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The See-Through House: My Father in Full Colour
By Shelley Klein. 2020
'A charming account of a daughter, a house and a fastidious dad' Sunday TimesShelley Klein grew up in the Scottish…
Borders, in a house designed on a modernist open-plan grid. With colourful glass panels set against a forest of trees, it was like living in a work of art. Her father, Bernat Klein, was a textile designer whose pioneering colours and textures were a major contribution to 1960s and 70s style.Thirty years on, Shelley moves back home to care for her father, now in his eighties: the house has not changed and neither has his uncompromising vision - or his distinctive way of looking at the world. Told with great tenderness and humour, this is Shelley's account of looking after an adored yet maddening parent and a piercing portrait of the grief that followed his death. 'A sad, funny, utterly fascinating book about families, home and how to say goodbye' Mark Haddon'Original, moving and bracingly honest... often hilarious' Blake Morrison, Guardian'It is strange that grief should produce such a life-affirming book, but it has. Read it for the solace it contains, or for its captivating descriptions. Either way, it's a delight' TelegraphSaved By The Angels
By Glennyce S. Eckersley. 2002
Saved by the Angels gives warm and uplifting true stories of the extraordinary things that can happen to people (or…
their friends and relatives) if they have a near-death experience. This might include seeing the Angel of Death, having clairvoyant dreams, being aware of special fragrances, strange symbols and coincidences. Glennyce Eckersley, author of the hugely successful An Angel At My Shoulder, has collected many true stories of how angels can affect people's day-to-day lives. As more of us search for greater spiritual fulfilment, they give us hope that we live, not in a purely chaotic world, but in one of harmony, meaning and order.Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud
By Mark Hollingsworth, Sandy Mitchell. 2005
When Sandy Mitchell was arrested for his alleged involvement in two bombings in Saudi Arabia in December 2000, he thought…
it was a case of mistaken identity and that he would soon be released. Instead, he spent nearly three years in jail, where he was repeatedly tortured before being forced to sign a confession and admit his guilt on Saudi television.Throughout his incarceration the Saudi authorities knew that the attacks had been committed by al-Qaeda militants. Yet they kept Mitchell in jail and refused him access to a lawyer for a year. By this time he had been sentenced to death but he was eventually released before the penalty could be imposed. Saudi Babylon is the story of a shocking miscarriage of justice. But it also reveals an even more disturbing truth: how the British government, mindful of multi-billion-pound arms sales to Saudi Arabia, virtually abandoned Mitchell by adopting a softly-softly diplomatic approach to the corrupt Saudi royal family. Based on diaries and records of meetings with ministers and officials, this is a powerful exposé of how the British government acts when one of its citizens is illegally imprisoned and tortured by a regime with which it does business.The Honourable John Norquay: Indigenous Premier, Canadian Statesman
By Gerald Friesen. 2024
The life and times of the Premier from Red River John Norquay, orphan and prodigy, was a leader among the…
Scots Cree peoples of western Canada. Born in the Red River Settlement, he farmed, hunted, traded, and taught school before becoming a legislator, cabinet minister, and, from 1878 to 1887, premier of Manitoba. Once described as Louis Riel’s alter ego, he skirmished with prime minister John A. Macdonald, clashed with railway baron George Stephen, and endured racist taunts while championing the interests of the Prairie West in battles with investment bankers, Ottawa politicians, and the CPR. His contributions to the development of Canada’s federal system and his dealings with issues of race and racism deserve attention today. Recounted here by Canadian historian Gerald Friesen, Norquay’s life story ignites contemporary conversations around the nature of empire and Canada’s own imperial past. Drawing extensively on recently opened letters and financial papers that offer new insights into his business, family, and political life, Friesen reveals Norquay to be a thoughtful statesman and generous patriarch. This masterful biography of the Premier from Red River sheds welcome light on a neglected historical figure and a tumultuous time for Canada and Manitoba.Sarah's Diary: An unflinchingly honest account of one family's struggle with depression
By Sarah Griffin. 2007
'I was fourteen when I found my Dad trying to commit suicide in the garage. Sounds shocking doesn't it? But…
that was part of me, part of living with my Dad'Sarah's Diary is the very personal diary of Sarah Griffin - an ordinary teenage girl learning to deal with the ups and downs of family life. On the outside hers was like any other family, but behind closed doors lay a sad and lonely secret. Sarah's Dad had depression -- a condition we've all heard of but seldom discuss. Beautifully written, brutally honest, Sarah's story is compelling reading.Roger Casement's Diaries: 1910:The Black and the White
By Roger Sawyer. 1997
Born in Ireland in 1864 Roger Casement acted as British Consul in various parts of Africa (1895-1904) and Brazil (1906-11)…
