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This is the first book in which Michael Palin has agreed to be interviewed. He talks about his life as a Python and his subsequent work. He lets the reader in on his favourite Python sketch; reveals why he is fascinated with Hemingway; tells which places have affected him the most on his globetrotting journeys and whether or not he was really expecting the Spanish Inquisition. With colour and black and white photographs.
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The Mongol queens of the thirteenth century ruled the largest empire the world has ever known. Yet sometime near the end of the century, censors cut a section from "The Secret History of the Mongols, " leaving a single tantalizing quote from Genghis Khan: Let us reward our female offspring. Only this hint of a father's legacy for his daughters remained of a much larger story. The queens of the Silk Route turned their father's conquests into the world's first truly international empire, fostering trade, education, and religion throughout their territories and creating an economic system that stretched from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. Outlandish stories of these powerful queens trickled out of the Empire, shocking the citizens of Europe and and the Islamic world. After Genghis Khan's death in 1227, conflicts erupted between his daughters and his daughters-in-law; what began as a war between powerful women soon became a war against women in power as brother turned against sister, son against mother. One of the most important warrior queens of history arose to rescue the tattered shreds of the Mongol Empire and restore order to a shattered world. Queen Mandhuhai led her soldiers through victory after victory. In her thirties she married a seventeen-year-old prince and bore eight children throughout a career spent fighting China's Ming Dynasty on one side and a series of Muslim warlords on the other. Her unprecedented success on the battlefield provoked the Chinese into the most frantic and expensive phase of wall building in history. Charging into battle even while pregnant, she fought to reassemble the nation of Genghis Khan and to preserve it for her own children to rule in peace. Despite the efforts to erase them from history, the Mongol queens live on.
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Songwriter, composer, lead guitarist and creative powerhouse behind The Who, Pete Townshend is a pre-eminent influence on rock. Spearheading Sixties rock smashing guitars and writing songs which challenged the function of popular music. Townsend created the power chord and broke the three-minute mould of the pop song in Tommy, Quadrophenia and later works. His intelligence, imagination and restless mind led him into uncharted waters; and he is still exploring and inspiring countless up and coming musicians. This is his own story; his difficult childhood and its repercussions later in life; and his quest to understand his own past while keeping faith with his audience.
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The Edwardian period was a great age for English fiction. Many classic novels were first published then - Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Lost World; E. M. Forster's A Room with a View and Howard's End; Conrad's Lord Jim and Nostromo; for children, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden and A Little Princess and Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill and Just So Stories; the first of Galsworthy's Forsyte novels, The Man of Property; Erskine Childers's great spy story The Riddle of the Sands; Arnold Bennett's Clayhanger, Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. But alongside these there was a wealth of other writing, much of it forgotten or half-forgotten, some of it unjustly neglected, and all of it important to the literary context in which the enduringly popular works were produced. This Companion examines the broad sweep of fiction-writing from 1900 to the outbreak of the First World War - a time when novels in Britain were produced more cheaply, and read more widely, than ever before. There's over 800 author-entries as well as articles on individual books, literary periodicals and general topics. With the new century came fiction from new sources, which explored new subjects and was read by new audiences. An unprecedented number of women began to publish - they represent nearly half the author-entries here - though many of them chose to do so under noms de plume. Genres such as spy stories, Ruritanian romance and detective fiction were invented or suddenly came into their own, each with its following of readers. Significant social developments and themes can be traced both in the Companion at large and via the topic entries, which for the first time allow readers to explore all the novels in a particular genre.
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The son of W.E. (Bill) Harney, the legendary writer and story-teller and Ludi Yibuluyma, a Waradaman woman, Yidumduma Bill Harney had little contact with his father. Instead, he was brought up straddling both heritages learning the traditional Aboriginal way of of life and the white man's way. Yidumduma Bill witnessed horrific acts such as cattle station owners poisoning Aborigines and welfare officers seizing part-Aboriginal children. His own sister Dulcie was taken by the authorities and he narrowly escaped the same fate. Years later, he had to fight to keep his own sons. Bill has seen the disintegration of the traditional Aboriginal way of life and the end of the livelihood of stockmen and drovers. Shocking stories of casual cruelty and violence sit alongside the tales of the Dreamtime, graphic details of the bush tucker of his childhood and hilarious yarns about drunken drovers, crafty poddy-dodgers and miserable publicans.
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In 100 years of polar exploration, no-one had ever walked from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole and back without any support. Many had tried. None had succeeded. Until, on 26th January 2012, James Castrission - Cas - and Justin Jones - Jonesy - made history by completing the longest unsupported polar journey of all time. Following in the footsteps of the great polar explorers like Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and Mawson, they battled frostbite, physical and mental breakdown, starvation, blizzards and crevasse falls. After 89 gruelling days they made it back to the coast more dead than alive. This is the inspiring story of two Australian adventurers who realised an almost impossible dream. With honesty and humour, Castrission outlines their preparation, the rich history of past explorers who inspired their efforts and takes the reader along on their daring expedition, showing what can be achieved through hard work, tenacity and mateship. Illustrated with colour photographs.
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The sequel to My Sunburnt Childhood. Having grown up on the massive Killarney cattle station near Katherine, NT, Toni Tapp Coutts was well prepared when her husband, Shaun, took a job at McArthur River Station in the Gulf Country, 600 kilometres away near the Queensland border. Toni became cook, counsellor, housekeeper and nurse to the host of people who lived on McArthur River and the constant stream of visitors. She made firm friends, created the Heartbreak Ball and started riding campdraft in rodeos all over the Territory, becoming one of the NT's top riders. In the midst of this busy life she raised three children and saw them through challenges; dealt with snakes in her washing basket; kept in touch with her large, sprawling Tapp family: and fell deeply in love with the Gulf Country.
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A complicated childhood in Australia, a bold move to London, being a woman in a man's world on Not the Nine O'Clock News, becoming Mrs Billy Connolly, motherhood, career changes and then Strictly Come Dancing - told in her own inimitable style, The Varnished Untruth is Pamela Stephenson's own story: a challenging story and one that can only engender respect and admiration. Illustrated with colour and black and white photographs.
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This is big country, the outback, home to the largest cattle and sheep stations in the world. Yet as these properties are closed to visitors, few of us know what goes on behind the farm gate. So what's life really like when next door is 500 kilometres away, and mustering livestock in their tens of thousands, backbreaking physical labour, and dealing with extreme heat and long hours is all in a day's work? And why would these tough stockmen and women not have it any other way? Evan McHugh gets behind the wheel of his four-wheel drive to find out. Given special access to these properties, Evan goes behind the scenes at Adria Downs in the dead heart of Central Australia, helps drove cattle from the air at Wave Hill and gets a lesson in trapping dingoes at the remote Commonwealth Hill station. Following in the footsteps of the pioneering greats, Evan reveals the fascinating history of these outback stations, and what it takes to work on one today.
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