Биографии. Мемуары [N-Z]

When 30-year-old Dean Nicholson set off from Scotland to cycle around the world, his aim was to learn as much as he could about our troubled planet. But he hadn't bargained on the lessons he'd learn from his unlikely companion.
Three months after leaving home, on a remote road in the mountains between Montenegro and Bosnia, he came across an abandoned kitten. Something about the piercing eyes and plaintive meowing of the bedraggled little cat proved irresistible. He couldn't leave her to her fate, so he put her on his bike and then, with the help of local vets, nursed her back to health.
Soon on his travels with the cat he named Nala, they forged an unbreakable bond - both curious, independent, resilient and adventurous.
Experiencing the kindness of strangers, visiting refugee camps, rescuing animals through Europe and Asia, Dean and Nala have already learned that the unexpected can be pretty amazing. Together with Garry Jenkins, writer with James Bowen of the bestselling A Street Cat Named Bob, Dean shares the extraordinary tale of his and Nala's inspiring and heart-warming adventure together.

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From Andrew Roberts, author of the bestsellers The Storm of War and Churchill: Walking with Destiny, this is the definitive modern biography of Napoleon.

Napoleon Bonaparte lived one of the most extraordinary of all human lives. In the space of just twenty years, from October 1795 when as a young artillery captain he cleared the streets of Paris of insurrectionists, to his final defeat at the (horribly mismanaged) battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon transformed France and Europe. After seizing power in a coup d'etat he ended the corruption and incompetence into which the Revolution had descended. In a series of dazzling battles he reinvented the art of warfare; in peace, he completely remade the laws of France, modernised her systems of education and administration, and presided over a flourishing of the beautiful 'Empire style' in the arts. The impossibility of defeating his most persistent enemy, Great Britain, led him to make draining and ultimately fatal expeditions into Spain and Russia, where half a million Frenchmen died and his Empire began to unravel.

More than any other modern biographer, Andrew Roberts conveys Napoleon's tremendous energy, both physical and intellectual, and the attractiveness of his personality, even to his enemies. He has walked 53 of Napoleon's 60 battlefields, and has absorbed the gigantic new French edition of Napoleon's letters, which allows a complete re-evaluation of this exceptional man. He overturns many received opinions, including the myth of a great romance with Josephine: she took a lover immediately after their marriage, and, as Roberts shows, he had three times as many mistresses as he acknowledged.

Of the climactic Battle of Leipzig in 1813, as the fighting closed around them, a French sergeant-major wrote, 'No-one who has not experienced it can have any idea of the enthusiasm that burst forth among the half-starved, exhausted soldiers when the Emperor was there in person. If all were demoralised and he appeared, his presence was like an electric shock. All shouted "Vive l'Empereur!" and everyone charged blindly into the fire.'

The reader of this biography will understand why this was so.

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A revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade.

Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months.

In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade.

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A landmark new biography that presents the man behind the many myths. The first writer in English to go back to the original European sources, Adam Zamoyski s portrait of Napoleon is historical biography at its finest.
Napoleon inspires passionately held and often conflicting visions. Was he a god-like genius, Romantic avatar, megalomaniac monster, compulsive warmonger or just a nasty little dictator?

While he displayed elements of these traits at certain times, Napoleon was none of these things. He was a man and, as Adam Zamoyski presents him in this landmark biography, a rather ordinary one at that. He exhibited some extraordinary qualities during some phases of his life but it is hard to credit genius to a general who presided over the worst (and self-inflicted) disaster in military history and who single-handedly destroyed the great enterprise he and others had toiled so hard to construct. A brilliant tactician, he was no strategist.

But nor was Napoleon an evil monster. He could be selfish and violent but there is no evidence of him wishing to inflict suffering gratuitously. His motives were mostly praiseworthy and his ambition no greater than that of contemporaries such as Alexander I of Russia, Wellington, Nelson and many more. What made his ambition exceptional was the scope it was accorded by circumstance.

Adam Zamoyski strips away the lacquer of prejudice and places Napoleon the man within the context of his times. In the 1790s, a young Napoleon entered a world at war, a bitter struggle for supremacy and survival with leaders motivated by a quest for power and by self-interest. He did not start this war but it dominated his life and continued, with one brief interruption, until his final defeat in 1815.

Based on primary sources in many European languages, and beautifully illustrated with portraits done only from life, this magnificent book examines how Napoleone Buonaparte, the boy from Corsica, became Napoleon ; how he achieved what he did, and how it came about that he undid it. It does not justify or condemn but seeks instead to understand Napoleon s extraordinary trajectory.

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"Even a name by which to be known among men, slavery had denied me." A standout among slave testimonies, the Narrative of William W. Brown provides a revealing account of life as a slave in mid-19th century Missouri. Written with harrowing clarity and heart-breaking honesty, it is a striking account of the struggle to survive under slavery and the terrifying risks run by slaves trying to escape its grasp in antebellum America.

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You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.
Born into slavery during the early nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom before he was twenty-one years old. From the moment he arrived in New York City, he felt a need to tell his story, one that mirrored so many people still enslaved in the South with no hope of escape.
As an orator and preacher, Douglass was an abolitionist, supporter of women s suffrage and staunch defender of equality for all. In his first autobiographical work, published in 1845, The Narrative of Frederick Douglass describes how he went from slave to a free man.

Серия: Collins Classics

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A new edition of the classic African American autobiography, now with with the inclusion of Douglass's other works.

The pre-eminent American slave narrative published in 1845, the Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838: how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die.

Also included in this edition are Douglass's famous oration The Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro and his only known work of fiction, the novella The Heroic Slave.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland. He changed his surname to Douglass to conceal his identity after escaping slavery in 1838 and making his way to Philadelphia and New York. Having been taught to read by the wife of one of his former owners, Douglass wrote later that literacy was his 'pathway from slavery to freedom', and in 1845 he published his instantly bestselling Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Renowned as the foremost African American advocate against slavery and segregation of his time, he repeatedly risked his own freedom as an antislavery lecturer, writer and publisher. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1895, and after lying in state in the nation's capital, was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

Серия: Penguin Classics

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The infamous literary hoax that fooled the art world

On January 8 1960, artist Nat Tate set out to burn his entire life's work. Four days later he jumped off a Staten Island ferry, killing himself. His body was never found.

When William Boyd published his biography of Abstract Expressionist Nat Tate, tributes poured in from a whole host of artists and critics in the New York art world. They toasted the troubled genius in a Manhattan launch party attended by David Bowie and Gore Vidal.

But Nat Tate never existed. The book was a hoax.

Will Boyd's biography of a fake artist is a brilliant probe into the politics of authenticity and reputation in the modern art scene. It is a playful and intelligent insight into the fascinating, often cryptic world of modern art.