where he denounced atrocities among Congolese and Putumayo rubber workers. knighted in 1911, He returned to Ireland, where as an ardent nationalist he attempted to enlist German help for the cause. He was hanged for high treason in London in 1916. A compulsive diary writer, his so-called 'Black' Diaries were finally released into the public domain in 1994. At the time of his trial, these diaries-detailing his promiscuous homosexual activities in Brazil-were used to condemn him and, subsequently, to poison his reputation. Published here for the first time-as are his more public 'White' Diaries of the same year-they not only offer the reader the opportunity to judge their authenticity-still a matter of heated debate-but they also take us deep into the mind of the bravest, most selfless and practical humanitarian of the Edwardian age.Robert Burns: The Patriot Bard
By Patrick Scott Hogg. 2008
Following the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns (1759-96), Patrick Scott Hogg presents the greatest of Scotland's poets…
within the true context of his times. Exploding the Burns myth, Robert Burns: The Patriot Bard replaces the ram-stam lad of popular cliché with the real, living Burns - a Scottish patriot of the heart, an idealist who wished for 'Freedom and Liberty' for his beloved country, but also a man who was pragmatically a British patriot and risked his life for democratic reform. Here Burns is painted in his native colours as a highly complex, hyper-intelligent writer in both prose and poetry, not the semi-confused, contradictory simpleton of previous biographies. The fascinating legend of Burns as a ladies' man is placed where it should be - as less important than the message of the bard.The real day-to-day Burns was irascible, stubborn-minded, independent, controversial and opinionated. He detested many of his social superiors within the feudal order and attacked them as hypocrites and oppressors of the common people. The voice of Burns, always in the language of the people, and his idealist vision of a better world endeared him as a poet of humanity 'the world o'er'. Drawing from Burns' existing canon of poetry and letters, plus some newly attributed works suppressed for over two centuries, this life story is a roller-coaster narrative that charts the success and untimely death of the greatest songwriter of all time, the real Robert Burns.The Road Taken
By Michael Buerk. 2005
'Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem it lights up…
a biblical famine, now, in the Twentieth Century.'Those words opened Michael Buerk's first report on the Ethiopian famine for the 6 o'clock news on October 24th 1984. His reports sent shock waves round the world. The Live Aid concert, a direct consequence of Bob Geldof watching that broadcast, was watched by half the planet.Michael Buerk has reported on some of the biggest stories in our lifetime: the Flixborough chemical plant fire, the Birmingham pub bombing, Lockerbie. He was in Buenos Aires at the start of the Falklands War; he reported the death throes of apartheid in South Africa. He was the face of the BBC flagship evening news for many years and has fronted everything from the popular BBC1 series 999 to the erudite Radio 4 programme The Moral Maze. He has won every major award and is universally admired and respected for his intelligent and honest journalism.Here, he also reveals the private Michael Buerk, his bigamist father, his long and happy marriage to Christine and his delight at fatherhood.Rezso Kasztner: The Daring Rescue of Hungarian Jews: A Survivor's Account
By Ladislaus Löb. 2008
Two months after his eleventh birthday, on 9 July 1944, the gates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp closed behind Ladislaus Löb.…
Five months later, with the Second World War still raging, he crossed the border into Switzerland, cold and hungry, but alive and safe. He was not alone, but part of a group of some 1,670 Jewish men, women and children from Hungary, who had been rescued from the Nazis as a result of a deal made by a man called Rezso Kasztner - himself a Hungarian Jew - with Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the Holocaust. Twelve years and a miscarriage of justice later Kasztner was murdered by an extremist Jewish gang in his adopted home of Israel. To this day he remains a highly controversial figure, regarded by some as a traitor and by many others as a hero. He was accused of betraying the bulk of the Hungarian Jewry by hand-picking only those who were politically and personally dear to him, or those from whom he could benefit financially, and the judge of his post-war trial concluded that he had 'sold his soul to Satan'.Rezso Kasztner tells his story - and also the story of a child who lived to grow up after the Holocaust thanks to him. A compelling combination of history and memoir, it is also an examination of one individual's unique achievement and a consideration of the profound moral issues raised by his dealings with some of the most evil men ever known.Putin's Prisoner: My Time as a Prisoner of War in Ukraine
By Aiden Aslin, John Sweeney. 2023
Brought to you by Penguin.Aiden Aslin joined the Ukrainian marines in 2018, compelled to defend his adopted homeland from the…
growing threat of Russian invasion. In February 2022, as Russia mounted a full-scale offensive, Aiden and his unit were stationed at the frontline at Mariupol.Pinned down at a Mariupol steelworks, after a month-long siege and running out of supplies, Aiden was part of the mass surrender of over a thousand Ukrainian troops, in April 2022. Then his real ordeal began.Singled out for his British passport, Aiden was interrogated, tortured, stabbed, turned into a propaganda zombie, tried by a kangaroo court and then sentenced to death. A victim of a catalogue of abuses of international law, Aiden struggled to cling on to any hope of survival. Certain that he was going to be executed, he was eventually freed in a prisoner exchange and permitted to return home.In Putin's Prisoner, Aiden will tell the full, harrowing story of his time fighting in Putin's war, of his six months in Russian captivity, and of his hardened resolve to defend the freedoms of the people of Ukraine.©2023 Aiden Aslin & John Sweeney (P)2023 Penguin AudioA Purposeful Life: What I’ve Learned About Breaking Barriers and Inspiring Change
