'F' word. Tipping the scales at nearly 20 stone, with creaking knees and a dodgy ankle to boot, at the beginning of 2011 Pauline had reached a crisis point. Something had to change, and fast. It was never going to be an easy ride, but with her trademark warmth and sense of humour, Pauline recounts the highs and lows of the rollercoaster year in which she whips herself, and her life, into shape - with a fair few tales from her celebrated forty-year acting career thrown into the bargain. She reveals all: from the strain of working long hours away from home on one of Britain's most popular soaps to renewing her wedding vows and reuniting with her Birds of a Feather co-stars; from battling the bulge and facing the naysayers to rediscovering the joys of airline travel . . . without a seatbelt extension.Honest and revealing, Where Have I Gone? is brimming with brilliantly funny anecdotes and truly moving moments. So put your feet up and join Pauline as she embarks on the most incredible year of her life.The Villain: The Life of Don Whillans
By Jim Perrin. 2005
Don Whillans has an iconic significance for generations of climbers. His epoch-making first ascent of Annapurna's South Face, achieved with…
Dougal Haston in 1970, remains one of the most impressive climbs ever made - but behind this and all his other formidable achievements lies a tough, recalcitrant reality: the character of the man himself.Whillans carried within himself a sense of personal invincibility, forceful, direct and uncompromising. It gave him sporting superstar status - the flawed heroism of a Best, a McEnroe, an Ali. In his own circle, his image was the working-class hero on the rock-face, laconic and bellicose, ready to go to war with the elements or with any human who crossed his path on a bad day.The Virgin Banker
By Jayne-Anne Gadhia. 2017
Jayne-Anne Gadhia, the straight-talking CEO of Virgin Money, looks back at the events that have influenced, shaped and inspired her…
to become one of the most powerful women in banking.With anecdotes from her life before becoming a banker, including beating the bullies and experiencing racism as part of a mixed race marriage, through to building a business from scratch, working at RBS under Fred Goodwin just before the financial crash, and steering Virgin Money to become a listed business, breaking boundaries along the way, professionally and personally.Jayne-Anne shines a light on issues surrounding the role of women in banking and the alpha-male dinosaurs that dominate the industry. She draws on the relationships and deals that have shaped her career so far, including her personal experience with mental health issues, which has helped her attitude and approach to both her business and personal life. This is not a conventional biography, nor a ‘how to do it’ business book. It is a candid, fresh and fascinating insight into being a woman in business, the financial crisis and the way in which business can be conducted as a force for good.Whatever Happened to Margo?
By Margaret Durrell. 1995
In 1947, returning to the UK with two young children to support, Margaret Durrell starts a boarding house in Bournemouth.…
But any hopes of respectability are dashed as the tenants reveal themselves to be a host of eccentrics: from a painter of nudes to a pair of glamorous young nurses whose late-night shifts combined with an ever-revolving roster of gentleman callers leading to a neighbourhood rumour that Margo is running a brothel. Margo's own two sons, Gerry and Nicholas, prove to be every bit as mischievous as their famous Uncle Gerald - and he himself returns periodically with weird and wonderful animals, from marmosets to monkeys, that are quite unsuitable for life in a Bournemouth garden.The Voice Of Silence: A Life of Love, Healing and Inspiration
By Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo. 2002
The Voice of Silence is by an Irishwoman who has had an extraordinary life. Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo was brought up in…
1930s rural Ireland where her father initiated her into the healing arts. At the age of 16, she entered a convent where she trained as a nurse, and was sent to India to look after the elderly (and knew Mother Teresa). Here, she felt it was the young, rather than the old, who needed more help and so she left her order and trained in midwifery. Later, in Paris, she was asked to nurse the Duke of Windsor just before he died - and many years later was introduced to Princess Diana and became her weekly confidante. In between, were bouts of serious illness, studying acupuncture in China - and being photographed by Snowdon. The Voice of Silence is the life story of a very unusual woman who has learned far more than most from all the remarkable things that have happened to her. It is also the author's thoughts on healing, spirituality and love - and how closely the three are intertwined. Full of feeling, poetic vision and insight, this book cannot fail to touch the heart of the reader, and inspire.The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen