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Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) was the leading female artist of the Russian avant-garde and a key figure of the modernist era. She embraced with a complete openness a wide range of artistic styles, traditions and media. From sculpture and painting, printmaking and book illustration, to fashion and innovative cinema, she applied the spirit of `everythingness' (Toutisme) to her creative practice. After gaining fame for her early experiments with abstraction, she earned further international renown for her work for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes following her emigration to Paris in 1914.
This publication will consider the entire spectrum of Goncharova's creative practice. An important focus will be her 1913 exhibition in Moscow at which she displayed over 350 paintings along with the numerous drawings, studies, prints and designs, demonstrating her prolific and prodigious talent. It will also address how Goncharova was unafraid to explore subjects in her art that were considered taboo for a gentile woman of pre-war Europe, such as the female nude, paganism and marginalised cultures. The artist caused controversy with her biblical scenes, which were rendered in intense and earthly manner that reflected her personal experiences in the period leading to the outbreak of the First World War. Her involvement in performative practices of the futurist movement in Russia went along with her own ground-breaking experiments with non-figurative forms. It was her work that largely contributed to elevating theatre design and costume-making into an art form.
Essays by leading experts and lavish illustrations will bring to a new audience the diverse work of this modernist artist whose oeuvre blazed the path of Russian avant-garde painting, ground-breaking European theatre design and modernist graphic design.

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After The Second World War, Czeslaw Milosz was exiled for many years from his home country of Poland. In Native Realm, he evokes that homeland and his years away from it; how it nurtured him and how its divisions and destruction shaped a generation. Exploring such diverse memories as a Soviet officer drinking tea with his little finger sticking out, or two Chinese girls passing, laughing, by a New York subway station, Milosz uses these to both 'bring Europe closer to the Europeans' and to capture the formative moments in his life, from his Catholic education to his time in Paris, all with his distinctive honesty, elegance and self-awareness.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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Nelson Mandela was born in a remote African village but went on to become the most influential African leader in history. This Macmillan Reader charts Mandela's journey from childhood to ANC activist. It goes on to describe his release after 27 years' imprisonment by the South African government, his role in ending Apartheid and his eventual inauguration as the first black President of South Africa.

Серия: Macmillan Readers

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Pearson English Active Readers present stories carefully written and graded across five levels for teachers of English who want to activate their students language through reading.

From original stories, classic and contemporary fiction, to film adaptations and nonfiction titles, an integrated skills approach consolidates vocabulary and develops language skills while learners experience the joy of reading.

Серия: Pearson English Active Readers

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Bear Grylls has always sought out adventure. From childhood escapades to would-record-breaking expeditions, to his infamous survival challenges, Bear has spent a lifetime in the wild.

In his autobiography, the global adventurer, Chief Scout and TV presenter reflects on the extraordinary adventures that have shaped his life. Sharing personal stories from his toughest expeditions and capturing the exhilarating reality behind some of the hairiest survival missions, Bear takes readers up mountains and across oceans, through jungles and deserts. Immersing us in the behind-the-scenes action on his celebrated television shows, and with a rare insight into his family life, Bear recounts his most death-defying and life-defining moments.

Packed with deeply personal and wildly entertaining tales, Never Give Up is a testament to the value of adventure. It celebrates the power of the wild and what it can teach us, and highlights the importance of courage, kindness and a resilient attitude - a 'never give up spirit' - to navigate the great adventure of life.

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Gareth Steel wants you to understand vets in a way you never could have before.

How it feels to watch a healed dog bound into their owner s arms. The joy of breathing life into the fluid-filled lungs of a newborn calf after a difficult labour. The satisfaction of rescuing a distressed sheep from the high-tide line.

What it s like to work 100-hour weeks for less than the minimum wage. How it can scar your soul to euthanize a beloved puppy with its grieving family beside you. The pressure of having to know such a diverse range of medicine, that one hour you can be protecting yourself from a dangerously distressed horse and the next you can be performing delicate surgery on a tiny mouse. How all these pressures have built up to the extent that vets have four times the national suicide rate, and why.

Gareth Steel has been a vet for nearly twenty years and has worked all over the UK, across both rural and city practices, dealing with all manner of household pets and farm animals. This is his fascinating raw account of just how involved the job is and the toll the extreme emotions that come with it can take, but it also a heart-warming and often humorous story of the desperate lengths we go to for the love of animals.

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Imagine going from neurologist to dermatologist, orthopaedic surgeon to obstetrician, assassin to saviour - all in one day. Welcome to the extraordinary world of veterinary medicine
In Never Work with Animals, vet Gareth Steel shares the moments of humour, horror and heroism across his 20-year career caring for creatures great and small, from bulls to stick insects.
Thought-provoking, heartwarming and often laugh-out-loud funny, this unforgettable memoir reveals what life is really like for our vets.

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Jan Thorburn. A New Zealand Adventure
Sarah and Jessica arrive in New Zealand for a holiday. They find a mobile phone in the taxi from the airport. It is Michael s mobile, but can they find him? He has messages from home are they important? Go with the girls on a New Zealand adventure.
D'Arcy Adrian-Vallance. Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was a small, quiet nun. She lived for God and helped poor people on the streets of India. She was very famous for her work. She died in 1997, but people remember her today. People in many countries love her. This is her story.
Elizabeth Laird. Dead Man's River
It is the time of the American Gold Rush. Jonas Clark loves Hetty Gray, but is too poor to marry her. People think there is gold in Dead Man's River, but they also think there are ghosts there too. Jonas tries his luck, and is successful, but not in the way he had imagined.
John Escott. Prince William
Prince William is rich, handsome and the future King of England! But in many ways he is also an ordinary teenage boy. This is the story of his life and tells you all about his school, his friends, the sports, music and fashion he likes, as well as interesting facts about the Royal Family and his mother, Princess Diana. With seven pages of full colour photographs, this is a wonderful way to learn more about the British Royal Family and in particular this shy, eighteen-year- old Prince.

Серия: Pearson English Readers

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The tragic, compelling story of the last Tsar and his family Nicholas & Alexandra is the internationally famous biography from Pulitzer prize-winner Robert Massie. Massie shows conclusively how the personal curse of the young heir's haemophilia, and the decisive influence it brought Rasputin, became fatally linked with the collapse of Imperial Russia. As an engrossing account of one of the century's most dramatic episodes - and an intimate portrait of two people caught at the centre of a maelstrom - Nicholas & Alexandra is unlikely ever to be surpassed. 'The story of the last Tsar has probably never been so powerfully - and so accurately - told' Guardian

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In 1968 Nick Drake had everything to live for. The product of a loving, creative family and a privileged background, he was not only a handsome and popular Cambridge undergraduate, but also a new signing to the UK's hippest record label, Island.
Three years later, however - having made three well-reviewed but low-selling albums - Nick had been overwhelmed by a mysterious mental illness. He returned to live in his family home in rural Warwickshire in 1971, and died in obscurity in 1974, aged just 26.
In the decades since, Nick has become the subject of ever-growing fascination and speculation. Combined sales of his records now stand in the millions, his songs are frequently heard on TV and in films, and he has become one of the most widely known and admired singer-songwriters of his generation.

