Whether flying actresses to Italy, cricketers to the Sahara, or a cat to Abu Dhabi, no job is too small, but many, many jobs are too difficult. Carolyn Knapp-Shappey, MJN Air's formidable boss, has employed two of the very cheapest pilots money can buy: Captain Martin Crieff, who's always wanted to fly and won't let a little thing like lack of ability stop him, and First Officer Douglas Richardson, smooth-voiced old sky god and eternal schemer. Passenger service is provided by the relentlessly cheery Arthur, proud inventor of both Surprising Rice and his own hat. Written by John Finnemore (John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, The Now Show), Cabin Pressure stars Stephanie Cole as Carolyn, Benedict Cumberbatch as Martin, Roger Allam as Douglas and John Finnemore as Arthur.

    its magic hung in the air. It is Warsaw, 1939, and Elzunia is an indulged teenager who longs for a heroic life filled with romance. But the outbreak of war shatters all her dreams. As bombs fall, she meets Adam, a taciturn airman whose fate becomes entwined with hers. In despair over the occupation, Adam joins the Polish resistance, then flies bombers for the RAF. Forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, Elzunia learns that even children must create their own rules to survive. When the Ghetto defies the invaders, and later the entire city of Warsaw rises up, Elzunia finds strength in ways she never imagined. Nocturne is a powerful and inspiring testament to resilience and courage in the face of cruelty and betrayal.

    Battling in freezing conditions, at its lowest -52℃, the descriptions of the privations are vivid and terrifying. With no winter clothes they resorted to using those taken from Soviet corpses.In 1942, fighting near Oriel, however, his battalion suffered heavy losses and was disbanded. Ill with frostbitten legs, Rehfeldt was treated in hospital and once recovered was dispatched to the Front.Following various battles (Werch, Bolchov) his battalion again suffered heavy losses and it merged. In agony from severe frostbite to his legs, Rehfeldt defied the odds and astonished his surgeon when he walked again. He was promoted from Gunner to Trained Private Soldier in 1942, and to Corporal for bravery in the field in 1943.He was awarded numerous honors including the Wound Badge and the Infantry Assault Badge.On 3 May 1945 he was captured by US Forces and held as POW for one month in a camp at Waschow before internment in Holstein from where he was released in July 1945 after agreeing to work on the land. In December 1945 he began studying veterinary medicine: his future career.This astonishing account of a man who kept bouncing back from near death is a testament to the author’s determination and sheer strength of spirit.

    When he sees it, Dorian makes a wish that changes his life. As he grows older, his face stays young and handsome. But the picture changes. Why can't Dorian show it to anybody? What is its terrible secret?

    She finds it hard to adjust to her new life, not least when she discovers that the family business she has just married into -- Remer Steel -- is producing weaponry for the German army. With the First World War looming, Vicky flees to Yorkshire with her children, leaving Berlin, and her husband, behind. Striking dark-haired beauty Zelda Wallace is no stranger to marriage. Widowed at just twenty-one with a young son, she is eager to meld into Berlin's high society and sever all ties with her American identity in order to become a true Berliner. But beneath her exotic looks, Zelda holds a deeply hidden secret that if revealed, could threaten everything she holds dear!

    Pieced together by the couple’s granddaughters, who combed through historical research, family lore, and insights from a neighbour’s wartime diary, the story chronicles how the couple struggled to keep their children from starving, but could not keep them from harm, and reveals the strife and hardship endured not just by them, but by a nation. These experiences, kept from subsequent generations of the family, were almost lost until, long after their deaths, the path of the couple through the war and on to Canada was uncovered. A personal and intimate account within the larger context of a terrorized nation, this is also a story of the bonds and strains among family, told with the haunting, evocative prose for which Kristen den Hartog is known.

    Trinian's, the gloriously anarchic boarding school for young ladies, became synonymous with outrageous behavior when Ronald Searle's drawings first appeared in Britain's Lilliput magazine in the 1940s. Searle said about his creations: "A St. Trinian's girl would be sadistic, cunning, dissolute, crooked, sordid, lacking morals of any sort and capable of any excess. She would also be well-spoken, even well-mannered and polite. Sardonic, witty and very amusing. She would be good company. In short: typically human and, despite everything, endearing." St. Trinian's girls are experts in the maidenly arts of torture, witchcraft, and mayhem of all description; their antics take the reader back to those authoritarian school days that begged for serious rebellion and all-embracing non-conformity. Poisonous mushrooms, medieval racks, and field hockey sticks as weapons of choice figure prominently. Gin-swigging and cigar-smoking are popular pastimes. Now, black humor and black stockings intact, the St. Trinian's girls reach American shores in this gleefully wicked collection of cartoons, published to coincide with the major film, St. Trinian's, starring Rupert Everett, Mischa Barton, and Colin Firth.

