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Human Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The South Asian Experience
By M. Ehteshamul Bari, Uday Shankar. 2024
This book sheds light on the fact that the proclamation of an emergency can be a legitimate constitutional method to take…
prompt preventative measures in protecting the interests of the society in times of grave crises. However, the exercise of emergency powers should not undermine a nation’s commitment to democratic values, such as maintaining the rule of law and upholding fundamental human rights. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed grave threats to the lives and health of individuals. However, since the constitutions of South Asian nations do not permit the proclamation of an emergency on health grounds, executives of these nations were constrained to rely, among other things, on ordinary legislation to tide over the threats posed by the pandemic. Although these statutes entrust the executive with extensive emergency powers, they do not simultaneously stipulate any safeguards subjecting the exercise of such powers to a reliable system of checks and balances. Accordingly, this book critically examines the exercise of emergency powers in the South Asian nations to tide over threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a profoundly adverse impact on the human rights of individuals. Such exercise of powers was consistent with the general tendency demonstrated by succeeding generations of the executives in these nations to use emergency situations as the convenient means for imposing long-lasting limitations on the rights of individuals. Consequently, this book identifies the flaws, deficiencies, and lacunae of the legal framework in these nations, which permit the executive to assume unfettered power in the exercise of emergency measures at the expense of the liberty of individuals. Consequently, based on these findings, recommendations will be put forward for initiating reforms in these nations aimed at ensuring the maintenance of a delicate balance between the necessity to respond tograve threats and to simultaneously prevent undue intrusion on the fundamental human rights of individuals.Sontag: Her Life and Work
By Benjamin Moser. 2019
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEFinalist for the Lambda Literary AwardFinalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyNamed one of…
the Best Books of the Year by: O Magazine, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Seattle TimesThe definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private faceNo writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own. Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—and featuring nearly one hundred images—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.Honor Thy Father
By Gay Talese. 2009
A classic masterwork newly updatedThe electrifying true story of the rise and fall of New York's notorious Bonanno crime familyOn…
New York's Park Avenue on a rainy Tuesday night in October 1964, the famous Mafia chieftain Joseph Bonanno was kidnapped by two mobsters and reported by the police as dead on the following morning. More than a year later, Bonanno mysteriously reappeared, setting off a bloody mob feud that came to be known as the “Banana War.”In this monumental work—packed with intimate details and brilliant reporting—bestselling author Gay Talese first brought to the American consciousness a world and a life previously known to only a few. No other book has done more to acquaint readers with the secrets, structure, wars, power plays, family lives, and fascinating, frightening personalities of the Mafia.Yet Being Someone Other
By Sir Laurens Van Der Post. 1982
Yet Being Someone Other is the most revealing book that Laurens van der Post wrote about his extraordinary and eventful…
life, and the most far-reaching; it is a distillation of the experiences that have moved him at the deepest level of the imagination and made him the exceptional person and writer he was.Written in Blood
By Mike Silverman, Tony Thompson. 2014
As one of the UK’s leading forensic scientists, Mike Silverman has helped to identify and convict dozens of murderers, rapists,…
armed robbers, burglars and muggers, thanks to the evidence they – or their victims – unwittingly left behind at the scenes of their crimes. Mike Silverman started his career in the days when fingerprints were still kept on card files and DNA profiling was just a pipe dream, so Written in Blood is more than just a casebook – it is also a definitive history of the development of forensic science over the course of the past thirty-five years.From collecting blood samples at gangland executions to investigating forensic science failings, including in the murders of Rachel Nickell and Damilola Taylor, Mike Silverman’s unique career provides a fascinating insight into the ways forensic science is used to help solve real-life crimes. Packed with genuine crime scene photographs and original sketches, Written in Blood is the ultimate insider’s account of the fascinating world of forensic science.The Wolf Pit
