Résultats de recherche de titre
Articles 161 à 180 sur 465
Confessions of a Fashionista
Par Angela Clarke. 2013
The incredibly popular Daily Mail column, 'Confessions of a Fashionista', feeds its hungry readers snippets of a life in the…
glittering yet deranged world of fashion. Now its anonymous author reveals both her identity and the true story of her giddyingly glamorous time in the style industry, with insider gossip on the people who populate it. Propelled by a painful end to a relationship and determined to prove her ex wrong for breaking up with her, our Fashionista lands a place on the Harrods Graduate Scheme. A complete outsider to the fashion world, she sets out on a wing and a pair of Guccis, and finds herself in a whirlwind of couture and craziness. Along the way she learns how to stay sane in a world where hairdressers have egos as big as their clients' bouffants, where dogs fly business class, and if you're eating carbs it can only be because you're pregnant. Confessions of a Fashionista is a book for anyone who's ever been an outsider, for anyone who's ever had a relationship end badly and thought they'd never find true love, and for anyone who thinks that cakes were made to be eaten, not sniffed. By turns hilarious, sad, thrilling, romantic and fun, it is the It book for fashionistas everywhere.The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare
Par Jeff Farrell, Paul Keany. 2012
‘It won’t happen to me. That’s what I thought when I got on the plane to Venezuela. But it did…
– I got caught.’Caught smuggling half a million euros’ worth of cocaine, Paul Keany was sexually assaulted by Venezuelan anti-drugs officers before being sentenced to eight years in the notorious Los Teques prison outside Caracas. There he was plunged into a nightmarish world of coke-fuelled killings, gun battles, stabbings, extortion and forced hunger strikes until finally, just over two years into his sentence, he gained early parole and embarked on a daring escape from South America . . .Aided by his extensive prison diaries, Keany reveals the true horror of life inside Los Teques: a shocking underworld behind bars where inmates pay protection money to stay alive, prostitutes do the rounds and vast amounts of cocaine are smuggled in for cell-block bosses to sell on to prisoners for huge profits. The Cocaine Diaries is a remarkable story, told by Keany with honesty, courage and even humour, despite knowing that every day behind bars might have been his last.Clubland UK: On the Door in the Rave Era
Par Steven McLaughlin. 2013
Clubland UK is a story of violent men and the worlds they inhabit. At the height of the hedonistic ’90s…
rave era, Steven McLaughlin policed some of Blackpool’s busiest seafront clubs on chaotic nights, as the virulent dance and drug craze exploded onto the scene. From the front line, he witnessed the dark underbelly of clubland culture and the predatory menace lurking beneath the smiley-face T-shirts, pilled-up clubbers and frantically waving arms. He saw people revel in it; he saw people excel in it; he saw people profit in it; and he saw people suffer in it. Because sometimes being ‘a face’ in clubland demands the highest price of all. From small-town gyms to big-time steroid dealers, from martial-arts myths to back-alley fights, door wars and gang grudges in Britain's gaudiest seaside town, Clubland UK is a story that takes the reader into a twilight world where testosterone, brotherhood, ego and a warrior mentality all collide in a bruising mess. This book is a must-read trip into the dark side of the dance decade, a roller-coaster ride of pills and blood-spilling thrills, where agony and ecstasy co-exist in a blurred neon blaze.The Cloud Garden
Par Paul Winder, Tom Hart Dyke. 2003
The Darién Gap is a place of legend. The only break in the Pan-American highway, which runs from Alaska to…
the tip of South America, it is an almost impregnable strip of swamp, jungle and cloud forest between the vast landmasses of North and South America. Stories of abduction and murder there are rife and in recent years more people have successfully climbed Everest or trekked to the South Pole than have crossed the Darién Gap. In 2000, Tom Hart Dyke, a young botanist, set off to Central America with one thing on his mind: orchids. He knew that in order to find the rare and beautiful species he so fervently admired, he would have to visit some of the most inhospitable places on earth. Unbeknown to Tom, another young explorer, Paul Winder, was backpacking through the area at the same time. Though he sometimes worked freelance in the City of London, Paul was a fearless and intrepid traveller, happier scaling volcanoes than lounging on beaches. In every bar and café along his