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Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor s perspective, Night is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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Longlisted For The William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Prize 2020
'The definitive biography of a racing driver who won three World Championship titles' Matt Dickinson, The Times, Sports Books of the Year
'Thoroughly gripping...a fitting tribute' Justin Marozzi, Sunday Times

Niki Lauda was one of the greatest stars in motor racing - a superb driver on the track and a much-loved personality off it. From his famous rivalry with James Hunt in 1976, as depicted in the film Rush, to working with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, his career helped define modern Formula One.

Six weeks after the 1976 crash at the notorious Nurburgring that left him burned and receiving the last rites while obituaries were written, Niki Lauda stepped back into his Ferrari at Monza to defend his first World Champion title. Jackie Stewart called it 'the most courageous thing I have ever witnessed in sport'. Lauda and Hunt were playing cat-and-mouse for the championship. At the final race of the season in Japan, the weather was appalling and conditions treacherous. Lauda had a narrow lead and an agonising decision to make - high-speed drama at its best.

Following his extraordinary recovery from the accident, Lauda won the title in 1977 and again, following a return from retirement, in 1984 with McLaren. When he eventually hung up his helmet for good, he started his own airline and had to deal with the horrendous aftermath when one of his aircraft crashed, killing all 223 on board. He later returned to the sport in various management roles and successfully persuaded Lewis Hamilton to join Mercedes.

Maurice Hamilton first came across Lauda in 1971 and in this definitive biography tells his remarkable story. Based on interviews with friends, family, rival drivers and colleagues, it is a superb tribute to a brave, supremely talented and much-missed star of Formula One.

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Nikolai Gogol was one of the great geniuses of nineteenth century Russian literature, with a command of the irrational unmatched by any writer before or since. His strange tales, though often read as forceful demands for social change, were displays of the fantasies of the human spirit. In this ideal marriage of subject and critic, Nabokov analyses his endlessly inventive compatriot, focusing on the masterpieces Dead Souls, The Overcoat and The Government Inspector.

Misunderstood by his contemporaries, mishandled by theatre directors and ending his life mistreated by doctors - with medicinal leeches hanging from his exceptional nose - it took Nabokov to give Gogol, 'the oddest Russian in Russia', the critical biography he and his singular, brilliant work deserve.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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I hadn t opened the towel that contained her gum since 2013. The last person to touch it was Nina Simone, her saliva and fingerprints unsullied. The idea that it was still in her towel was something I had drawn strength from. I thought each time I opened it some of Nina Simone s spirit would vanish. In many ways that thought was more important than the gum itself.

On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave s Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone s piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, a conduit that would eventually take Ellis back to his childhood and his relationship with found objects, growing in significance with every passing year.

Nina Simone s Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.

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From the brilliantly original and critically acclaimed Sally Bayley, a literary story of working class childhood, absent or broken men and the power of literature to save and rebuild a world.

In Sally Bayley's childhood, the men were often missing. Missing because they were drunk, or out of work, or wandering. Or missing because their behaviour meant women banned them from the house.

The man who was around for Sally was Shakespeare, and he brought men with him to fill the gaps. Sally grew up with a troupe of sad kings and lonely heroes. Her mind ran away from home with Falstaff and Prince Hal, with deceivers and mavericks and geniuses.

In her signature and extraordinary style, this is Sally's story of her childhood - one lived with darkness snapping at heels, with real and imagined people passing through interchangeably, and with trauma a spiky memory to be skirted and avoided.

Inventive, literary and adventurous, this is a story of hard childhood and a testament to the way that great literature and its characters can guard an imagination against the bad.

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Jess McDonald was a true crime junkie and Line of Duty sofa sleuth with a strong sense of justice. Under a year later, thanks to a controversial new initiative, she was a detective in the London Metropolitan Police Service.

The Met Police's Direct Entry Detective scheme was aimed at turning people with no experience of the police into detectives.

When it was launched, to tackle an unprecedented recruitment crisis, over 4, 500 people, Jess included, applied.

But why, within just a year of qualifying, had the majority of Jess' cohort resigned?

No Comment is Jess' candid, eye-opening and often shocking account, exploring the reality of being a detective in the Met and responsible for 'keeping London safe for everyone'. In her incisive book she explores the challenges of life on the front line, dealing almost exclusively with serious crimes against women, and what that reveals about the Met Police now.

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Mark Hodkinson grew up among the terrace houses of Rochdale in a house with just one book. Today, Mark is an author, journalist and publisher. He still lives in Rochdale but is now surrounded by 3, 500 titles, at the last count.
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. It s about the schools, the music, the people but pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors that led the way and shaped his life. It s about a family who didn t see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who taught Mark the power of stories. It s also a story of how writing and reading has changed over the last five decades.

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In Helmand province in July 2006, Major Adam Jowett was given command of Easy Company, a hastily assembled and under-strength unit of Paras and Royal Irish rangers. Their mission was to hold the District Centre of Musa Qala at any cost. Easy Company found themselves in a ramshackle compound, cut off and heavily outnumbered by the Taliban in the town.

In No Way Out, Adam evokes the heat and chaos of battle as the Taliban hit Easy Company with wave after wave of brutal attack. He describes what it was like to have responsibility for the lives of his men as they fought back heroically over twenty-one days and nights of relentless, nerve-shredding combat. Finally, as they came down to their last rounds and death stared Easy Company in the face, the siege took an extraordinary turn...

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From the beginning of their lives, the Olivier sisters stood out: surprisingly emancipated, strikingly beautiful, markedly determined, and alarmingly 'wild'. Rupert Brooke was said to be in love with all four of them; D. H. Lawrence thought they were frankly 'wrong'; Virginia Woolf found them curiously difficult to read. In this intimate, sweeping biography, Sarah Watling brings the sisters in from the margins, tracing lives that span colonial Jamaica, the bucolic life of Victorian progressives, the frantic optimism of Edwardian Cambridge, the bleakness of two world wars, and a host of evolving philosophies for life over the course of the twentieth century.

Noble Savages is a compelling portrait of sisterhood in all its complexities, which rediscovers the lives of four extraordinary women within the varied fortunes of the feminism of their times, while illuminating the battles and ethics of biography itself.

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Being a writer, says James Baldwin in this searing collection of essays, requires 'every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are'. His seminal 1961 follow-up to Notes on a Native Son shows him responding to his times and exploring his role as an artist with biting precision and emotional power: from polemical pieces on racial segregation and a journey to 'the Old Country' of the Southern states, to reflections on figures such as Ingmar Bergman and Andrй Gide, and on the first great conference of African writers and artists in Paris.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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Ramla Ali's life inside and outside the ring represents her ruthless refusal to quit and passion to fight for what she believes in.

In her first book, Ramla details ten key fights - a combination of life's constant challenges and real bouts she's endured both in and outside of the ring - that have shaped her remarkable rise to date.