By Will Cohu. 2012
In 1966 Will Cohu's grandparents moved to Bramble Carr, a remote cottage on the Yorkshire moors. The summers and winters…
he spent there were full of freedom and light; only after childhood ended was he aware of the price the adults had paid for life in this most romantic of settings.Navigating family tensions and the trials of growing up, Will describes the close-knit community of North Yorkshire and his family's place within it: the shepherd probing the head-high snowdrifts for his flock; the pub landlord obsessed with military uniforms; the village doctor lost in his love for the purple moorland; Will's glamorous RAF parents; and, at the centre of the story, his beloved but enigmatic grandparents.The Wolf Pit is an enquiring love letter from Will Cohu to his family, and to a changing rural England that is passionate, frightening and funny.Witness (later issued as Evil Relations): The Story of David Smith, Chief Prosecution Witness in the Moors Murders Case
By David Smith, Carol Ann Lee. 2011
Despite standing as chief prosecution witness in the Moors Murders trial, David Smith was vilified by the public due to…
the accusations thrown at him by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady about his involvement in their crimes. Hindley's later confession that she and Brady had lied in an attempt to reduce their sentences did little to diminish the slurs against his name. For almost 45 years, Smith was asked by writers and film-makers to tell his story. Apart from a handful of brief interviews, he always refused. Carol Ann Lee met Smith during her research for One of Your Own, her critically acclaimed biography of Hindley, following which he finally agreed to reveal all. In Witness, interviews, archival research and, most significantly, David Smith's own vivid memoir are fused to create an unforgettable, often harrowing account of his life before, during and after the Moors Murders.Wilfred Owen
By Jon Stallworthy. 1959
Of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen most fires the imagination today – this is the…
comprehensive literary biography of the greatest WW1 poetWilfred Owen tragically died in battle just a few days before the Armistice. Now, during the centenary year of his death, this biography honours Owen’s brief yet remarkable life, and the enduring legacy he left. Stallworthy covers his life from the childhood spent in the backstreets of Shrewsbury to the appalling final months in the trenches. More than a simple account of his life, it is also a poet's enquiry into the workings of a poet's mind. This revised edition contains the beautiful illustrations of the original edition, including the drawings by Owen and facsimile manuscripts of his greatest poems, as well as a new preface by the author.‘One of the finest biographies of our time.’ Graham Greene‘An outstanding book, a worthy memorial to its subject.’ Kingsley Amis ‘As lovingly detailed as the records of Owen's short life permit, but it is always fascinatingly readable, in fact engrossing.’ Sunday TelegraphWild Thing: The True Story of Britain's Rightful Guv'nor
By Bernard O'Mahoney, Lew Yates. 2007
Everybody in the unlicensed fight game knows that only one man has the honour of being titled 'Guv'nor' - and…
that man is Lew 'Wild Thing' Yates. Yates began boxing at the age of six, and as an adult he was ruthless in pursuit of his dream of becoming world heavyweight champion. But when his licence was revoked following an assault on a referee, he turned to unlicensed boxing.By day, Yates pounded punchbags and the streets in an effort to reach the peak of physical fitness as he prepared for his epic battle with Roy 'Pretty Boy' Shaw. At night, he pounded gangsters and drug dealers foolish enough to take him on in the nightclubs where he worked.Wild Thing documents how Yates rose to the top of his bloody profession. When it comes to his fighting ability, he doesn't need to boast, brag or exaggerate. With Lew Yates, what you see is what you hope you're never going to get. This is his remarkable story.Vedi: Continents of Exile: 3 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 1981
Book 3 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.Ved continues the story of Ved Mehta's two earlier memoirs, Daddyji, a biographical portrait of his father, and Mamaji, an exploration of his mother and her history. The focus here turns toward Mehta's childhood, his education in an Indian orphanage for the blind, and the general experience of blind people in India.Wannabe in my Gang?: From the Krays to the Essex Boys
By Bernard O'Mahoney. 2004
Kray gang boss Tony Lambrianou, who served a life sentence for the brutal murder of Jack 'the Hat' McVitie, has…