route, rumours abounded of the Darién Gap - and the more he heard, the greater became his desire to make the journey. Pure chance brought Paul and Tom together in northern Mexico; they formed an instant bond and their fate was sealed. Ignoring a final, succinct warning from the Lonely Planet guide - 'Don't even think about it!' - Tom and Paul set off into the Darién: Tom in search of orchids, Paul in search of adventure. They would find plenty of each. For six days they made good progress. Then, just hours away from Colombia, the dream ended and the horror began. Paul and Tom were ambushed by FARC guerrillas who were to hold them hostage for the next nine months. From that day on, their survival was a matter of extraordinary endurance, incredible ingenuity and not a little good luck ...The Chameleon Poet: A Life of George Barker
Par Robert Fraser. 2001
The poet George Barker was convinced that his biography could never be written. 'I've stirred the facts around too much,'…
he told Robert Fraser. 'It simply can't be done.' Eliot wrote of his 'genius'. Yeats thought him the most interesting poet of his generation. Dylan Thomas envied his power over women. War trapped him in Japan. In America he conducted one of the most celebrated love affairs of the century. He fathered fifteen children in several countries, three during one battle-torn summer. By the 1950s he was the toast of Soho. Barker was Catholic and bohemian, frank and elusive, tender and boisterous. In Eliot's phrase, he was 'a most peculiar fellow.' Robert Fraser's biography offers both a portrait of a talented, tormented and irresistibly entertaining man, and a broad cultural landscape. Around the central figure cluster painters like Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Johnny Minton and the 'Roberts' Colquhoun and MacBryde; writers such as Dylan Thomas, Walter de la Mare and Elizabeth Smart, whose By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept hymns their liaison; the lugubrious humorist Jeffrey Bernard. After closing time at the Colony Room, Minton declared, they had to sweep up the jokes.'An inspirational manifesto for change' Caroline Lucas, former leader of The Green Party 'A remarkable and important book' Steve Backshall,…
Naturalist, Broadcaster, and Author'Astute, erudite and crystalline, Bella writes with visionary clarity and passion [...] It's a wonderful book' Dara McAnulty, award-winning author of Diary of a Young Naturalist____________________________Across the planet, the futures of young people hang in the balance as they face the harsh realities of the environmental crisis. Isn't it time we made their voices heard?The Children of the Anthropocene, by conservationist and activist Bella Lack, chronicles the lives of the diverse young people on the frontlines of the environmental crisis around the world, amplifying the voices of those living at the heart of the crisis.Advocating for the protection of both people and the planet, Bella restores the beating heart to global environmental issues, from air pollution to deforestation and overconsumption, by telling the stories of those most directly affected. Transporting us from the humming bounty of Ecuador's Choco Rainforest and the graceful arcs of the Himalayan Mountains, to the windswept plains and vibrant vistas of life in Altiplano, Bella speaks to young activists from around the world including Dara McAnulty, Afroz Shah and Artemisa Xakriabá, and brings the crisis vividly to life.It's time we passed the mic and listened to different perspectives. Bella's manifestos for change will inspire and mobilize you to rediscover the wonders and wilds of nature and, ultimately, change the way you think about our planet in crisis. This is your chance to hear the urgent stories of an endangered species too often overlooked: the children of the Anthropocene. ____________________________'Extraordinarily moving, wild and engaging - the book of the moment' Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and author of Climate Justice'A visionary statement for the future [...] Pragmatic, positive & beautifully written' Ben Macdonald, Award-Winning Conservation Writer, Wildlife TV Producer and NaturalistChewy: The Street Dog who Brought a Neighbourhood Together
Par Bruce Klein. 2014
"I really enjoyed Chewy – a book with a powerful and heart-warming message. In a world where old-fashioned notions like…