By Dawn Butler. 2023
'Dawn Butler is a history-making, game-changing, ceiling-smashing politician.This powerful book offers a fascinating insight into both the personal and political…
sides of her journey.'Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London'When I was younger my parents taught me to be resilient and my brothers told me to be resistant, and now I think it's time for a revolution. Let's complete the power of three.'As the third Black woman ever to be elected as an MP, and the first elected African-Caribbean woman to become a Government Minister, Dawn Butler is a true pioneer. Famously ejected from the House of Commons for calling Boris Johnson a liar, her tireless campaigning to eradicate injustice - from the NHS to the Metropolitan Police - has changed lives. Until now, she's never talked openly about what has inspired and motivated her to persevere in the face of oppression.Drawing on lessons from her own life, Dawn shows how traditional routes to power are outdated and reveals that it's easier than we think to disrupt a broken system. From her early life to the Palace of Westminster, she shares the values, people, places and beliefs that have helped her to forge her own authentic path to power.Now she is on a mission to give others the courage and conviction to dream big and make positive change, even when everything feels broken around us.Please Don't Cry: A family torn apart by grief. An incredible act of love.
By Jane Plume. 2014
'I’m glad I could do her this one last favour. If it had been the other way round, I know…
Gina would have done the same for me.’Jane and Gina were the best of friends. When Gina’s husband Shaun was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2009, Jane vowed to do everything she could to help her best mate and her two small sons through the awful time to come. But things were about to take a tragic turn for the worse. In 2010, Gina was killed in a shock car crash. Though devastated by her own grief, Jane knew that Gina needed her now more than ever – to help with the boys she had left behind. And after cancer claimed Shaun's life, Jane stepped in to care for the two orphans, becoming the mother her best friend could no longer be.This is the moving true story behind an incredible act of love.Pitt the Elder: Man of War
By Edward Pearce. 2010
This remarkable book opens at the dawn of the British Empire - with the great sea battle at Quiberon Bay…
where French ships, intended for the 1759 invasion of Britain, are chased, caught and defeated by a fleet commanded by Admiral Sir Edward Hawke. In this momentous victory Britain effectively settled the outcome of the Seven Years' War and established itself as the world's dominant imperial power.At the heart of the conflict with France was William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham and Britain's future Prime Minister. Weaving together military history and political biography Edward Pearce provides a portrait of the man 'with an eye like a diamond' - a man who had close ties with the slave trade and who preached war and British supremacy on a world stage. Alongside detailed descriptions of battles in Europe and North America we follow Pitt's career as a politician - one that was closely intertwined with General James Wolfe at Quebec; American independence; the slow mind of George III and the quick one of the rake and outsider John Wilkes.Edward Pearce scrutinises the real man at the heart of the historical events and mystique surrounding the legacy of Pitt the Elder, to present a rounded and masterful portrait of arguably the most powerful minister ever to guide Britain's foreign policy and of an age which marked a new epoch in history, when the balance of power in Europe and the world was set for almost two centuries.Personal Impressions
By Isaiah Berlin. 2009
This enthusiastically received collection contains Isaiah Berlin's appreciation of seventeen people of unusual distinction in the intellectual or political world…
- sometimes in both. The names of many of them are familiar - Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, L. B. Namier, J. L. Austin, Maurice Bowra. With the exception of Roosevelt he met them all, and he knew many of them well. For this new edition four new portraits have been added, including recollections of Virginia Woolf and Edmund Wilson. The volume ends with a vivid and moving account of Berlin's meetings in Russia with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova in 1945 and 1956.Pavel's Letters
By Monika Maron. 1999
Teasing her family's past out of the fog of oblivion and lies, one of Germany's greatest writers asks about the…
secrets families keep, about the fortitude of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and about what becomes of the individual mind when the powers that be turn against it.Born in a working-class suburb of wartime Berlin, Monika Maron grew up a daughter of the East German nomenklatura, despairing of the system her mother, Hella, helped create. Haunted by the ghosts of her Baptist grandparents, she questions her mother, whose selective memory throws up obstacles to Maron's understanding of her grandparents' horrifying denouement in Polish exile. Maron reconstructs their lives from fragments of memory and a forgotten box of letters. In telling her family's powerful and heroic story, she has written a memoir that has the force of a great novel and also stands both as an elaborate metaphor for the shame of the twentieth century and a life-affirming monument to her ancestors.A Passion For Trees: The Legacy Of John Evelyn
By Maggie Campbell-Culver. 2006
