Two Marriages: From Paradise into Hell and Back Again

In Two Marriages: From Paradise to Hell and Back Again, Jette tells the story of her journey through love and heartbreak. The first third of the book is written from the perspective of a narrator and details Jette’s career, social life, and the betrayal by her first husband. The last two thirds, written by Jette in the first person, is a tribute to her second husband, Ernest Edward John Paradine, a former Major of the British Royal Artillery, who was honored by the Queen in 1981 with an MBE. Jette recounts the couple’s move to England and her experiences travelling with Ernest to India, Pakistan, Brunei, Singapore, and Jordan. Along the way, the reader learns of Ernest’s family secrets and Jette’s love for England and classical music. The book is a true love story and a glimpse into life in ‘third world countries’ from 1988 to 2000, with unbelievable coincidences playing a role in both Jette and Ernest’s lives.

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.

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.

Last Touch

Dean Jamieson was murdered on 04/04/2006, leaving an irreplaceable void in the lives of those who held him dear. Dean's mother, Josephine, pens a devastating novel that is a deeply intimate and personal examination of the life and death of her child and the grief that accompanies such a loss.Jamieson critiques the landscape following an untimely death; the support of the social sector and the police, the role of the media and reportage and the effect on family.Jamieson's prose, whilst at times visceral, portrays the emotional weight of burying a child but offers, amongst the darkness, hope. This is a work, whilst being intimate, that transcends the personal and offers solidarity to those who have suffered the loss of a loved one.

Don't Worry, He Doesn't Bite

The vets on TV are always depicted as perfect clinicians, with sunshine and rainbows bursting out from their individual patients. But what media companies fail to show you are the more ‘uncommon’ cases, like a dog eating some used condoms, for example. This book aims to rectify this perception, specifically taking the reader on a journey through what life is like graduating as a veterinary surgeon. You will read about some pretty stupid cases my colleagues and I have experienced, all of which are true, though I must admit, I do have a habit of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story. So, sit back, relax, and take a break from this mundane existence we call life, as I show you the world through the eyes of a newly graduated veterinary surgeon.

Maxamillion the Great

Drawing on countless real-life stories from his embattled life, Maxamillion the Great is a captivating and moving autobiography told in the only way it could be, through the eyes of his beloved owner, author Barbara Goodier.

Taking the reader through the lows of his joyless puppyhood into the highs of his new found family, it persuades us to revisit the idea that miracles really do exist and sometimes even more than once.

Creative in its narration and affecting in its story, it will move you to re-evaluate what is important in your own life, will make you cry when you least expect it and lay bare the unbreakable bond between a dog and his mum.

The Dublin Marilyn House

Jackie Devoy, the ‘Dublin Marilyn,’ invites you into her vibrant world filled with color, passion, and a touch of Hollywood glamour. In The Dublin Marilyn House, Jackie shares her inspiring journey of self-discovery, resilience, and the pursuit of dreams.

From her humble beginnings in Dublin’s inner city to her adventures on reality TV and her unique Marilyn Monroe-themed homes, Jackie’s story is a testament to the power of embracing individuality and finding joy in life’s unexpected turns. With heartwarming anecdotes, design tips, and a sprinkle of Irish charm, this book will leave you feeling uplifted, inspired, and ready to create a life as colourful as Jackie’s.

More Than Music

This is the third part of a joint autobiographical trilogy based on the letters and diaries of two professional singers Christopher Davies and Barbara Kendall-Davies. It also relates to their young son, Giles and his blossoming career as a singer.

There is a good deal of music, of course but also many unexpected and divergent paths as well, including a major Hollywood movie. 

Not What The Good Fairy Promised

Twenty-four-year-old Joanna’s life flipped upside down at the taking of a phone call. News of her sister’s near-death in a fire triggered the onset of bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that Joanna would have to manage for the rest of her life.

