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Beatrix Potter lived a modest, unsensational and private life. The first few decades were spent in being governess-taught at home and with few friends outside of her brother and extended family and in being the dutiful daughter. She loved to study nature and became a very good natural scientist - but by 1897, Beatrix was 31 and searching for more independent activities, wishing to earn some money of her own while dutifully taking care of her parents, dealing with her especially demanding mother as well as managing their various households. From painting natural botanical specimens she progressed to fantasy pictures of animals and thence to the book that became the classic Tale Of Peter Rabbit. And the rest - of course - is history. This biography was only made possible with the assistance of her family friends - the tale of the creator behind the perennial animal stories beloved by generations of children. Includes four colour plates and sixteen black and white photographs. -
Joan Baez, the undisputed Queen of Folk, was catapulted to fame after her appearance at the 1958 Newport Folk Festival. Here, she not only tells her story, but the story of the changing social history of her time, from the smoke-filled coffee houses of the 1950s to the Vietnam war protests, Woodstock and beyond. -
The tale of the White Star Liner Oceanic which struck a remote reef of Shetland and sank in 1914, just after the outbreak of World War One. This 'Queen of the Seas' was more magnificently luxurious than her famous sister Titanic. It is remarkable that the disaster was scarcely heard of at the time and is now all but forgotten; but it was wartime; secrecy was paramount and the line had been taken over by the Royal Navy and had become the armed cruiser HMS Oceanic, yet still retaining its grand marble bathrooms, gilt carvings, gold-plated fittings and stained glass domes. The cause of the disaster is classic - there were two captains; one naval and the other merchant navy, although the naval officer was in supreme command. The ship was on patrol off the north coast of Scotland; the navigator was miles out in in his estimate of of its position on September 8 and when the mist cleared, instead of being well south and west of the isle of Foula, the ship was east of it and heading straight for the terrible Shaalds reef. After that, mistake piled on mistake - the bow struck and the tide pushed the ship further onto the reef; and the giantess was poised briefly before breaking up and sinking. A remarkable salvage operation of the Oceanic was achieved in 1974. -
Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky was already a successful writer in the early 1940s and living in Paris. She was also Jewish and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. She intended Suite Française to be a five-part novel but at the time of her death, she had only completed the first two parts. The handwritten manuscripts were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. A Storm In June: In the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival - some try to maintain lives of privilege, others struggle simply to preserve their lives - but soon they will be forced to face physical and emotional displacement and the annihilation of the world they know. Dolce: Life in a German-occupied provincial village becomes increasingly complex and uneasy as the villagers - from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants - cope as best they can with the soldiers billeted amongst them. Some choose resistance, others collaboration - and lives are transformed by each and every choice. Irène Némirovsky saw that true nobility and love did exist but often in the most surprising places. -
'We're happy little Vegemites, as bright as bright can be...' Who remembers Vegemite sandwiches in their school lunch boxes? Or, when you felt a bit crook, Vegemite on Sao biscuits to settle your stomach? Generations of Aussie kids have been raised on Vegemite. In 1992, Kraft produced the 70th Happy Birthday Vegemite book, full of games, memorabilia, recipes, advertisement and facts all about Vegemite. V not only stood for Vegemite - it stood for vitamins and vitality, vim and vigor! -
Sometimes Hollywood gets it wrong - that's the popular belief. Sometimes, Hollywood got it right. But did early woman emerge from the caves in an animal skin bikini, a la Raquel Welch, in One Million Years B.C.? Is the great chariot race in Ben-Hur like the real thing? Was the relationship between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn portrayed fairly? This book is divided into the Seven Ages of Hollywood, from the Creation to the Vietnam War, comparing fact - insofar as it can be ascertained - with the versions presented in Hollywood. Cover shows Charlton Heston being epically (and hopefully accurately) Moses in The Ten Commandments.
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This is Freddy and Philip's story - the true story of a couple who married during the 70 day seige of Singapore and who became prisoners of the Japanese and were interned in Changi Gaol in Singapore. With other imprisoned medical men, Dr. Philip Bloom was forced to perform miracles of improvised surgery, using anything he could lay his hands on to make artificial limbs for crippled fellow-prisoners. Freddy, an American and temporary nurse, was interred in the women's camp. Apart from sharing the suffering with 400 other women and 80 children, she fell victim to the dreaded Kampei Tai and was locked for days and nights in a 'cage' with imprisoned men. Both survived, but suffered terrible hardships. The book is their lives in the prison camps. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
Goldwyn: Arthur Marx
$15.00The incredible tale of Samuel Goldwyn, who emigrated alone to America as a teenager, became a glove salesmen and then made his way to the top of the fledgling film industry by some very questionable ways and means. Did he really ask David O. Selznick, "So, who've you got to play Scarface O'Hara?" And did he really believe that 'a verbal contract wasn't worth the paper it's printed on'? Arthur Marx shows us a Goldwyn who was a highly complex and puzzling individual. He supplies in abundance more famous Goldwynisms - and a good many stories printed here for the first time. Rich in anecdotal detail about both Goldwyn’s personal and professional life, this biography is a testament to his role as both a perfectionist in art and a founder of one of America’s great industries. The author is the son of Groucho Marx and thus had access to many of those mentioned in this biography. -
Mervyn Leroy (1900 - 1987) was the director of such epic and famous films as Waterloo Bridge, Mr. Roberts, Quo Vadis? The Wizard of Oz and the extremely scary The Bad Seed, just to name a few. He began work selling newspapers at the age of ten after his father's death. His love affair with show business began when he got a bit part in a play. He worked in vaudeville before trying his luck in Hollywood, starting as a wardrobe assistant before graduating to a job with William DeMille. He was assigned to direct Mary Astor in No Place To Go - and the rest is history, as he mingled with such film industry founders as Jesse Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, Jack Warner, Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer. He also discovered such stars as Clark Gable and Lana Turner. Illustrated with black and white photos. One for the very dedicated film buff.
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