threatened to kill Bernard O'Mahoney 'by smashing a hammer through his head'. 'Dodgy' Dave Courtney, who claims to have murdered two gangland rivals, tried 'to put him out of his misery' and 'the most dangerous man in the country', John 'Gaffer' Rollinson, has vowed to kill him 'when he finds him'.But O'Mahoney, one-time friend of the notorious Kray Brothers and former key member of the Essex Boys gang, isn't concerned about any of these threats, because he knows the truth about the wannabe gangsters who have built their 'reputations' on fantasy gleaned from Hollywood movies and 'true' crime books written by their heroes. Wannabe in my Gang? is a story that spans two decades and involves some of the most infamous names and crimes in British history. It gives a unique insight into the Kray brothers' firm, revealing that its public image is far from the truth. Also uncovered is what happened to the remaining members of the Essex Boys firm following the death of Esctasy victim Leah Betts and the murder of three of its leaders, who were found dead in their blood-spattered Range Rover one winter's evening. For the first time ever, O'Mahoney will expose the gangland myths that have made legends of those who claim to be responsible for mayhem and murder. He reveals the sordid secret of one of Britain's most infamous gangsters and tells the truth about the imposters who make a living selling stories and writing books about events that have never even happened. Wannabe in my Gang? is the book that many in the underworld never wanted the public to read. A crime exposé of the highest order, it is shocking, revelatory and gripping from beginning to end.Up at Oxford: Continents of Exile: 7 (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ved Mehta. 1993
Book 2 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one…
of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta.After studying in the United States, Mehta - blind since childhood - achieves his dream of enrolling at the University of Oxford: a place that has consumed his imagination ever since he was a small boy growing up under the British Raj. In Up at Oxford, Mehta recalls the nuances of his conversations, the range of his youthful emotions, and the sounds, smells, and tastes of university life. Along the way he draws memorable portraits of, among others, novelists, poets, scholars, and peers.Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time
By A S Byatt. 1970
Unruly Times is a superlative portrait of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, and a fascinating exploration of the Romantic…
Movement and the dramatic events that shaped it. With a novelist's insight and eye for detail, A. S. Byatt brings alive this tumultuous period and shows a deep understanding of the effects upon the minds of Wordsworth, Coleridge and their contemporaries - de Quincey, Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron and Keats.Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey - The instant Sunday Times bestseller
By Her Honour Wendy Joseph. 2022
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 2023'Wendy Joseph's gripping account of the law at…
work reads like a cliffhanger.' Sunday Times'Absolutely superb. 5 stars for sheer readability alone. Her Honour entertains as she educates us about murder, about the law and about how we human beings are shaped as we create the culture we live with.' PHILIPPA PERRY, author of THE BOOK YOU WISH YOUR PARENTS HAD READ___________________________________________________________________________________'Every day in the UK lives are suddenly, brutally, wickedly taken away. Victims are shot or stabbed. Less often they are strangled or suffocated or beaten to death. Rarely they are poisoned, pushed off high buildings, drowned or set alight. Then there are the many who are killed by dangerous drivers, or corporate gross negligence. There are a lot of ways you can kill someone. I know because I've seen most of them at close quarters.'High-profile murder cases all too often grab our attention in dramatic media headlines - for every unlawful death tells a story. But, unlike most of us, a judge doesn't get to turn the page and move on. Nor does the defendant, or the family of the victim, nor the many other people who populate the court room.And yet, each of us has a vested interest in what happens there. And while most people have only the sketchiest idea of what happens inside a Crown Court, any one of us could end up in the witness-box or even in the dock.With breath-taking skill and deep compassion, the author describes how cases unfold and illustrates exactly what it's like to be a murder trial judge and a witness to human good and bad. Sometimes very bad.The fracture lines that run through our society are becoming harder and harder to ignore. From a unique vantage point, the author warns that we