By Wilfred Owen. 2018
'Orpheus, the pagan saint of poets, went through hell and came back singing. In twentieth-century mythology, the singer wears a…
steel helmet and makes his descent "down some profound dull tunnel" in the stinking mud of the Western Front. For most readers of English poetry, the face under that helmet is that of Wilfred Owen.' Professor Jon Stallworthy, from his Introduction.When Wilfred Owen was killed in the days before the Armistice in 1918, he left behind a shattering, truthful and indelible record of a soldier's experience of the First World War. His greatest war poetry has been collected, edited and introduced here by Professor Jon Stallworthy. This special edition is published to commemorate the end of the hellish war that Owen, though the hard-won truth and terrible beauty of his poetry, has taught us never to forget.A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture
By Samuel Hynes. 1990
Between the opulent Edwardian years and the 1920s the First World War opens like a gap in time. England after…
the war was a different place; the arts were different; history was different; sex, society, class were all different.Samuel Hynes examines the process of that transformation. He explores a vast cultural mosaic comprising novels and poetry, music and theatre, journalism, paintings, films, parliamentary debates, public monuments, sartorial fashions, personal diaries and letters.Told in rich detail, this penetrating account shatters much of the received wisdom about the First World War. It shows how English culture adapted itself to the needs of killing, how our stereotypes of the war gradually took shape and how the nations thought and imagination were profoundly and irretrievably changed.A Volunteer Nurse on the Western Front: Memoirs from a WWI camp hospital
By Olive Dent. 2014
Starring Oona Chaplin as a V.A.D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment), and Suranne Jones and Hermione Norris as trained nurses, The Crimson…
Field is a gripping drama set in a tented hospital on the coast of France, where plucky real-life V.A.D. Olive Dent served two years of the Great War, and kept this extraordinarily vivid diary of day-to-day life – ever cheerful through the bitter cold, the chilblains, hunger and exhaustion. Resilient, courageous and resourceful, nurses, doctors and patients alike do their best to support each other. A Christmas fancy-dress ball, a concert performed by a stoic orchestra covered in bandages, church services held in a marquee and letters from Blighty all keep spirits up in camp, as wounded soldiers suffer terribly with quiet dignity on the makeshift wards, and nurses rush round tirelessly to make them as comfortable as possible.With original illustrations throughout by fellow V.A.D.s, Olive’s memoir is a fascinating period piece, a rare first-hand account of this little-known story, which will resonate very strongly with viewers of The Crimson Field.Inside this book, you'll find stories of 50 extraordinary people such as:Evel Knievel, who jumped his motorcycle over 14 Greyhound…
busesThe Iceman, the most well-preserved human, found in the ice after 5,300 yearsSam Patch, who jumped Niagara Falls for $75Helen Thayer, who walked to the North Pole aloneRoy Sullivan, who was struck by lightning 7 timesThese intriguing facts and hundreds more await curious readers, amateur historians, and anyone who aspires to the altogether extraordinary!Dissent In America: Voices That Shaped A Nation
By Ralph F. Young. 2009
This collection of primary sources presents the story of US History as told by dissenters who, throughout the course of…
American history, have fought to gain rights they believed were denied to them or others, or who disagree with the government or majority opinion. Each document is introduced by placing it in its historical context, and thought-provoking questions are provided to focus the student when s/he reads the text. Instructors are at liberty to choose the documents that best highlight a theme they wish to emphasize.The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer
By Alexander Shannon, David Leslie. 2011
Alexander Shannon escaped a shady past to enjoy a glittering career in the army, only to end up back in…
the thick of criminal activity.Shannon's time as a soldier saw him posted to the Falklands, Northern Ireland and war-torn Bosnia. The rigours of army life took their toll and he found himself drawn into a series of ruthless gang wars. He used the skills he'd learned in the forces to hide weapons, work for drugs racketeers and plot a massacre, and he was offered a fortune to work as a Mafia-style contract assassin.He was questioned over brutal killings and accused of a triple murder attempt, yet his dedication and determination to succeed in the army brought him accolades and a series of promotions. In The Underworld Captain, Shannon explains how he managed to combine a successful army career with dangerous gangland dealings for so long and how he finally broke free for good.Under Two Dictators: With an introduction by Nikolaus Wachsmann