A scholarship to Cambridge, with three years to get her degree, had ended in this. Joanna’s high hopes, and her father’s fierce ambitions for her, now lay in tatters. A glowing future of any description lay beyond her grasp as she struggled to get to grips with her new and utterly foreign reality. Where was she going in life now?

Not What the Good Fairy Promised is the heart-warming story of a young woman’s experience of terrifying breakdown, psychiatric hospital, and the stigma of mental illness. There is the battle with everyday life, with its frightening demand that she re-discover her identity – her selfhood – while struggling to survive and earn a living, yearning for something worthwhile to fill the hours of nine to five. This is a tale of experiencing, and overcoming, serious mental illness, of driving ahead to forge a new and unlooked for future – and what the Good Fairy did deliver.

Sailing Through Life...

When Nick Ardley asked for a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test, the aftershocks of a prostate cancer diagnosis were momentous. Frightened, he said he was too young to die. Petrified, he understandably broke down. But all was not lost: his family and the boat shared with his wife were soon at work repairing his life.

A life-long sailor, the salt marsh fringed waters of the greater Thames estuary had always enthralled, and it was to them he went for healing. It’s a place where in the free flow of a saline breeze his mind cleared, and he began treating it all as just another little illness. Like a cold, he said, knowing full well it wasn’t! Sailing up the River Thames, he announced to his wife his choice of the medical directions offered. Later, after mooring off Gravesend, both cried together.

Ardley’s treatment overlapped the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, the serious stuff was done and dusted. The pandemic brought new trials. The couple were frighteningly threatened by a fellow yachtsman who disliked an Ardley web blog … the horror of that summer has remained fresh.

Throughout the telling of Ardley’s tales, his story, sailing with family and friends, country walking and living life, he has maintained a normality. Perhaps a familiar story, but it comes with a warning: Men, get yourselves tested before it’s too late!

So, onwards he goes, sailing through life…

Seascapes of a Soul: Wholeness and the Sense of Self

The search for self-knowledge and identity is a common theme in autobiographies these days. So also is the search for a spirituality other than that of the conventional religions. Both are found in Seascapes of a Soul: Wholeness and the Sense of Self. This book is an account of a unique spirit on an often solitary journey. With clear argumentation and transparent honesty, this author presents a story that reaches towards individuation, gained partly through discovering C.G. Jung’s ideas about the psyche.
Several themes recur: the onset of old age, Jungian individuation, solitude and aloneness, mood swings, a rejection of orthodox religion, a love for the natural world, an interest in gnosticism, the inner sense of the Divine. Her relationship with her twin sister is also prominent. There is light and dark here: the ups and downs of living with a twin.
In rejecting the Christianity she grew up with she followed an innate urge to a spirituality that ultimately arose from the strong sense of self she had had from an early age. If this has a name it would be ‘gnostic’ because it is a perception of inner divinity, the God within.
This is a woman’s story with a difference. Although, unlike so many, she did not have to struggle through a life of disadvantage and deprivation, she did have to wrestle with a powerful self that sometimes wandered up blind alleys into ego. But she learned to accept mistakes and incorporate them into what Einstein called a ‘calm and modest life’.
Images of the sea, symbols of the unconscious, run through the book. The ‘seascapes’ at the head of each chapter function in the story as a leitmotif for the modes and moods of the spirit.

Thank You for My Dinner, May I Get Down Please?

The author always enjoyed a sense of freedom, whether roaming around the Somerset countryside as a child or later on, living offshore with her husband and three daughters on a boat. She considers nothing strictly ‘out of bounds’, and for seventy years no-one has stopped her in her tracks. Thank You for My Dinner really sums up the dichotomy of her life – an upbringing steeped in Victorian-based principles and the free license to go her own way, which was generous even by twenty-first century standards.

This is the story of Celia’s early life coupled with a trip down the river, never completely grown up, always looking for adventure, not anticipating danger, but keeping a sense of fun and a smile through various struggles – and surviving enough to say ‘thank you’ at the end.