community, closeness and neighbourliness seem to have been lost, it is one of those unexpected stories that restore your faith in our collective nature. It also reminds us, once again, what an important role animals can play in our lives" - James Bowen, author of A Street Cat Named BobThe first time Bruce Klein caught sight of Chewy, this beautiful street dog captured his heart.Chewy had been a stray since he was a puppy. Sometimes he travelled with other street dogs, but more often he made his rounds alone. Bruce began to feed this timid St Bernard Cross, and he soon met other locals who looked out for Chewy too. The neighbours saw Chewy shivering in the winter rain, and knew it would only be a matter of time until the local animal control put him down. Bruce was happy to take him home, but Chewy was big and frightened. Rescuing him wouldn’t be simple – the neighbours had to devise a plan ...Chewy is the uplifting true story of how a whole neighbourhood came together to change one dog’s life. It will capture your heart too.Chasing Lost Times: A Father and Son Reconciled Through Running
Par Geoffrey Beattie, Ben Beattie. 2012
Geoffrey Beattie is an extremely successful academic and celebrity psychologist. He was perhaps a less successful father. His obsession with…
his career and his driving passion for running when he was at home almost destroyed his relationship with his son, but, ironically, it is running that has brought them back together.Chasing Lost Times is the emotional story of a father and son trying to repair a relationship through a shared activity that depends on sheer physical effort, the kind of physical effort that may once have been the source of commonality between father and son in all previous generations but which seems to be absent in the modern world.Chasing Killers: Three Decades of Cracking Crime in the UK's Murder Capital
Par Joe Jackson. 2009
Glasgow is known as the murder capital of Britain and no one understands why better than Joe Jackson. For over…
30 years, Jackson worked the crime beat, first as a uniformed cop then as a seasoned murder squad detective. In this hard-hitting memoir of his most memorable cases, he reveals the reality behind chasing killers and other crooks in 'No Mean City'.As a young cop, Jackson was threatened by Glasgow's most ruthless gangster, Arthur Thomson, and, as a fresh detective, he took part in the hunt for Bible John, Glasgow's most shadowy serial killer. He locked up more than his fair share of paedophiles and sex beasts along the way and, as a veteran Senior Investigating Officer, he cracked the hardest homicide nut there is: a murder without a body. Jackson's investigations have grabbed headlines, while his 'collars' have filled jails.Chasing Killers will shock readers with its behind-the-scenes look at how murder probes are run. Every case is related with candour and humour, and is laced with the kind of detail that only an expert can provide. Joe Jackson has been called the real-life Taggart, but this is no TV fantasy - this is real city police work: concrete hard, soot black and blood red.Charles: The Heart of a King
Par Catherine Mayer. 1988
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller'Breathtaking' The Times'[The book that] made headlines around the world.' IndependentThe former Prince of Wales…
has lived his whole life in the public eye, yet he remains an enigma. He was born to be king, but he aims much higher. A landmark publication, Charles: The Heart of a King reveals Charles in all his complexity: the passionate views that mean he will never be as remote and impartial as his mother; the compulsion to make a difference and the many and startling ways in which the Prince and now King of the United Kingdom and fifteen other realms has already made his mark.The book offers fresh and fascinating insights into the first marriage that did so much to define him and an assessment of his relationship with the woman he calls, with unintended accuracy, his 'dearest wife': Camilla, now Queen Consort. We see Charles as a father and a friend, a serious figure and a joker. Life at court turns out to be full of hidden dangers and unexpected comedy.Now, updated and revised with a new preface and two new chapters - covering details of Harry and Meghan's exit and its implications, the cash-for-honours scandal, Prince Andrew, and more - this significant study reveals a monarchy threatened and a man in sight of happiness yet still driven by anguish and a remarkable belief system, a charitable entrepreneur, activist, agitator and avatar of the Establishment who just as often tilts against it.Based on multiple interviews with his friends and courtiers, palace insiders and critics, and rare access to Charles himself, before his kingship, this biography explores his philanthropy and his compulsive interventionism, his faith, his significant impact on politics and the philosophy that means when he seeks harmony he sometimes creates controversy.Gripping, at times astonishing, often laugh-out-loud, this is a royal biography unlike any other.'A must-read ... this important book is nothing short of a manual to our future King's world-view' GQ'A sustained piece of higher journalism' IndependentCastaway