From her arrival in England as a refugee to being drawn to the energy and spirit of her first boxercise class; from the adrenaline of her first amateur fights to how she often powered on alone, searching for a community of women like her, and her biggest win of all: letting love into her life.

Each relatable lesson is packed full of honesty and urgency, powering the reader on to become their own champion.

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For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakinkept notebooks. In them, he wrote his daily thoughts, impressions, feelings and observations about and around his Suffolk home, Walnut Tree Farm. Collected here are the very best of these writings, capturing his extraordinary, restless curiosity about nature as well as his impressions of our changing world.

Perfect for fans of Robert Macfarlane and Colin Tudge, this is a book that fills readers with a desire to explore the world around them.

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I went for a walk around the garden. A great tit warbled above a patch of coltsfoot. I felt a thousand discoveries awaited '

Notes from a Summer Cottage by Nina Burton is a beautifully written nature memoir about the time spent renovating a cottage in the Swedish countryside, and all the species that she encountered her during her stay.

Did you know that there are more ants altogether than the number of seconds that have passed since the Big Bang? And that in relation to their size, their anthill cities can be larger than London and New York? Or, that a bird s migratory instinct is so strong that an injured stork once escaped captivity and was found six weeks later having walked 150 kilometres, following the migratory path of his flock on foot? What begins with a renovation of a an old summer cottage swiftly turns into an exploration of nature, life and philosophy, in which Nina Burton reveals the inner lives and hitherto unknown habits of the animals with which she shares.

Within the walls, the ceiling and the floor of the cottage and its surrounding garden, she encounters a host of animals ants, honey bees, foxes, squirrels, blackbirds, badgers, pigeons, deer and many more all of whom have made her house and garden their home, and all of whom cause Nina to reflect on their role within our world.

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From the prize-winning author of To Be a Machine meet the men and women preparing for the end of the world

In the remote mountains of Scotland, in high-tech bunkers in South Dakota and in the lush valleys of New Zealand, small groups of determined men and women are getting ready.

They are environmentalists who fear the ravages of climate change; billionaire entrepreneurs dreaming of life on Mars; and right-wing conspiracists yearning for a lost American idyll. One thing unites them: their certainty that we are only years away from the end of civilization as we know it.

Not unconcerned himself by the possibility of the end of days, Mark O Connell set out to meet them.

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Beginning in 1967, Bukowski wrote the column "Notes of A Dirty Old Man" for the underground newspaper Open City. Perennially drunk, broke and in search of a woman, Bukowski takes on the guise of a wise fool as he ventures through America's seedy lowlife. Peopled by Kerouac, Burroughs and other much less salubrious characters, his exploits provoke humour and despair, whilst highlighting the inherent beauty and futility of life.

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'The story of the negro in America is the story of America ... it is not a very pretty story'

James Baldwin's breakthrough essay collection made him the voice of his generation. Ranging over Harlem in the 1940s, movies, novels, his preacher father and his experiences of Paris, they capture the complexity of black life at the dawn of the civil rights movement with effervescent wit and prophetic wisdom.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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A personal and powerful essay on loss from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun.

'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language'

On 10 June 2020, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie died suddenly in Nigeria.

In this tender and powerful essay, expanded from the original New Yorker text, his daughter, a self-confessed daddy's girl, remembers her beloved father. Notes on Grief is at once a tribute to a long life of grace and wisdom, the story of a daughter's fierce love for a parent, and a revealing examination of the layers of loss and the nature of grief.

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Dark, fierce and raw, Notes on Heartbreak is a love story told in reverse...

Reeling from a broken heart, Annie Lord revisits the past - from the moment she first fell in love, the shared in-jokes and intertwining of a long-term relationship, to the months that saw the slow erosion of a bond five years in the making.

Charting her attempts to move on, Annie explores the ups and downs of being newly single, from disastrous rebound sex to sending ill-advised nudes, stalking your ex's new girlfriend on Instagram and the sharp indignity of being ghosted.

This stunning exploration of love and heartbreak from cult journalist and Vogue columnist Annie Lord, is so much more than a book about one singular break-up. It is an unflinchingly honest account of the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone who has ever nursed a broken heart.

It's a book about the best and worst of love: the euphoric and the painful, the beautiful and the messy.

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Just how do you become a barrister? Why do only 1 per cent of those who study law succeed in joining this mysteriously opaque profession? And why might a practising barrister come to feel the need to reveal the lies, secrets, failures and crises at the heart of this world of wigs and gowns?

Nothing But The Truth is The Secret Barrister's bestselling memoir. It charts an outsider's progress down the winding path towards practising at the Bar, taking in the sometimes absurd traditions of the Inns of Court, where every meal mandates a glass of port and a toast to the monarch, to the Hunger Games-style contest for pupillage, through the endlessly frustrating experience of being a junior barrister - as a creaking, ailing justice system begins to convince them that something has to change . . .

Full of hilarious, shocking and surprising stories, Nothing But The Truth tracks the Secret Barrister's transformation from hang 'em and flog 'em, austerity-supporting twenty-something to campaigning, bestselling, reforming author whose writing in defence of the law is celebrated around the globe. Asking questions about what we understand by justice and what it takes to change our minds, it also reveals the darker side of working in criminal law and how the things our justice system gets wrong are not the things most people expect.

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A unique look at the craft of writing from a bestselling master of storytelling.

In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author shares with readers what he thinks about being a novelist; his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.

Readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this highly personal look at the craft of writing.

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Enter the world of Gyles Brandreth - broadcaster, actor, writer, former politician - as he takes us on an extraordinary journey into his past.

From growing up in an apparently well-to-do but strapped-for-cash middle-class English family to his adventures in swinging London, Gyles encounters princes, presidents, pop stars and prime ministers, gets involved in everything from setting up Scrabble championships to examining Danish sex shops, and thrills us with countless tales of family, friends and acquaintances, both famous and infamous.

Filled with incredible and sometimes shocking stories, Odd Boy Out is the story of Gyles Brandreth's fascinating life told with his unique wit and charm.

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To define Nigeria is to tell a half-truth. Many have tried, but most have concluded that it is impossible to capture the true scope and significance of Africa's most populous nation through words or images.
And yet here, through personal essays from 24 of its writers, a more accurate picture comes into view: one that details the realities and contradictions of patriotism, examines the role of class and privilege in Nigerian society, juxtaposes inherited tradition with the diasporic experience and explores the power of storytelling and its intrinsic link to Nigeria's history.
Within these pages, acclaimed and award-winning writers share memories and experiences of Nigeria that can be found nowhere else, bringing to the fore a country whose influence can be found everywhere.
Powerful, lyrical and entirely unforgettable, Of This Our Country weaves together a living portrait of Nigeria, one that is as beautiful as it is complex.

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A gloriously irreverent memoir from the frontline of old age - by the Sunday Times-bestselling author and legendary actor

Sheila Hancock looked like she was managing old age. She had weathered and even thrived in widowhood, taking on acting roles that would have been demanding for a woman half her age. She had energy, friends, a devoted family, a lovely home. She could still remember her lines.

