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Waiting in the Wings
Completely without any professional qualifications, Brian Hutchinson had 31 different jobs during a long working life. From acrobat to special advisor to a cabinet minister; all completely unplanned through opportunity knocks! Brian (Hutch) Hutchinson: Acrobat, Musician (Sax/Clarinet), one of the youngest Justices of the Peace at Inner London Juvenile Courts, Civil Servant, Special Advisor to Cabinet Minister, Music Business Executive, Theatrical Agent, Recording Studio Partner, Record Factory MD, Director Brixton Business Centre, Board Member Brixton City Challenge, General Manager on secondment The Princess Diana Memorial Fund, Patron Macmillan Academy Teesside, Independent Assessor for Commissioner for (Ministerial) Public Appointments, Corporate Affairs Director Allied Zurich Plc, Chair UK Trustees International Fund for Animal Welfare, Former Trustee National Centre for Circus Arts. Taken out of school at 15 years old to join my Father’s troupe of acrobats on tour with Boswell’s Circus in Southern Africa; I was untrained as an acrobat and learned the basics on the two weeks’ boat journey from Southampton to Cape Town. I also played alto Sax and Clarinet in the circus band. I guess I’m an entrepreneur; it was easier in the 1950s–1970s to succeed without formal qualifications such as a university degree or even a couple of A Levels. I was also one of the youngest JPs in the Inner London Juvenile Courts thanks to advice from the Master of then Rolls and support from Lady (Elspeth) Howe.
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Weed Out the Scumbags: The Art of Finding Your Soulmate
This book is a testament to the knowing that soulmates do usually find each other, in one way or another, as the universe deems. The author’s story is meant to enlighten and give credence to those who are desperate to encounter their one and only soulmate. Your soulmate is very likely to appear, but the catch is to sometimes make it happen on your own—as this author has done. Had she not ‘bit the bullet’ by taking certain actions to bring her soulmate to her—unbeknownst to him—this book might not have been written. Her tactics were clear and steadfast, and her story is evidence to her truth that almost anyone can find their soulmate, anywhere in the world. She did. Why not you?
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Welcome to My Fabulous Sh*tshow
Welcome to My Fabulous Sh*tshow embraces the power of being yourself and yielding your sword of soul to conquer the battlefield that is life as a woman and a mother.
It pays tribute to the amazing super troopers in your life who not only love and support you but are in the trenches just in case you call for backup. They will catch you, prop you up and send you back out to battle in your gorgeous stilettos!
Armed with eyelash and hair extensions plus a splash of impatience that only a single woman can have whilst juggling kids and a career, this book takes delight in showcasing how being in your mid-40s can also mean that you are in your prime time and life is only just beginning.
Learn how self-discovery is a journey for the brave or for those who like to cringe. Was it through trying to work out a brand after being described as Bridget Jones meets Carrie Bradshaw?
Is it from becoming a newly appointed student of the universe (with Google as a professor) or testing the philosophies of drama and love or even seeking answers about parallel universes?
Perhaps it was trying to find answers from undertaking a sexual energy cleanse, rebuilding an ‘empire’ after having a squashed heart or is it the struggle to date men of the same age.
This fabulous sh*tshow takes a humorous and curious look at living beyond your expectations and at how things in life just happen as they are supposed to.
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When East Met West
The path from a refugee’s child to a chairman of the board of a large company leads the author to a variety of people and unforgettable experiences. Hansjuergen Nelde experiences multiple political systems: born in national socialism, he grows up in socialism and is imprinted by the later GDR. To live and work in socialism for 40 years means adaptation to avoid being left behind. The author experiences the German unification as a managing director of a large pharmaceutical company. With that began in the now re-united Germany a much stricter capitalism than the FRG had ever seen before the fall of the wall. Thanks to his competency, Nelde manages to become the chairman of the board of his entrusted company that had transformed from a people’s-owned company (VEB) to a publicly listed company (AG). He meets many important politicians and actively shapes the new Germany. His memories come together in short stories and anecdotes behind the political background.
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When the Knives Rattle in the Drawer
Ryan Tanner is an average family man battling alcohol and the demons from his childhood, while struggling as a husband and a father. Drowning in a life that often makes no sense, he turns to an insightful, no-nonsense psychologist as a last resort to try and save his volatile, but altogether beautiful marriage with his beloved wife Tess. Surrounded by Ryan’s drinking, memories of their traumatic childhoods and the gut-wrenching lows of married life, When the Knives Rattle in the Drawer is a cathartic recount about understanding the damage that life can cause and searching for the strength to be the best partner and parent possible.
Set in two different worlds, the story evolves between the couple’s small-town family life and wild, alcohol fuelled nights in the inner suburbs of Sydney. After meeting at 17 years old, they have been married for 23 years and play a simple game: 20 questions, ask anything you want. They explore every aspect of trust, love, fidelity and desire before they go to the club. A club where they enter a world of primal sexual energy, a world where wild things happen.
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When ‘Will’ is More Than ‘Won’t’ - Your Journey Begins
I’ve always been a dreamer, wanting more from life than it was giving me, whilst still making the best of what it did.
I never thought in my darkest moments, or wildest dreams, that one day I would, with my partner of ten years David, find myself in a Land Rover we called Lizzybus driving around the world.
If I had imagined this, it would have been nothing like the reality of it, of blistering hot desserts, snow-covered mountains, civil wars, and uprisings, with our life depending on each other and Lizzybus.
