-
Lucky Dip
After an improbable beginning, Richard Thomas’s diplomatic career took him to some unlikely places, like Bhutan where his motor-scooter spawned an aid programme, or twenty thousand feet up in Robert Maxwell’s private jet buying up post-communist Bulgaria, or a NATO base in the North Atlantic to await the arrival of Satan, or to tea round the fire in Downing Street with a government minister and a mounted policeman, or to a wooden hut in West Africa where he, now persona non grata, and his Australian girlfriend, Catherine, managed to get married on the fringes of a dictator’s last-gasp political rally.
But it was not all beer and skittles. There were run-ins with secret policemen in communist Eastern Europe, encounters with horrific conditions in post-communist so-called orphanages where Catherine kick-started a new, humane approach to physical and cognitive disability in children and adults, deliberate cultivation of the dissidents who would supplant a communist dictatorship and a close-up view of Europe’s biggest displacement of people since the Second World War, the result of Bulgaria’s ethnic cleansing of a tenth of its own population in 1989 barely noticed by western governments or media.
All this, and much more, is recounted by someone who reckons that he struck lucky in the diplomatic dip.
£3.50 -
Margaret: Daughter of Destiny
“The damage done tonight will resound down the generations!”
These words, spoken in anger by an outraged mother in the year 1904, will prove prophetic. Fourteen years later, a child enters the world, innocent, yet blighted by the repercussions of a distant crime, committed on a summer night, in remote Western Australia. From the beginning, the odds are stacked against Margaret as she is robbed of her childhood.
In due course, Margaret reaches adulthood and to her horror, finds herself powerless to prevent the outcome she most dreads. The malevolent forces of destiny reach down to a further generation and into the lives of her children.
This story is a tribute to the courage and tenacity of a mother’s love. It plays out against the backdrop of a period spanning two world wars, a great depression and the dawn of a new millenium. Through all of this, Margaret faces the additional challenges of being a single mother in an unforgiving era.
The story follows the relentless power of generational forces, pitted against the strength of the human spirit. It relives one woman’s heroic struggle to change the future. Margaret forges a path – ultimately – to release and redemption.
Margaret’s story is told by the person who shared so closely in this journey of struggle and redemption: her daughter.
£3.50 -
Moonlight and Roses
The year is 1934 and Albert, a singer, meets Dorothy, a pianist, because another pianist has broken his thumb. As children they had grown up during the First World War and had known the Depression, but they were young and life was full of music. They married in 1936 and their daughter, Barbara, was born in 1937. Life looked good but Albert was an Army reservist and was called up at the outbreak of the Second World War. His letters to Dorothy from France form the basis of this book. Fortunately, he survived Dunkirk and was posted to Stars in Battledress, entertaining the troops for the duration of the war.
The book shows the privations on the Home Front and the morale of the British people despite the dangers and hardships of war. Life was no easier after the war, but with the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the New Look, colour came back into everyone's life. The Festival of Britain in 1951 was the icing on the cake. And with the National Health Service being created and new homes being built, the dark days were past and life could only get better.
£3.50 -
More in Hope Than Glory
Football is a game that is loved throughout the world at every level. It’s a game that is all-encompassing whether it be the enjoyment of a kick about in the local park or the magnificent spectacle of a World Cup final. Well, this is a football story that lies somewhere between those two extremes, and to be honest more towards the bottom end of the spectrum.
This is a light-hearted true story of a young lad who used to walk four miles to the ground of the team he loved for every home game, and then grew up to become its chairman. It tells of the many highs and even more lows of running a lower league football club. It recounts the hopes and aspirations of every football supporter, followed by the inevitable kick-in-the-stomach feeling when it all falls down. It’s about love and passion for football in a proud northern town.
More in Hope Than Glory is the story of how what was once regarded as one of the most unsuccessful league football teams suddenly and dramatically became a little less unsuccessful.
£3.50 -
My Career and Times in the London Boroughs, the Soviet Union and Ceausescu's Romania
It is strange how events happen in one’s life, almost as ordained. From perfectly respectable and responsible positions in local government; then, by fate, facing a 3-month trial at the Old Bailey; afterwards, a short time back in local government; then, almost out of the blue, living and working in the then Soviet Union and, afterwards, in communist Romania. Unique and fascinating experiences only possible to happen for a short time, as countries change and develop as time goes by.
This book tells how Brian Edwards survived all of the above, having experienced events outside the imagination of most people, which, at the same time, were both extremely pleasurable and also very difficult.