Given the extent of his influence on 17th-century life, and his lasting impact on the British landscape it is remarkable…
that no book has been written before about John Evelyn. He was a longstanding friend of Samuel Pepys (who wrote of him, ' A most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others.'), a founder-member of the Royal Society and a prolific writer and diarist. He was an early advocate of the garden city but his most important work was Sylva: a Discourse of Forest Trees. Sylva was presented to the Royal Society to promote the planting of timber trees 'for the supply of the Navy, the employment and advantage of the poor as well as the ornamenting of the nation.' He was responsible for the first great raft of tree-planting and for a great influx of tree introductions to Britain.Maggie Campbell-Culver's book, like Sylva, has at its core a section detailing the characteristics, history and uses of 33 trees incorporating the advice Evelyn gave and demonstrating its relevance still in the 20th-century. Not only was Evelyn probably the first horticultural writer to show an appreciation of the aesthetic benefits of trees in our landscape, he is shown to be a founder-father of the modern conservation movement.Out Of The Wilderness: Diaries 1963-67
By Tony Benn. 1987
1963 saw Labour's emergence from its 'wilderness years' in Opposition, and the election of Harold Wilson following the unexpected death…
of Hugh Gaitskell. In the first Wilson government of 1964 Benn was made Postmaster General and became known as an innovator for his introduction of the Giro and arguing for a radical broadcasting policy. After Labour's landslide victory of 1966 he was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Technology, but Labour's honeymoon came to an abrupt end in 1967 with the introduction of devaluation, leading to disilliusionment with the Government.Tony Benn's account on his relations with the industrialists, television and press chiefs, the Palace and the diplomatic world as well as trade unionists, civil servants, and his Cabinet colleagues, reveals the workings of our political and economic systems at the highest level.Out of the Wilderness is a unique political record of the 1960s, told by a man who served in five Labour administrations and who today is one of the most experienced figures both in and out of the House of Commons.'No-one interested in the political influence of the Crown, the intrigues of the civil service or the highly traditionalist character of Harold Wilson can afford to ignore it' The ObserverOur Billie
By Ian Clayton. 2010
'An astonishing work' - Joanne HarrisEvery parent's worst nightmare became a reality for Ian Clayton. On a short holiday break…
in Hay-on-Wye he took his nine-year-old twins canoeing, and in a freak accident his daughter Billie was drowned. In a remarkably frank and vivid way Clayton describes what happened on that spring day, his desperate attempts to save his two children, and then what it felt like two years later to come face to face with the men who hired out the canoe.But Our Billie is not a story of bitterness and recrimination. Instead it's the story of how a family attempts to come to terms with something which makes no sense at all. Through his memories of Billie and his wonderfully affectionate portrait of the small town in Yorkshire where the family has lived for generations, he weaves a story of loss and remembering, of gratitude and forgiveness.Openhearted: Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go
By Ann Ingle. 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR TWO IRISH BOOK AWARDS'Something they don't tell you about getting older is that you fall. Oh, you hear…
about it in passing, of course, "She had a fall, poor thing". Falling is not something you ever think about as a younger woman. You think about falling in love . . .'At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name.Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back on that first glorious fall and in a series of essays considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'.Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Open-Hearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others._________________________________'By some distance the most courageous, most poignant, most life-affirming memoir I've read in the last twenty years and more' Paul Howard'Genuinely inspirational. I LOVE ANN INGLE' Marian Keyes'What a beautiful openhearted, at times broken-hearted memoir ... honest, funny, searingly direct, a wonderful voice ... remarkable' Joe Duffy'Really beautiful. Searingly honest, astonishingly frank and very, very funny' Maia DunphyOpen Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5
By Stella Rimington. 2002
'The story of MI5's transformation - is fascinating. So, too is Rimington's account of her rise in what was very…
definitely a man's world.' Guardian____________________________The eye-opening memoir from the first female Director-General of MI5Stella Rimington worked for MI5 between 1969 and 1996, one of the most turbulent and dramatic periods in global history. Working in all the main fields of the Service's responsibilities - counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism - she became successively Director of all three branches, and finally Director-General of MI5 in 1992.She was the first woman to hold the post and the first Director-General whose name was publicly announced on appointment. In Open Secret, she continues her work of opening up elements of the work of our security services to public scrutiny, revealing the surprising culture of MI5 and shedding light on some of the most fascinating events in 20th century history from the ultimate insider viewpoint.____________________________Stella Rimington is also the author of the novels At Risk and Secret Asset.