From the very first moment I stepped foot on African soil, I wrote about the reality of living two feet from your other half 24 hours a day. The intimacy, hygiene, isolation, and loneliness, so far removed from my life to this point. But slowly, without even realizing it, it became part of me, and me it, seeing only the wonder, the joy, and the privilege.
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White Is Black
A patient’s journey in intensive care always starts like a tennis ball landing on top of the net, at the tipping point. Not only for the one in the bed.
Doctor Apfelstein, a specialist in the field, recounts his rise and fall; from flamboyance to custody; from the sleaziest north-east suburb of Paris where he may have killed some of his guests, to the jungle of Harley Street, and finally the flatlands of Norfolk.
He portrays the darkest recesses of his trade, the fleeting nature of life and love, and the blessings of all sorts of music: the soothing drug he needs.
When his own tennis ball lands on top of the net that separates oblivion from memories, at the tipping point, he has chosen his side. Memories. His way.
Translated from French by Brigid Purcell, PhD in European Literature, assisted by Philippe Grunstein, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London), Associate Professor of Medicine, for specific vocabulary of Respiratory Medicine and Intensive care.
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White Light
Meet Andy Kent.
Husband, dad, businessman and survivor of death.
This is the story of a person’s life – the story of a life fully lived, a life touched by many others and a life that has made a difference. It hasn’t been plain sailing, and many lessons have been hard-learned along the way. From a cerebral haemorrhage he should not have survived to an impossible fund-raising walk spanning the length of the country, discover the incredible true story of a man whose mission it is to help others, whatever the cost.
Love, loss, and life combine in this inspiring account of a man who has always refused to give up, and whose determination has helped so many people.
This is Andy Kent’s story so far…
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Who Do You Think You Are?
This is at once a personal memoir and the story of what it is like to grow up and live alienated from the values of the society into which one was born. In the deeply fissured modern world, many now find themselves similarly in places where rival ideologies and interests are tearing their worlds apart. This is an account of how awareness of such a world reveals itself. In South Africa apartheid succeeded in enshrining its own particular values in law. But the roots of what had brought its monstrosity into being have never been confined to South Africa. They remain plain to see in the world today: intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism – xenophobia, racism, nationalism.
In this memoir, Hitler’s installation as German Chancellor and the rise of Nazism leads directly to the author’s early sense of not belonging: a growth in awareness of the reasons for the feeling and acute sensibility to the rifts and fractures lying beneath the surface of a comfortable domestic life. It clarifies how personal beliefs may become diametrically opposed to those of the society to which one belongs by birth. So the question of identity quickly arises: ‘Where do I fit in? Who am I?’ It was this that many Whites asked themselves in apartheid South Africa, but it is also one that increasingly must be asked by many today.
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Wild Colonial Boy
This autobiographical novel narrates the journey of Dan Docherty, a young Glasgow law graduate and karate black belt, who left his traditional Catholic family in 1975 to serve in the notoriously corrupt Royal Hong Kong Police.
In Hong Kong, he learned Chinese language intensively, then drill, musketry and law. A famous Tai Chi master accepted him as a disciple and trained him to become an international full contact champion.
In this book we’ll have a few beers with colourful characters like Big Don and Mountie Dave. We’ll visit exotic locales—Manila, Macao, Singapore… We’ll witness Dan in full contact competition and in street fight action. As they say in the Hong Kong Police, “If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.”
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Witness To History
For almost fifty years, Mohinder Dhillon was one of Africa’s foremost news cameramen and documentary filmmakers. This book is both a personal memoir and a photographic record of the many remarkable events he covered over the course of an extraordinary career – events that were to change the course of history.
This book is much more than a collection of photographs. It offers fascinating insights into the behaviour of contemporary African leaders: Emperor Haile Selassie, Jomo Kenyatta, William Tubman, Julius Nyerere, Milton Obote, Idi Amin, Col. Gamel Nasser, Léopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Muammar Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe among them. Mohinder’s encounters with these and other leading figures of the day took place against the backdrop of the Cold War proxy conflicts that were then tearing Africa apart.
While primarily a vivid eye-witness account of the many turbulent events that shaped Africa during and immediately after the colonial era, this wide-ranging memoir also documents events that Mohinder filmed in South Yemen, Vietnam and elsewhere in the world.
To the fore throughout is Mohinder’s deep and abiding sense of compassion, both in his approach to photojournalism and as a committed humanitarian.£30.99 -
You Know You Love It
This is the true story of one aspiring band’s out-of-control, flat spin and predictable nosedive into rock ‘n’ roll obscurity. It’s a torrid, tragic yet hilarious tale that will surely strike a chord with many a band out there. Because these guys weren’t going to go down quietly, they would go kicking and screaming with a defiant, united swagger, and a firmly-raised middle finger directed at the tide of indifference, musical and cultural, of the prejudices of their times.
Share their journey as all their hopes, dreams and ambitions crash and burn, then apparently sink without trace, buried for all eternity... until now. For just like a fully preserved fossil, uncovered after nigh on a quarter of a century, their real story can at last now be retold in all its salacious detail. The filth and the fury, the divisions and the dirt, exposed and relayed just as ye gods of rock would have decreed. It’s a very personal, honest, warts an’ all account drawn from the diary entries of the band’s frontman and lead vocalist, Matt Fielder.
Through all the ups and downs, tears, beers and occasional cheers of life in an outmoded, but still gigging heavy rock band in the 1990s. From its humble beginnings to its ill-fated ‘Storm over London’ tour and inevitable demise, It’s raw, it’s raucous, it’s rock ‘n’ fucking roll… and you know you are going to love It!
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