do so at our peril._____________________________________________________________________________________________'The most exceptional book I have read in a long time.' CLARE MACKINTOSH'A very rare gem. written with authority, humility and compassion. Compellingly clever and sharply honest.' PROFESSOR DAME SUE BLACK, author of ALL THAT REMAINS'Riveting, thought-provoking, and very, very entertaining. I loved it.' RODDY DOYLE'Will make you question all the fundamentals that you've come to take for granted about offenders, the crimes that they commit - especially murder - and the punishment they deserve. A page turner that will leave you wanting to know more.' EMERITUS PROFESSOR DAVID WILSON, author of MY LIFE WITH MURDERERSThe instant Sunday Times bestseller, March 2023The 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.Undercover
By Joe Carter. 2016
A compelling true story of the reality of undercover police workFor over 20 years, Joe Carter has worked for the…
police as an undercover cop. Travelling the globe on different passports, fraternising with thieves and international drugs and arms dealers, working alongside dangerous criminals, Carter always knew his life would come crashing down around him at any point. His story is a gripping account of the secret, solitary work of an undercover officer and the many ‘sticky’ situations he found himself in, as well as the moving confession of the difficulty in reconciling his two identities with his family life.This book explores the resilience needed to lead a double life, the thrilling challenge of working with the biggest criminals in Britain, and maintaining a sense of justice through the many adventures he encounters.Tynan Letters
By Kathleen Tynan. 1994
The Letters of Kenneth Tynan- drama critic, talent snob, intellectual dandy, inveterate campaigner - provide a record of a soul:…
written between the ages of 11 and 53, they not only chart the extraordinary parabola of his career but show the constancy of his quest for grace, style and effortless wit.True Storey: My Life and Crimes as a Football Hatchet Man
By Peter Storey. 2010
True Storey is the compelling autobiography of notorious 1970s football legend Peter Storey, dubbed 'the bastard's bastard', who gained a…
reputation for ultra-violence on the pitch and had a capacity to find even greater trouble off it - a fact borne out by a string of criminal convictions and several jail sentences. A key member, as their midfield enforcer, of the resilient Arsenal team that won the European Fairs Cup followed by the cherished Double in 1970-71, Storey was a confirmed ladies' man who loved a drink. In the mid-'70s, Storey's pub, the Jolly Farmers in Islington, became a magnet for north London villains and he rubbed shoulders with Great Train Robber Tommy Wisbey and Howard 'Mr Nice' Marks, Britain's biggest drug smuggler. Storey talks candidly about the crimes he committed and the spells in prison that blighted his life. He reveals the truth about his feud with George Best and relays an astonishing account of how Bertie Mee tried to make him miss the 1971 FA Cup final against Bill Shankly's Liverpool side because the Arsenal manager wanted Eddie Kelly to start instead. Today, Peter is an elusive character but a man transformed and at ease with life. Only now does he feel the circumstances are right to set the record straight and tell his side of a remarkable True Storey.Trouble in Mind: An Autobiography
By Bernard O'Mahoney. 2011
Trouble in Mind is bernard o'mahoney's unblinkingly honest account of his eventful life so far.Growing up in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, O'Mahoney…
regularly bore the brunt of his father's psychotic violence. After a spell in the army, he served two prison sentences for wounding, before moving to Basildon and forming the Essex Boys firm, one of the most successful and violent criminal gangs in British history.When O'Mahoney quit the firm, he received death threats from his partners, who were murdered less than a fortnight later. He was arrested in the aftermath of the triple murder but was never charged.As he began to distance himself from his shady past, tragedy struck when his young wife died suddenly and, grieving, he spiralled out of control and ended up serving another spell in prison.The Essex Boys firm has been the subject of three films and numerous books, but the gang's infamous activities are only one remarkable aspect of O'Mahoney's extraordinary life story, which he candidly recounts in this gripping memoir.Trollope (The complete Novels Of Anthony Trollope Ser.)
By Victoria Glendinning. 1995
Victoria Glendinning provides a woman's view of Anthony Trollope, placing emphasis on family, particularly on his relationship with his mother.…
But it is Anthony as a husband and lover that intrigues her most. She looks at the nature of his love for his wife, Rose and at his love for Kate Field.