£3.50 -
Otto Papesch
Otto Papesch was my father. I was four years old when he died. I asked myself for years what kind of a human being he was. I have attempted to paint a picture of that handsome, charismatic, cultivated, professional chemical engineer, enthusiastic sportsman, photographer and family man by basing myself on the vast correspondence that still exists, his diary of 1917, stories about him from my mother and grandparents and the innumerable photos he took over the years. This has been an attempt to describe his prominent characteristics but also shed light on his dilemmas and the contradictions in his personality and thereby to describe the important events of his short life. Would his destiny have been different had he been born a year later?
£3.50 -
Our Mothers
This book contains a collection of stories written by a group of friends who met during school and university days. Rarely celebrated, these short stories are about their mothers. While these women were from different backgrounds and some were born, or lived their early lives, in different countries, they shared some things in common. They were British by either birth or ancestry. They were middle class and they were young mothers during the latter part of World War 2, or shortly thereafter. They lived in Canberra during the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s – longer in some cases – and contributed to the social life of the growing city in a variety of ways.
£3.50 -
Peter Wyngarde: A Life Amongst Strangers
FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, THE LIFE STORY OF ONE OF THE GREAT TELEVISION AND STYLE ICONS Peter Wyngarde: the name elicits memories of an actor with worldwide renown and instantly adhesive star quality, who was to hit his professional zenith via his starring roles in the smash hit TV series, Department S, and its equally successful spin-off, Jason King. However, when this imperial phase of his career took a downturn during the mid-1970s, he stoically dusted himself off and returned to the theatre--the scene of so many of his earliest triumphs. There he enjoyed continued success until a late-period revival came with the role of General Klytus in the 1980 blockbuster, Flash Gordon. Ordinarily, this book would end there. The fact that it doesn't reveals an unusual dichotomy: it splits Wyngarde's life into two, almost equal, parts. From the late 1980s, the author came into his orbit as the long yearned-for, missing piece of the puzzle: namely a strong, dependable sounding board and, increasingly, his soulmate. To those who have been content to view Wyngarde as a two-dimensional figure on a TV screen, or merely as the subject of media gossip, this book will come as a revelation--and no doubt a startling one, as it will shatter many long-held myths and preconceptions. And yet in spite of her closeness to the subject, the author has refused to place him on a pedestal: her exploration of his life and career is as honest as it is eye-opening. While she does not shy away from Wyngarde's more difficult characteristics and painful life experiences, the thread running through the book is a story of love and devotion that is deeply touching and ultimately heart-wrenching. "This is an intimate biography that is elegantly crafted, intensively researched, and presented with the utmost honour." Steven Berkoff
£3.50 -
Prove It All Night
Can there be anything more uplifting than a great rock concert?
A concert where words like brilliant, fantastic, superb, amazing and incredible can never do it justice. They don’t even come close.
If you are blessed to have seen that one special gig that actually changed your life, a gig that you wished had never come to an end, then maybe, just maybe, you’ve been in the presence of greatness.
A night to remember that will never fade from your memory, however long you live. It’s as fresh today as it was all those years ago. It was a rock and roll epiphany.
£3.50 -
Rebels 79: The Iconoclast, the Prophet, the Commando and the Bleeding Heart
Some people just own it. What is it? Transcendent charisma and the ability to articulate the unsung. In the 1970s, four musicians blurred the lines between the sacred and the profane. Come journey from Lagos and Kingston to New York City and London to live inside the raw imagination of that decade.
£3.50 -
Saving Grace
Saving Grace explores a century-old mystery about shame and madness in one Queensland family. Told with prim reluctance that her great aunty, Grace Baynes, went insane when her fiancé married her younger sister, the author seeks to know the truth. What really happened to Grace and why? Dramatically told just as Erica discovered it piece by piece, the family story she reconstructs is as engrossing as it is edifying. The narrative blends evidence taken from historical and medical records with contemporary psychiatric opinion to produce a compelling account of vulnerability and unconditional love in the life of Grace Clement Baynes. A woman lost to her family. A woman lost to herself.
£3.50 -
Sermons and Addresses
When a respected scholar with a career at three major American universities moves to a position as principal of an important institution in UK, there is likely to be considerable interest in what he has to say not only to his students, but to many others as well. The two most important formats for such communication were the sermon and the academic lecture. Historically, the sermon has been an extremely important form of communication, first as verbal communication to a specific group of listeners, and then as a written text made available to many more readers. Marc Saperstein was a member of Beth Shalom Reform Congregation in Cambridge, where religious services were directed and sermons delivered not by the rabbi of the synagogue – which never had a rabbi – but by members of the congregation. During the five years from 2006-2011, Marc Saperstein delivered 29 sermons in Beth Shalom. He also was asked to deliver sermons at 15 other congregations. The texts of these sermons are now accessible in the book.
£3.50