Par Lucy Irvine. 1983
THE SHOCKING STORY OF A DESERT ISLAND DREAM THAT WENT SOUR'Writer seeks "wife" for a year on tropical island.' The…
opportunity to escape from it all was irresistible. Lucy Irvine answered the advertisement - and found herself alone on a remote desert island with a 'husband' she hardly knew.Lucy Irvine fell in love with the seductive, if cruel, beauty of that untouched Eden, whose power to enslave and enchant her never slackened throughout the whole of her amazing adventure.Uncompromisingly candid and sometimes shocking, Castaway is her compulsively readable account of a desert island dream which threatened to turn into a nightmare of illness, thirst and personal antipathy.Now a film by Nicholas Roeg starring Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed,Call the Fire Brigade!: Fighting London's Fires in the '70s
Par Allan Grice. 2012
Working as a fireman in London’s East End during the early 1970s was no easy ride. In the years before…
workplace health-and-safety legislation had started to exert its grip, Allan Grice had to cut his fire-and-rescue teeth without the advantages of a breathing apparatus for each member of his crew. Back then, the time-tested strategy was to ‘get in’ – to crawl below the intense heat and ‘eat’ the thick smoke – in order to locate a missing child or to halt a rapidly spreading inferno. In Call the Fire Brigade!, Grice recounts his most memorable experiences as a front-line member of the London Fire Brigade working the city’s East End, with its myriad commercial premises, brooding Thames-side warehouses, seedy tenements and colourful cosmopolitan community, ranging from prosperous manufacturers to down-and-out winos with their body-warming bonfires in derelict houses. Fires in factories, tenements and warehouses, and non-fire emergencies such as the Moorgate Tube disaster of 1975, are graphically described, while the elation of rescue, the sadness of being too late to save lives and the warm camaraderie of fire crews during some of the capital’s busiest peacetime years are vividly depicted.The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker: The Intimate Adventures of a Woman Who Can’t Say No
Par Suzanne Portnoy. 2006
What if you had the power to make all your fantasies come true?Suzanne Portnoy is a woman on a mission.…
Freed from the restraints of marriage and monogamy, she’s no longer looking for Prince Charming. She’s looking for fun. And she intends to find it...This is an erotic memoir with a difference.The Boy Who Was Born a Girl: One Mother’s Unconditional Love for Her Child
Par Jon Edwards, Luisa Edwards. 2012
Brought up as female for fifteen years, Jon can remember feeling different from other girls since he was only five…
years old. But it will take years of depression, incessant bullying, self-harm and isolation before he discovers why.When Jon eventually confides to his mother that he feels like a boy, Luisa commits herself unconditionally to helping her child.For Jon, the changes that follow are his path to happiness. But for Luisa, this means coming to terms with the enormous loss of her daughter.A Boy's Own Dale: A 1950s childhood in the Yorkshire Dales
Par Terry Wilson. 2011
Growing up in rural Yorkshire in the 1940s and 50s, Terry Wilson spent his school days hunting down Just William…
books, cutting up apples to help with fractions and staring out the window dreaming up new schemes. But it was on the Dales themselves that Terry came into his own. Whether he was 'out-fishing' the adults with his homemade rod, grouse-beating for the lady of the manor, helping to bring in the farmers' hay in exchange for rabbit shooting rights, or growing his own prize caulis, his idiosyncratic and inventive mind is only matched by his love of nature. Told with affection, dry humour and a respect for the landscape and its people, through Terry's eyes we meet farmers, mill owners and 'gentlemen of the road'. Beautifully illustrated with newly-commissioned line-drawn illustrations by Don Grant, A Boy's Own Dale is a magical memoir of a long-lost world.British Muslim Soldier
Par Adnan Sarwar. 2014
It isn't nice but you're an animal, so you can do it, dressed in green and brown and black waiting…