So why, at 89, having sailed past supposedly disturbing milestones - 50, 70 even 80 - without a qualm, did she suddenly feel so furious? Shocking diagnoses, Brexit and bereavement seemed to knock her from every quarter. And that was before lockdown.

Home alone, classified as 'extremely vulnerable', she finds herself yelling at the TV and talking to the pigeons. But she can at least take a good long look at life - her work and family, her beliefs (many of them the legacy of her wartime childhood) and, uncomfortable as it might be to face, her future.

In Old Rage, one of Britain's best loved actors opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood. And yet - despite age, despite rage - she finds there are always reasons for joy.

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In 2016, Sheila Hancock sat down to write a book about a serene and fulfilled old age. This is not that book.

In Old Rage, one of Britain's best-loved actors opens up about her tenth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life and takes an uncompromising look at a world so different from the one of her wartime childhood. And yet despite age, despite rage she finds there are always reasons for joy.

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A gloriously irreverent memoir from the frontline of old age - by the Sunday Times-bestselling author and legendary actor

Sheila Hancock looked like she was managing old age. She had weathered and even thrived in widowhood, taking on acting roles that would have been demanding for a woman half her age. She had energy, friends, a devoted family, a lovely home. She could still remember her lines.

So why, at 89, having sailed past supposedly disturbing milestones - 50, 70 even 80 - without a qualm, did she suddenly feel so furious? Shocking diagnoses, Brexit and bereavement seemed to knock her from every quarter. And that was before lockdown.

Home alone, classified as 'extremely vulnerable', she finds herself yelling at the TV and talking to the pigeons. But she can at least take a good long look at life - her work and family, her beliefs (many of them the legacy of her wartime childhood) and, uncomfortable as it might be to face, her future.

In Old Rage, one of Britain's best loved actors opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood. And yet - despite age, despite rage - she finds there are always reasons for joy.

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This autobiography is about growing up in Egypt. It is also an investigation into childhood perception in which the author uses herself and her memories as an insight into how children see and know. It is a look at Eygpt up to, and including, World War II from a small girl's point of view, which is also, ultimately, a moving and rather sad picture of an isolated and lonely little girl.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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The acclaimed Penguin Monarchs series: short, fresh, expert accounts of England's rulers - now in paperback

Although he styled himself 'His Highness', adopted the court ritual of his royal predecessors, and lived in the former royal palaces of Whitehall and Hampton Court, Oliver Cromwell was not a king - in spite of the best efforts of his supporters to crown him.

Yet, as David Horspool shows in this illuminating new portrait of England's Lord Protector, Cromwell, the Puritan son of Cambridgeshire gentry, wielded such influence that it would be a pretence to say that power really lay with the collective. The years of Cromwell's rise to power, shaped by a decade-long civil war, saw a sustained attempt at the collective government of England; the first attempts at a real Union of Britain; the beginnings of empire; a radically new solution to the idea of a national religion; atrocities in Ireland; and the readmission to England of the Jews, a people officially banned for over three and a half centuries. At the end of it, Oliver Cromwell had emerged as the country's sole ruler: to his enemies, and probably to most of his countrymen, his legacy looked as likely to last as that of the Stuart dynasty he had replaced.

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If we're talking agoraphobia, we're talking books. I slip between their covers, lose myself in the turn of one page, re-discover myself on the next. Reading is a game of hide-and-seek. Narrative and neurosis, uneasy bedfellows sleeping top to toe.

When Graham Caveney was in his early twenties he began to suffer from what was eventually diagnosed as agoraphobia. What followed were decades of managing his condition and learning to live within the narrow limits it imposed on his life: no motorways, no dual carriageways, no shopping centres, limited time outdoors.

Graham's quest to understand his illness brought him back to his first love: books. From Harper Lee's Boo Radley, Ford Madox Ford, Emily Dickinson, and Shirley Jackson: the literary world is replete with examples of agoraphobics - once you go looking for them.

On Agoraphobia is a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes painfully acute look at what it means to go through life with an anxiety disorder that evades easy definition.

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Uncovering the mystery of her mother's disappearance as a child: Laura Cumming, prize-winning author and art critic, takes a closer look at her family story.

Autumn 1929 - a young girl is kidnapped from a beach. Five agonising days go by before she is discovered safe and well in a nearby village. The child remembers nothing of these events and at home, nobody ever speaks of them again.

Decades later, Laura Cumming delves into the mystery surrounding her mother's disappearance. Examining everything from old family photos to letters, tickets and recipes, she uncovers a series of secrets and lies perpetuated not just by her family but by the whole community and in doing so unlocks a mystery almost a century old.

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Martin O Neill is one of the most fascinating and respected figures in football. In On Days Like These, he tells the story of his remarkable career.

For the first time, Martin O Neill reflects on one of the most varied and successful football careers in the British Isles. With a journey spanning over fifty years, Martin dives into the exhilarating highs of trophies, promotion and World Cup fights and the painful lows of fan confrontations, boardroom drama, relegation scraps and getting fired.

Read fascinating stories from his journey as a player, his breakthrough with Distillery in Northern Ireland, to joining Brian Clough s legendary Nottingham Forest team as it rose from the Second Division all the way to winning back-to-back European Cups.

Go behind-the-scenes on his international career for Northern Ireland, playing alongside and getting to know the Belfast Boy himself, George Best.

Then, Martin delves into his work as a manager, including his celebrated leadership of Celtic retaking dominance from Rangers in his very first Old Firm match.

And on more recent times, lessons are learned in England as he led Wycombe from Conference to the League, and Leicester City and Aston Villa to unprecedented highs before joining forces with Roy Keane and taking the Republic of Ireland to the second round of the Euros for the first time in their history.

Written by Martin himself with his trademark honesty and humour, On Days Like These is an insightful and captivating autobiography from a true icon of football and a must-read for any fans of the beautiful game.

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In On Love, we see Charles Bukowski reckoning with the complications of love and desire.
Alternating between the tough and the tender, the romantic and the gritty, Bukowski exposes the myriad faces of love in the poems collected here - its selfishness and its narcissism, its randomness, its mystery and its misery, and, ultimately, its true joyfulness, endurance and redemptive power.
Whether writing about his daughter, his lover, or his work, Bukowski is fiercely honest and reflective, using love as a prism to look at the world and to view his own vulnerable place in it.

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'If a man truly desires to write, then he will.
Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it.'

Charles Bukowski was one of our most iconoclastic, raw and riveting writers, one whose stories, poems and novels have left an enduring mark on our culture. On Writing collects Bukowski's reflections and ruminations on the craft he dedicated his life to.

Piercing, unsentimental and often hilarious, On Writing is filled not only with memorable lines but also with the author's trademark toughness, leavened with moments of grace, pathos and intimacy. In the previously unpublished letters to editors, friends and fellow writers collected here, Bukowski is brutally frank about the drudgery of work and uncompromising when it comes to the absurdities of life and of art.

