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You Don't Have to Be a Champion... to Be a Winner!
From fitting wheels to wheelbarrows in a builders’ merchant, Brian rapidly climbed the business ladder and became a Xerox salesman. He was unaware that the professional selling skills he was learning would one day propel him into the glamorous and overtly commercial world of F1.
A disastrous debut at a racing driver school was the spark that lit his passion for motor racing. Aware of the need for some serious financial backing to be able to take part, Brian embarked on a variety of highly innovative and often extremely entertaining ways of securing sponsorship, including working with the cast of a top 1970s’ BBC sit-com, as well as with John Cleese, of Monty Python fame.
A chance meeting on a plane with Max Mosley offered an opportunity of managing one of the most popular F1 Grand Prix circuits. This, in turn, led to the heady heights of a factory drive for Mercedes and the establishment of South Africa’s first racing driver school.
It was only a matter of time before Brian’s exceptional sponsorship-acquisition skills took him to F1, where he quickly made a name for himself by securing multi-million pound deals with three of the most sought after global corporations.
However, Brian’s greatest achievement in motorsport was to establish the Motorsport Industry Association in 1994, in a bid to secure government recognition of the industry in its own right. Once again, Brian’s sales skills played a key role.
Without ever becoming a household name as a motor racing champion, Brian’s story of how he most definitely became a winner is not only inspirational, but highly entertaining, amusing, often irreverent and informative.
You Don’t Have to Be a Champion... to Be a Winner is the story of Brian Sims, who left school in 1963 with just 5 GCE O-Levels and a shattered dream of following in his father’s footsteps as a Royal Air Force pilot.
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…On a Donkey Called Elvis
This book is a panoramic view of the life of one individual growing up in the West of Ireland in the sixties and seventies. It chronicles the advances made by society, its laws and restrictions that were rooted in the past of this Catholic state.
It moves from childhood to adolescence and onto adulthood, and describes the events which shaped her life as she grappled with the very many challenges that life throws at her.
Neither defeatist nor morbid, this is, for the most part, a light-hearted description of her actions on occasions which are difficult. She takes life on its terms and becomes more confident with each passing incident.
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Endeavour to Rise – Misdemeanours, Musings, Meditations, Mistakes and Mastery
Autobiography by way of a confessional, this book is a ramble through the author’s experiences, impressions, opinions and ideas formed over seven decades. This autobiography sees the author regret her failed relationships, financial mismanagement, folly and fecklessness. It also sees her celebrate success, achievements, courage and a lifetime of service as a nurse.This book is a call for you to recognize yourself as a unique miracle of creation. It offers some cautionary tales and urges you to rid yourself of guilt, blame and shame and to think for yourself.Exploring the eternal questions about the meaning of life e.g. ‘Why are we here?’, ‘Is there a God?’ and ‘Why is there so much suffering?’, this book invites you to reflect on your own life, your truth and your reality so you can shell your emotional baggage. It can also be seen as an exercise in vanity and self-indulgence.
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All at Sea in Arctic Waters
This book is experiences of the author aboard a destroyer on the Murmansk Arctic convoys of WWII. In spite of it being related to war, the content of the book is really to show what life was like for the ordinary ratings and their tasks, not the fighting. Many of the happenings are strangely amusing, depending on how they are read. Most of the occurrences were just everyday duties or chores that somehow went wrong or were the result of naivety of the crew, most of whom had never reached the age of 20 years and were thrown into doing things they had never contemplated before. So this book is really short yarns, mostly of amusing instances of life aboard a ship at war. These yarns are short, but the book as a whole is unique in as much as it is history as far as life was concerned on small RN ships in WWII, much of which few people have ever looked into or even heard about. The author’s work dealt with intercepting messages from and locating German submarines by shortwave radio direction finding. This was specialised, little of which has ever been reported, although closely related to the work at Bletchley Park. Here it is dealt with extensively.
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An Austro-German as an Englishman. A Life, Times, and Commentaries
Through three distinct stages of his life the author narrates his compelling story through the complex and fascinating prism of an Austro-German heritage and psyche, transposed onto an English environment and upbringing. This Autobiography charts a life from 1938 till 2014 and takes stock, with forensic and contemplative detail, of 20th- and 21st-century politics and their wider implications seen today. Now in his seventies von Maltzahn looks back. The book is a living testimony to a life that has witnessed the world, its global political structure and his own immediate environment, change immeasurably. These pages serve as a personal reconciliation and a means by which to understand this ever changing world and his place within it.