to be attacked and smiling because you had bullets for teeth. Adnan Sarwar, a Pakistani boy from Burnley, joined the British Army – the White Man’s Army. Why did he do it? To prove he was as white as his friends? For Queen and Country? Or to work out who he was – British, Muslim or a Soldier? Perhaps he could be all three. ‘British Muslim Soldier’ is Adnan’s journey through the battlegrounds of war, race and identity, facing up to the often brutal realities of these fraught warzones. There is racism, family ties, tedious routine, enemies and torture. But what Adnan’s story really comes down to is love – love for his family, for his fellow squaddies – and a deep-rooted sense of identity and belonging. …when did these clothes fit so well? When did Corporal become an older brother and when did the army become a mother? When did I become a British soldier?British As A Second Language
Par David Bennun. 2005
David Bennun had lived in Africa his whole life. At the age of 18 he came to Britain, the mother…
country. The country he had read about in Punch magazine or seen in films like Chariots of Fire. He was in for a shock. A very big shock indeed: 'I could not have been less prepared had I spent my life up to that point listening to 30-year-old broadcasts of the Light Programme.'In this timely follow-up to the critically acclaimed Tick Bite Fever, David Bennun shows us our own country through the eyes of an alien. With his brilliantly witty turn of phrase we follow his life as a student, his brushes with Bohemia, his troubles renting and buying property, his discovery of British food and his horrors at entering the world of work. From DIY to architecture, sport to alcohol, transport to music and entertainment, David Bennun brilliantly and with ruthless wit deconstructs all these subjects, many of them so dear to the British heart.The Boy Grows Up: The inspirational story of his journey from broken boy to family man
Par Richard McCann. 2005
Richard McCann's account of his childhood became a massive UK bestseller. In it he told the harrowing story of how…
he and his sisters were left motherless when the Yorkshire Ripper killed his first victim, Richard's mother Wilma McCann. Just A Boy was praised for its unflinching and unself-pitying account of a neglected childhood at the hands of an abusive father and uncaring authorities. The Boy Grows Up is an account of how Richard used the success of Just A Boy to try and save his sister, and of his attempts to make sense of his past whilst learning more about the effects of traumatic childhoods and loss.The Bonfire Of Berlin
Par Helga Schneider. 1995
Abandoned by her mother, who left to pursue a career as a camp guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau, loathed by her step-mother,…
cooped up in a cellar, starved, parched, lonely amidst the fetid crush of her neighbours, Helga Schneider endured the horrors of wartime Berlin. The Bonfire of Berlin is a searing account of her survival. The grinding misery of hunger, combined with the terror of air-raids, the absence of fresh water and the constant threat of death and disease served not to unite the tenants and neighbours of her apartment block but rather to intensify the minor irritations of communal life into flashpoints of rage and violence. And with Russian victory the survivors could not look forward a return to peacetime but rather to pillage and rape. It was only gradually that Schneider's life returned to some kind of normality, as her beloved father returned from the front, carrying his own scars of the war. This shocking book evokes the reality of life in a wartime city in all its brutality and deprivation, while retaining a kernel of hope that while life remains not all is lost.Blood and Sand: The BBC security correspondent’s own extraordinary and inspiring story
Par Frank Gardner. 2006
On the June 6, 2004, while on assignment in Riyadh, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were…
ambushed by Islamist gunmen. Simon was killed outright. Frank was hit in the shoulder and leg. As he lay in the dust, a figure stood over him and pumped four more bullets into his body at point-blank range...Against all the odds, Frank Gardner survived. Today, although partly paralysed, Frank continues to travel the world, reporting and making documentaries for the BBC. This acclaimed memoir was brought up to date with a new chapter that recounted his return to Saudi Arabia for the first time since he was shot and the story he tells continues to move and inspire, and remains an affirmation of his deep understanding of - and affection for - the Islamic world in these uncertain times.___'Gardner tells his remarkable tale well and bravely, with an astonishing lack of anger and enduring love and respect for the Islamic world' SUNDAY TIMES'Brave, unsentimental and genuinely inspiring' EVENING STANDARD 'What makes Gardner's moving, often humorous, deeply personal story so important is the fact that he has woven into it a brilliantly dispassionate, clear-eyed account of the Islamic world' SCOTSMAN'A witty, self-deprecating, inspiring testament' DAILY TELEGRAPH