By Margarete Buber-Neumann. 2008
This book is a unique account by a survivor of both the Soviet and Nazi concentration camps: its author, Margarete…
Buber-Neumann, was a loyal member of the German Communist party. From 1935 she and her second husband, Heinz Neumann, were political refugees in Moscow. In April 1937 Neumann was arrested by the secret police, and executed by the end of the year. She herself was arrested in 1938. In Under Two Dictators Buber-Neumann describes the two years of suffering she endured in the Soviet prisons and in the huge Central-Asian concentration and slave labour camp of Karaganda; her extradition to the Gestapo in 1940 at the time of the Stalin-Hitler Friendship Pact; and her five years of suffering in the Nazi concentration and death camp for women, Ravensbrück. Her story displays extraordinary powers of observation and of memory as she describes her own fate, as well as those of hundreds of fellow prisoners. She explores the behaviour of the guards, supervisors, police and secret police and compares and contrasts Stalin and Hitler's methods of dictatorship and terror. First published in Swedish, German and English and subsequently translated and published in a further nine languages, Under Two Dictators is harrowing in its depiction of life under the rule of two of the most brutal regimes the western world has ever seen but also an inspiring story of survival, of ideology and of strength and a clarion call for the protection of democracy.Under a Mackerel Sky
By Rick Stein. 2013
‘All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why’Rick Stein's childhood…
in 1950s rural Oxfordshire and North Cornwall was idyllic. His parents were charming and gregarious, their five children much-loved and given freedom typical of the time. As he grew older, the holidays were filled with loud and lively parties in his parents' Cornish barn. But ever-present was the unpredicatible mood of his bipolar father, with Rick frequently the focus of his anger and sadness.When Rick was 18 his father killed himself. Emotionally adrift, Rick left for Australia, carrying a suitcase stamped with his father's initials. Manual labour in the outback followed by adventures in America and Mexico toughened up the naive public schoolboy, but at heart he was still lost and unsure what to do with his life.Eventually, Cornwall called him home. From the entrepreneurial days of his mobile disco, the Purple Tiger, to his first, unlikely unlikely nightclub where much of the time was spent breaking up drink-fuelled fights, Rick charts his personal journey in a way that is both wry and perceptive; engaging and witty.Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 2013The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club
By Marlena De Blasi. 2015
'If you loved Under the Tuscan Sun, you’ll love this' Red Magazine Every week on a Thursday evening, a group…
of four rural Italian women gather in an old stone house in the hills above Italy’s Orvieto. There – along with their friend, Marlena – they cook together, sit down to a beautiful supper, drink their beloved local wines, and talk. Surrounded by candle light, good food and friendship, the four women tell Marlena their evocative life stories, and of cherished ingredients and recipes whose secrets have been passed down through generations.Typhoon
By Mike Sutton. 2021
The thrilling account of the Typhoon FGR4s in the war against ISIS, from the RAF Wing Commander who led them…
into combat'Adrenaline-fuelled. A rare insight into the high-pressure, high-stakes world of an RAF fighter squadron at war' JOHN NICHOL________'Dragon, we've got reports of a mortar firing team to the west of Mosul. We need you to redeploy now . . .'Mike Sutton commanded the RAF's top Typhoon squadron across Iraq and Syria in the war against ISIS. Flying a Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4, the most advanced multi-role combat aircraft in the world, across treacherous skies, he was dodging ground fire, anti-aircraft artillery, and surface-to-air missiles.Split-second decisions and actions made the difference between life and death in the air - and on the ground . . .Typhoon tells the dramatic story of an air-combat squadron in action, putting you in the cockpit, hands gripping the controls, the sounds of battle crackling in your ears.Buckle up!________'A fabulous insight into the mind of an accomplished fighter pilot and leader as he takes on the biggest challenge of his career' FLYER'Gripping, nerve-shredding, captivating, visceral, fascinating' DAILY MAIL