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AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
On a Saturday afternoon in 2012, Ben’s life changed forever after a serious road traffic accident put him in a life-threatening situation and in an induced coma. After pulling through against all the odds, Ben had to navigate through living a normal life after surviving a traumatic brain injury. Not coming to terms with his new limitations, Ben carried on with life, keeping himself busy and throwing himself into everything that came his way. He got married, continued to work full time and had a child. It was after his daughter was born that Ben finally reached breaking point and finally asked for help. Whilst he was being treated by a local brain injury service, Ben’s life was turned upside down again with another life-changing event, putting further strain on his recovery.
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A Seasonal Footprint
My journey has been of global proportions. The sometimes spectacular, sometimes sombre, often-times splendid, at times spiritual, most times satisfying, brings perspective to the distinctive scenes each season displays. Each holds its own ‘colours’.A viewing of the ever-changing landscape emphasises the where, the what and the when. But, when the traveller pauses to reflect upon an exploration, an event, the deeper meanings of life may surface in the how and the why of personal experience. A journey becomes a pilgrimage when one’s life goal is placed in the knapsack. This book offers a personal reflection on a ‘journey’ that is still on-track to ultimate reality.
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Beef Cubes And Burdock
The rural landscape of John Phillpott’s boyhood has changed irrevocably over the last half-century.The elm – that celebrated ‘Warwickshire Weed’ of folklore – has been lost to disease, urban sprawl continues apace and motorways now disturb the tranquillity of fields that once knew only the sound of cattle, birdsong and the rumble of the farmer’s tractor.But paradise lost? Not quite, because the river flows on through the valley as it has done for millennia, the rook ‘parliaments’ can still be seen high overhead and the bells of the church that has stood on the hill looking out over the Swift Valley for a thousand years still call out to the faithful.Beef Cubes and Burdock is an affectionate glance over the shoulder back to a time when the pace of life was still dictated by the rhythm of the seasons rather than the touch of a computer keyboard.
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Broken Heart
Broken Heart tells the story of a lifelong racing cyclist with a long list of achievement who falls down to earth with a bump on receiving the news that his heart requires urgent medical attention. David has to drop his lifelong passion and come to terms with the realisation that he will need to undergo open-heart surgery. Shock, fear, and denial are just some of the emotions he has to work through.David tells the story of how he dealt with life-threatening moments and the anxieties this news brought him, as well as the adventurous and unexpected events which unfold in the months following open-heart surgery.
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Driving in Reverse - The Life I Almost Missed
Author Lindsay Wincherauk is down on his luck and headed for midlife collapse. Working two dismal jobs to pay his trendy Yaletown rent, grieving the sudden loss of two friends and family members, and dumped by the love of his life – Lindsay looks for the nearest exit. He decides on a whim to escape to Europe with his buddy Dave. By a twist of fate, his life turns completely upside down when he attempts to renew his passport and discovers he’s the main character in a dark family secret. Reeling from the shock, Lindsay grabs his bags and blasts through 11 countries in 31 days. Wincherauk’s story moves at breakneck speed as the author describes his flight through pain and madness, spinning into surreal side trips where he meets an inferno of wild characters. Back in Vancouver, while driving a suicidal man to work, a light goes on and Lindsay knows what he must do: write his story. He’s come precariously close to self-destructing and knows that until the hidden pieces of his life are uncovered, something would be missing. Writing his way through the dark chapters, with wit and candour, he breaks through to the other side – “reborn”.
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Fear, Hunger and Hope
As World War II drew to a close, the German city of Goerlitz became divided along its river; the right bank assimilated into Communist Poland and the left bank into remaining Germany before eventually becoming part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).Christa-Sheila Duggal was born here a few years before, in 1937. She writes of her formative years under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party and how it impacted her and her family.As her family attempted to piece together their lives after the turmoil of the war, Duggal returned to school to a new message from teachers about the marvels of communism; her city by then was divided more than merely the river which ran through it.In Fear, Hunger and Hope, Duggal uses an intriguing blend of memories and anecdotes and a keen eye for historical fact to craft this fascinating memoir of a childhood lived in a turbulent, divided city. It is a truly unique, first-hand chronicle of 20th century history.
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From Rehab to Life
Whether in or out of trouble, please say this serenity prayer on a daily basis: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." Thy will be done.
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