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How the rewilding of eight acres of Norfolk marshland inspired a family and brought nature even closer to home.

When writer Simon Barnes heard a Cetti's warbler sing out as he turned up to look at a house for sale, he knew immediately that he had found his new home. The fact that his garden backed onto an area of marshy land only increased the possibilities, but there was always the fear that it might end up in the wrong hands and be lost to development or intensive farming. His wife saw through the delicate negotiations for the purchase. Once they'd bought it, they began to manage it as a conservation area, working with the Wildlife Trust to ensure it became as appealing as possible to all species. For their son Eddie, who has Down's syndrome, it became a place of calm and inspiration.

In On The Marsh, we see how nature can always bring surprises, and share in the triumphs as new animals - Chinese water deer, otters and hedgehogs - arrive, and watch as the number of species of bird tops 100 and keeps on growing. As the seasons go by, there are moments of triumph when not one but two marsh harrier families use the marsh as a hunting ground, but also disappointments as chemical run-off from neighbouring farmland creates a nettles monoculture in newly turned earth.

For anyone who enjoyed books such as Meadowland and Wilding, or the writing of Stephen Moss, Roger Deakin or Adam Nicolson, this is a vivid and beautifully written account of the wonders that can sometimes be found on our doorsteps, and how nature can transform us all.

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Welcome to Sotheran's, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabelled keys, poisoned books and some things that aren't even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice.

Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd on Sackville Street (est. 1761) to interview for their bookselling apprenticeship, a decision which has bedevilled him ever since.

He'd intended to stay for a year before launching into some less dusty, better remunerated career. Unfortunately for him, the alluring smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap proved irresistible. Soon he was balancing teetering stacks of first editions, fending off nonagenarian widows with a ten-foot pole and trying not to upset the store's resident ghost (the late Mr Sotheran had unfinished business when he was hit by that tram).

For while Sotheran's might be a treasure trove of literary delights, it sings a siren song to eccentrics. There are not only colleagues whose tastes in rare items range from the inspired to the mildly dangerous, but also zealous collectors seeking knowledge, curios, or simply someone with whom to hold a four hour conversation about books bound in human skin.

By turns unhinged and earnestly dog-eared, Once Upon a Tome is the rather colourful story of life in one of the world's oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment.

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'Thick with rolls of gleaming new wire, the obstacle was designed to prevent a suicide bomber driving into the compound's thick mud walls. Today, however, it had only succeeded in stopping a terrified-looking small white dog. I knew that the Taliban could be hiding in any one of these buildings, just waiting for one of us. But I knew I couldn't just walk away.'

In a remote outpost of Now Zad, in Helmand province, Pen Farthing's tour of duty will change his life forever, but for entirely unexpected reasons ...

Appalled by the horrors of a local dog fight, he intervenes to free the victims. One of these dogs finds his way into the Marine compound - and into Pen's heart. Soon other strays are being drawn to the sanctuary provided by Pen's makeshift pound, including one young mum who crawls under the compound fence carrying her newborn pups to safety.

But as his time in Helmand draws to an end, Pen cannot leave the dogs of Now Zad to their own fates. He begins hatching plans to help them escape to a better life.

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An Englishman's home is his castle. But what if it's French?

One Place de L'Eglise is a thousand-year-old Languedoc ruin. Leaky, crumbling, lacking basic amenities, it is ignored by the local villagers. But for Londoners Trevor and Kaz it is love at first sight. Over the years they turn the house into a home, navigating floods and freezing winters. Here, these two English find their place - their bar, their baker, their builder (ignore him at your peril).

And gradually they learn slower joys - scents of thyme and lavender, warm sun on stone, nights hung with stars, silence in the hills, the secrets of fig jam.

One Place de L'Eglise is a love letter - to a house, a village, a country - from an outsider who discovers you can never be a stranger when you're made to feel so at home.

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101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, told by Britain's funniest writer.

Life is made up of humans meeting one another. They speak, or don't speak. They get on, or fall out. They laugh, they cry, are excited, are indifferent.

One on One is a chain of 101 extraordinary but true encounters, from Tolstoy rumbling Tchaikovsky in 1876 to George Galloway baiting Michael Barrymore in 2006. The Royal Family giggle at T.S. Eliot, Walter Sickert draws the curtains on the carol-singing Edward Heath, Youssoupoff assassinates Rasputin, Marilyn Monroe commissions Frank Lloyd Wright.

Circular in its construction, panoramic in its breadth, One on One is a book like no other.

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Why me? How could a boy from a Copenhagen tower block say I want to be a champion with Manchester United and Denmark and make it happen?

Peter Schmeichel is a giant of football, who won more Premier League titles (five) than any player in his position and captained Manchester United in the incomparable, last-gasp Treble-clinching win over Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final. I don t believe a better goalkeeper played the game, Sir Alex Ferguson said. One: My Autobiography is Schmeichel s story.

In it, he takes us inside the remarkable, winning environment of a club that transformed football during the 1990s, and on to the pitch on that crazy, breathless night in Barcelona in 1999. From Ferguson s unique gifts to Eric Cantona s unique personality, he delivers a close-up and insightful portrait of United s golden era.

However, One: My Autobiography goes way beyond the pitch.

Schmeichel has an incredible family story to tell, starting with his father, Antoni, a brilliant Polish jazz musician who battled demons and for years kept a momentous secret from those around him. And he explores what he has been able to pass on to his own son, Kasper himself a Premier League-winning goalkeeper and number one in the Danish national side.

Peter s life after football, seldom straightforward, is described with astonishing candour. One: My Autobiography is about football, origins, journeys and legacy.

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The follow-up autobiography to one of Britain's best loved actors and national treasures

In his first book David Jason told us about himself from his early years training as an electrician through to making it as one of Britain's greatest actors.

This autumn, in a follow up autobiography, he tells us about the many other lives he has lived - his characters. From Del Boy to Granville, Pop Larkin to Frost, he takes us behind the scenes and under the skins of some of the best loved acts of his career.

And in the process he reflects on how those characters changed his life too. The result told with his characteristic charm and wit is both funny and poignant, honest and heart warming.

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He is one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court but from early childhood Andre Agassi hated the game.

Coaxed to swing a racket while still in the crib, forced to hit hundreds of balls a day while still in grade school, Agassi resented the constant pressure even as he drove himself to become a prodigy, an inner conflict that would define him. Now, in his beautiful, haunting autobiography, Agassi tells the story of a life framed by such conflicts.

Agassi makes us feel his panic as an undersized seven-year-old in Las Vegas, practicing all day under the obsessive gaze of his violent father. We see him at thirteen, banished to a Florida tennis camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning fast return.

And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he loses to the world's best, his greater confusion as he starts to win. After stumbling in three Grand Slam finals, Agassi shocks the world, and himself, by capturing the 1992 Wimbledon. Overnight he becomes a fan favorite and a media target.

Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match, and every public relationship. Alongside vivid portraits of rivals, Agassi gives unstinting accounts of his brief time with Barbra Streisand and his doomed marriage to Brooke Shields. He reveals the depression that shatters his confidence, and the mistake that nearly costs him everything. Finally, he recounts his spectacular resurrection and his march to become the oldest man ever ranked number one.

In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf.

With its breakneck tempo and raw candor, Open will be read and cherished for years. A treat for ardent fans, it will also captivate readers who know nothing about tennis. Like Agassi's game, it sets a new standard for grace, style, speed and power.

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The amazing story of the original gangster, drug dealer and overlord, Frank Lucas

Criminals are not born in a vacuum, and Frank Lucas is no exception. At the age of six he watched his cousin die in a lynching and in that moment of Southern brutality, Frank Lucas, notorious gangster, billion-dollar-heroin importer and true-life inspiration for the film American Gangster was born.

Original Gangster is the story of the most notorious black gangster to ever rule the streets of New York. He went from running numbers in the 50s, to importing millions of dollars of heroin in the 70s, before losing it all at the hands of a snitch. This is the ultimate tale of ambition, hubris and downfall. The original O.G., Lucas has gone down in history for his infamous business measure of cutting out middlemen in the drug trade, buying heroin directly from its source in Southeast Asia, and then smuggling it back in the coffins of dead US servicemen.

Seven years of Lucas' life were dramatised for the Hollywood blockbuster American Gangster, but this is the first time that the mythical figure tells the story himself. The book delves even further into his extraordinary story, showing just what a folk hero Lucas is to contemporary urban audiences. It's a brutally honest account of a gangster and his times.

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Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of a minister in an evangelical Christian church in south Wales and then south-east England. It was a childhood fraught with bitter family conflict and the fear of damnation.

After a devastating loss of faith in his late teens, Matt began his search for salvation elsewhere, turning to books before developing a growing relationship with alcohol and drugs. He became addicted to crack and heroin in his early twenties, an ordeal that stretched over a decade and culminated in a period of hopeless darkness.

Recklessly honest, and as funny as it is grave, Original Sins is an extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction. But ultimately it is about looking for answers to life's big questions in all the wrong places, how hope can arrive in the most unexpected forms, and how the stories we tell might help us survive.

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Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of a minister in an evangelical Christian church. It was a childhood fraught with bitter family conflict and the fear of damnation. After a devastating loss of faith in his late teens, Matt began his search for salvation elsewhere, eventually becoming addicted to crack and heroin - an ordeal that stretched over a decade and culminated in a period of hopeless darkness.

Recklessly honest, and as funny as it is grave, Original Sins is an extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction. It's about looking for answers to life's big questions in all the wrong places, how hope can arrive in the most unexpected forms, and how the stories we tell might help us survive.

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A brilliant biography of the young Orson Welles, from his prodigious childhood and youth, his triumphs with the Mercury Theatre, to the making of Citizen Kane. Vivid, vastly entertaining, this is the definitive Welles biography.

Серия: Orson Welles Biographies

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In One-Man Band, the third volume in his epic survey of Orson Welles life and work, Simon Callow again probes in comprehensive and penetrating detail into one of the most complex artists of the twentieth century, looking closely at the triumphs and failures of an ambitious one-man assault on one medium after another theatre, radio, film, television, even, at one point, ballet in each of which his radical and original approach opened up new directions and hitherto unglimpsed possibilities.

The book begins with Welles self-exile from America, and his realisation that he could only function happily as an independent film-maker, a one-man band; by 1964, he had filmed Othello, which took three years to complete, Mr Arkadin, the biggest conundrum in his output, and his masterpiece Chimes at Midnight, as well as Touch of Evil, his sole return to Hollywood and, like all too many of his films, wrested from his grasp and re-edited. Along the way he made inroads into the fledgling medium of television and a number of stage plays, including Moby-Dick, considered by theatre historians to be one of the seminal productions of the century. Meanwhile, his private life was as dramatic as his professional life.

The book shows what it was like to be around Welles, and, with a precision rarely attempted before, what it was like to be him, in which lies the answer to the old riddle: whatever happened to Orson Welles?

Серия: Orson Welles Biographies

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Inspired by her encounter with the surviving roses that Orwell is said to have planted in his cottage in Hertfordshire, Rebecca Solnit explores how his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.

Following his journey from the coal mines of England to taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War; from his prescient critique of Stalin to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism, Solnit finds a more hopeful Orwell, whose love of nature pulses through his work and actions. And in her dialogue with the author, she makes fascinating forays into colonial legacies in the flower garden, discovers photographer Tina Modotti s roses, reveals Stalin s obsession with growing lemons in impossibly cold conditions, and exposes the brutal rose industry in Colombia.

A fresh reading of a towering figure of the 20th century which finds solace and solutions for the political and environmental challenges we face today, Orwell s Roses is a remarkable reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.

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One of the most enduringly popular and controversial writers of the twentieth century, George Orwell's work is as relevant today as it was in his own lifetime. Possibly, in the age of Brexit and populism, even more so. He foresaw 'Fake News' in Nineteen Eighty Four's 'Doublethink', the creation of the EU and predicted that post-Imperial xenophobia would cause Britain to leave it.

Separate from his career as a political theorist and novelist, Orwell's life is fascinating in its own right. Disillusioned with his family's upper middle-class complacency, Orwell grew to despise the class system that spawned him, despite being unable to fully detach from it. In truth, he reserved as much suspicion and distaste for the 'proles' as he did pity.

Orwell: A Man of Our Time offers a vivid portrait of the man behind the writings, placing both him and his work at the centre of the current political landscape.

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Shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award 2003

'Definitive' Daily Telegraph

Orwell has become one of the most potent and symbolic figures in western political thought. Even the adjective 'Orwellian' is now a byword for a particular way of thinking about life, literature and language yet, despite this iconic status, the man who was born Eric Blair in 1903 remains an enigma.

Drawing on a mass of previously unseen material, D J Taylor offers a strikingly human portrait of the writer too often embalmed as a secular saint. Here is a man who, for all his outward unworldliness, effectively stage-managed his own life; who combined chilling detachment with warmth and gentleness, disillusionment with hope; who battled through illness to produce two of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century.

Moving and revealing, Taylor's Orwell is the biography we have all been waiting for, as vibrant, powerful and resonant as its extraordinary hero.

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The definitive biography of one of the greatest writers of the the twentieth century.

Over seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) have together sold over 40 million copies. Even now, he continues to exert a decisive influence on our understanding of international power-politics.

D.J. Taylor's new biography, the first full-length study for 20 years, draws on a wide range of previously unseen material - newly-discovered letters to old girlfriends and professional colleagues, the recollections of the dwindling band of people who remember him, new information about his life in the early 1930s - to produce a definitive portrait of this complex, driven and self-mythologising man.

