Autobiography/Bio/Non-Fiction

//Autobiography/Bio/Non-Fiction
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  • When Alan Davies (Jonathan Creek, QI and so much more...!)  was growing up he seemed to drive his family mad. 'What are we going to do with you?' they would ask - as if he might know the answer. Perhaps it was because he came of age in the 1980s. That decade of big hair, greed, camp music, mass unemployment, social unrest and truly shameful trousers was confusing for teenagers. There was a lot to believe in - so much to stand for, or stand against - and Alan decided to join anything with the word 'anti' in it. He was looking for heroes to guide him (relatively) unscathed into adulthood. From his chronic kleptomania to the moving search for his mother's grave years after she died; from his obsession with joining (going so far as to become a member of Chickens Lib) to his first forays into making people laugh (not always intentionally), this is a touching and funny return to the formative years that make us all.
  • The Roaring Twenties? The Gay Twenties? The Dull Twenties? The Treacherous Twenties? Was it the gilded Jazz Age luxuriating in post-War euphoria or or the first decade of the modern world freeing itself from the traditions that came to an end in the trenches of France and Belgium several years earlier? This is an attempt to answer these questions in a colourful panorama. Anglo recounts the decade: how the revolution in media and transport touched ordinary people and why a new mass culture arose despite the attempts of custom and vested interest to ensure otherwise. In the cinema the animated cartoon and documentary made their first appearances; replacing the stage and music hall. In Britain, political controversy raged and the country divided over the General Strike of 1926. In Weimar Germany crippling inflation led to civilised anthropophagy as the masses struggled to feed themselves. In the U.S., jazz, Prohibition and the mobs ruled the day. Illustrated with black and white and colour archival photographs.
  • It takes more than a fit of the vapours for a giant airline to ground a multimillion-dollar jumbo jet. What investigative writer John Fuller stumbled upon was a jet-age ghost story – crews refused to fly the plane because of the recurring apparitions of a dead pilot and flight engineer from a crashed sister ship. It was the famed Lockheed Tristar; the first jumbo jet ever to crash, in the Florida Everglades, with the loss of 101 persons. In his investigation, Fuller is led inexorably to repeated eyewitness experiences of the dead men’s reappearances before flight crews. After a classic reconstruction of the mysterious crash itself, he interviews scores of airline flight personnel and explores every facet of every “ghost” report. A confirmed skeptic who has always written with professional thoroughness on both scientific and life subjects, Fuller uncovers startling evidence of contact with the spirit of the dead flight engineer Don Repo. It is a spine-tingling, persuasive account with implications of spiritual realities that are of increasing interest in today’s world of ever more extraordinary scientific breakthroughs.
  • Bill Bryson has the rare knack of being out of his depth wherever he goes - even (perhaps especially) in the land of his birth. This became all too apparent when, after nearly two decades in England, the world's best-loved travel writer upped sticks with Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al, and returned to live in the country he had left as a youth. Of course there were things Bryson missed about Blighty - the Open University, Boxing Day, Branston pickle, and irony, to name a few. But any sense of loss was countered by the joy of rediscovering some of the forgotten treasures of his childhood: the glories of a New England autumn; the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in shorts, and motel rooms where you can generally count on being awakened in the night by a piercing shriek and the sound of a female voice pleading, "Put the gun down, Vinnie, I'll do anything you say." When an old friend asked him to write a weekly dispatch from New Hampshire for the Mail on Sunday's Night & Day magazine, Bill firmly turned him down. So firm was he, in fact, that gathered here is eighteen months' worth of his popular columns about that strangest of phenomena - the American way of life. Whether discussing the dazzling efficiency of the garbage disposal unit, the exoticism of having your groceries bagged for you, the jaw-slackening direness of American TVV or the smug pleasure of being able to eat beef without having to wonder if when you rise from the table you will walk sideways into the wall, Bill Bryson brings his inimitable brand of bemused wit to bear on the world's richest and craziest country.
  • The Edwardian era marked a great turning point in modern British history. In many spheres it produced the culmination of British power and influence which had been growing rapidly in the nineteenth century. Yet it also witnessed the beginnings of the decline which was accelerated through the twentieth century. Abroad, the British Empire reached its zenith during the Edwardian years but the military challenge of Germany was growing stronger. At home, the apparently dominant Liberal and Conservative parties were being threatened by a new political force in the Socialists. Many misconceptions about the period, social, economic, political, and diplomatic have gained currency. At one extreme, it has been seen as a Golden age, shattered by the sudden impact of war in 1914; at the other extreme, it has been portrayed as an age of crisis, its society already collapsing under pressure of internal problems. This survey presents a vivid portrait of the turmoil and vibrance of British society at the beginning of the twentieth century and suggests ways in which the history of this period has shaped the subsequent development of Britain through the century.
  • This biography of William of Orange and Mary Stuart was published to mark the 300th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution - the accession to the throne of William of Orange, a Dutch soldier-prince and Mary Stuart, daughter of the deposed Catholic King James II. Their ascendancy to the throne in 1688 heralded the beginning of an epoch of immense achievement and an English monarchy that overshadowed every European ruler other than Louis XIV of France as well as the confirmation of the powers of Parliament - the era became known as the Glorious Revolution. Illustrated.
  • In the years between 1860 and 1880, dozens of bushrangers, some bold and famous, some little more than petty thieves, rampaged across the New South Wales and Victorian countryside - looting and murdering, bailing up travellers, harassing police, terrorising settlers. Perhaps the most famous of these in the 1860s was a handsome young man named Ben Hall, the first official outlaw under a new Act, shot dead by police in 1865. Other members of his gang, "Flash" Johnny Gilbert, Johnny Vane, O'Meally and Dunn, were all captured or shot by their pursuers. Also outlawed were Frederick Lowry, the ferocious Daniel Morgan, and Fred Ward, better known throughout New South Wales as "Thunderbolt". Finally, in this second volume of his History of Australian Bushranging, Charles White examines at length the incredible story of the Kelly Gang - Ned, Dan, Steve Hart and Joe Byrne.
  • In this sequel to To School Through The Fields, Alice continues her story of a country childhood and of the many memorable characters who were her neighbours. Old Nell and Bill and Dan appear again, together with many more characters, from Bridgie who plies her washboard every Monday to Peter who was born with a romantic heart. All takes place against the backdrop of great changes in country life, while Alice herself makes the transition from the old school across the fields to the secondary school in town. This is the story of a changing time, a time when rural Ireland quenched the oil lamp, removed the po from under the bed and threw the black pots and iron kettles under the hedge.
  • When Margaret Evans found herself running Maesyneuadd, an old historic manor in the foothills of coastal Merioneth, as a family hotel, she had one small son, was pregnant with another, knew absolutely nothing about catering and couldn’t speak a word of Welsh – and the first guests were due in a few weeks...This is the lively and engaging story of how she coped. Margaret and her husband James first found the redoubtable Mrs Ridley, a Yorkshirewoman, a fountain of hardwoork, information and reliability, who acted as general handywoman and chambermaid and who, with the aid of a permanent wave and set of false teeth, was also able to double as a waitress. As they increased their staff and sacrificed their comfortable beds to the guests, Margaret learnt how to strain custard for thirty, transform burnt chickens into a palatable Easter dinner and simultaneously changing little Tim’s nappy on the vast kitchen table while fishing Nick’s collection of worms out of the milk saucepan. And when it all got too much she would dash outside and and look down at the ancient stones of Maesyneuadd, with Snowdon towering in the north and again find tranquility and the strength to continue.