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The haunting true stories of over 350 Holocaust survivors in their own words.

In the shouted words of a woman bound for Auschwitz to a man about to escape from a cattle car, If you get out, maybe you can tell the story! Who else will tell it?

Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured. The recollections are from the start of the war the home invasions, the Gestapo busts, and the ghettos as well as the daily hell of the concentration camps and what actually happened inside.

Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and this hefty collection of stories told by its survivors is one of the most important books of our time. It was compiled by award-winning author Anthony S. Pitch, who worked with sources such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to get survivors stories compiled together and to supplement them with images from the war. These memories must be told and held onto so what happened is documented; so the lives of those who perished are not forgotten so history does not repeat itself.

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London's most notorious gangsters, in their own words . . .

The Kray twins were Britain's most notorious gangsters. Ruling London's underworld for more than a decade, as gang lords they were among the most powerful and feared men in the city. Photographed by David Bailey and even interviewed for television, they became celebrities in their own right and are infamous to this day.

Ronnie and Reg's reign of terror ended on 8 March 1969 when they were sentenced to life with the recommendation that they serve at least thirty years. Ronnie ended his days in Broadmoor - his raging insanity only controlled by massive doses of drugs. Reg served almost three decades in some of Britain's toughest jails before being released on compassionate grounds in August 2000. He died of cancer eight months later.

Compiled from a series of interviews with Fred Dinenage from behind prison walls, Our Story is the classic account that explodes the myths surrounding the Kray twins. In it, the twins set the record straight. In their own words they tell the full story of their brutal career of crime and their years behind bars.

With an introduction from Fred Dinenage, this compelling, disturbing and highly readable book is the definitive story of two legendary criminals.

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Telling their story in their own words, with exclusive photos and behind-the-scenes gossip, this is a must-have for any Little Mix fan.

Little Mix are the UK's most successful girl band. They first found fame - and each other - on The X Factor in 2011. Five years later they have gone from strength to strength, achieving huge global success. With three platinum-selling albums in the UK and over 14 million record sales worldwide, the band are both adored by their fans and critically acclaimed for their brilliant music.

In this book the girls share the real behind-the-scenes story of both their personal lives and their success. They reveal the many highs - what it feels like to perform in front of thousands of people; the excitement of seeing your music soar to Number One around the world - but also the lows. Through it all the girls have had each other, and their incredibly close friendship has grown stronger and stronger as the years have gone by. Now the girls are like sisters, and in this book they share their journeys and how it feels for your dreams to come true.

Brimming with exclusive photos, this book shares with us the girls' innermost secrets - their hopes and dreams for the future, their families, their relationships, their style advice and above all their friendship. This book is Little Mix's story in their own words and tells you everything you need to know about their lives both in and out of the spotlight.

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This is a book about science, bombs, and what happens to the human psyche when every day you go to work might be your last.

Kim Hughes is the most highly decorated bomb disposal operator serving in the British Army. He was awarded the George Cross in 2009 following a grueling six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan during which he defused 119 improvised explosive devices, survived numerous Taliban ambushes and endured a close encounter with the Secretary of State for Defence. The back drop to Painting the Sand is the Afghan War, the conflict where the cold courage of the bomb disposal operator rose to national prominence. No other field of warfare offers the chance of a single individual to come so close to his enemy and fight out a battle of wits where losing can mean death. This is one of the best memoirs that will come out of a ten-year struggle to defeat a hidden, and enduring, enemy.

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A classic memoir of prison breaks and adventure a bestselling phenomenon of the 1960s
Condemned for a murder he had not committed, Henri Charriere (nicknamed Papillon) was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat. Recaptured, he went into solitary confinement and was sent eventually to Devil s Island, a hell-hole of disease and brutality. No one had ever escaped from this notorious prison no one until Papillon took to the shark-infested sea supported only by a makeshift coconut-sack raft. In thirteen years he made nine daring escapes, living through many fantastic adventures while on the run including a sojourn with South American Indians whose women Papillon found welcomely free of European restraints

Papillon is filled with tension, adventure and high excitement. It is also one of the most vivid stories of human endurance ever written.

Серия: Harper Perennial Modern Classics

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Julian Green was born to American parents in Paris in 1900, and spent most of his life in the French capital. Paris is an extraordinary, lyrical love letter to the city, taking the reader on an imaginative journey around its secret stairways, courtyards, alleys and hidden places. Whether evoking the cool of a deserted church on a hot summer's day, remembering Notre Dame in a winter storm in 1940, describing chestnut trees lit up at night like 'Japanese lanterns' or lamenting the passing of street cries and old buildings, his book is filled with unforgettable imagery. It is a meditation on getting lost and wasting time, and on what it truly means to know a city.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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Paris: a million meanings in a single name

Heiress. Party girl. Problem child. Selfie taker. Model. Reality star. Self-created.

The labels attached to Paris Hilton.

Founder. Entrepreneur. Pop Culture Maker. Innovator. Survivor. Activist. Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother.

The roles Paris embraces as a fully realized woman.

Paris rose to prominence as an heiress to the Hilton hotel empire but cultivated her fame and fortune as the IT Girl of the aughts, a time marked by the burgeoning 24-hour entertainment news cycle and the advent of the celebrity blog. Using her celebrity brand, Paris set in motion her innovative business ventures, while being the constant target of tabloid culture that dismissively wrote her off as "famous for being famous." With tenacity, sharp business acumen and grit, she built a global empire and, in the process, became a truly modern icon beloved around the world.

Now, with courage, honesty, and humour, Paris Hilton is ready to take stock, place it all in context and share her story with the world. Separating the creation from the creator, the brand from the ambassador, Paris: The Memoir strips away all we thought we knew about a celebrity icon, taking us back to a privileged childhood lived through the lens of undiagnosed ADHD, a teenage rebellion that triggered a panicked - and perilous - decision by her parents. Led to believe they were saving their child's life, Paris's mother and father had her kidnapped and saw her sent to a series of 'emotional growth boarding schools', where she survived almost two years of verbal, physical and sexual abuse. In the midst of a hell we now call the 'troubled teen industry', Paris created a beautiful inner world where the ugliness couldn't touch her. She came out, resolving to trust no-one but herself as she transformed that fantasy world into a multibillion-dollar reality.

Recounting her perilous journey through pre-#MeToo sexual politics with grace, dignity and just the right amount of sass. Paris: The Memoir tracks the evolution of celebrity culture through the story of the figure at its leading edge, full of defining moments and marquee names. Most important, Paris shows us her path to peace while she challenges us to question our role in her story and in our own.

Welcome to Paris.

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Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she turns her curator's eye to the fabric of life itself, tugging at the threads of memory: a cardigan worn by a child, a tin button box, the draping of a curtain, a pair of cycling shorts, a roll of lace, a pin hidden in a seam. Through these intimate and compelling close-ups, we see how the stories and the secrets of clothes measure out the passage of time, our gains and losses, and the way we use them to unravel and write our histories.

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