    Few writers in either poetry or prose can be said to have attained the lucid intelligence and limpid economy of style that have become a matter of course with Zagajewski. It is these qualities, combined with his wry humor, gentle skepticism, and perpetual sense of history's dark possibilities, that have earned him a devoted international following. This collection, gracefully translated by Clare Cavanagh, finds the poet reflecting on place, language, and history. Especially moving here are his tributes to writers, friends known in person or in books—people such as Milosz and Sebald, Brodsky and Blake—which intermingle naturally with portraits of family members and loved ones. Eternal Enemies is a luminous meeting of art and everyday life.

    Michael had never heard his parents referenced as Freedom Fighters.Following his father’s death, and with his mother in failing health, Michael embarked on a ten-year research project to find out more details about his parents’ time in the Vilna ghetto, where they met, fell in love, and married, and about their activities as members of the Jewish resistance. Until Our Last Breath is the culmination of his research, and his parents’ story of love and survival is seamlessly tied into the collective story of the Vilna ghetto, the partisans of Vilna, and the wider themes of world history.Zenia, Bart’s mother, was born and raised in Vilna. Leizer fled there to escape the Nazi invasion of his hometown of Hrubieshov in Poland. They were married by one of the last remaining rabbis ninety days before the liquidation of the ghetto. Leizer was friends with Zionist leader Abba Kovner and became a member of the Vilna ghetto underground. Shortly before the total liquidation of the ghetto, Zenia and Leizer, along with about 120 members of the underground, were able to escape to the Rudnicki forest, about 25 miles away. They became part of the Jewish partisan fighting group led by Abba Kovner—known as the Avengers—which carried out sabotage missions against the Nazi army and eventually participated in the liberation of Vilna.Until Our Last Breath is intensely personal and painstakingly researched, a lasting memorial to the Jews of Vilna, including the resistance fighters and the author’s family.

    Thrown out of heaven, he is condemned for eternity to listen to Edith Piaf and Elvis Presley. Still, there are new arrivals to welcome: the Professor (James Grout), whose unerring optimism is a nasty blow and Thomas (Jimmy Mulville), one of the vilest people around. Then Satan has to deal with a rebellion and with human depravity on the increase, Hell’s getting over-crowded. It’s time for a new assistant. But will Scumspawn (Robert Duncan) get the job? Andy Hamilton stars as Satan in the comedy that’s satirical, philosophical, inventive, topical - and timeless. This box set contains all twelve episodes from the first and second series of the Sony Award-winning comedy show. ‘One of the great comic creations of recent years’ - Sunday Telegraph. '... one of the best-written comedies around, sustained over its 12 years on the air by brilliant performances and production' - Daily Telegraph.6 CDs. 5 hrs 44 mins.

    In her diary, along with innocent adolescent longings, she recorded what happened next: the humiliations and terrors, the murder of her beloved family and the startling story of her own survival. Leaving Europe after the war, Sabina forged a new life in Australia, juggling a thriving design business, her family, and an unorthodox love life. But as time wore on, she began asking herself why had she survived when so many died? And what kind of justice fitted such crimes? In May 2005, when Germany opened its controversial Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in Berlin, Sabina was chosen to speak as the voice of the six million dead. In her speech she noted that although the Holocaust had taken everything she valued, it had also taught her that hatred and discrimination are doomed to fail. Her ability to survive, to love, and to live well, has been her greatest triumph. 'I couldn't put down this engaging, honest story of love, loss and survival.' Diane Armstrong, bestselling author of THE VOYAGER OF THEIR LIFE 'important and wonderfully written' Australian Literary Review

    Bloc Life collects first hand testimony of the people who lived in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania during the Cold War era, and reveals a rich tapestry of experience that goes beyond the headlines of spies and surveillance, secret police and political corruption. In fact, many of the people remember their lives under communism as 'perfectly ordinary' and even hanker for the 'security' that it offered.From political leaders, athletes and pop stars, to cooks, miners and cosmonauts, the stories collected in Bloc Life evoke the moods, preoccupations and experiences of a world that vanished almost overnight.

    With a staunch belief that the only way to survive a war is on a farm, Severin ignores the criticism of his friends and neighbors to move his family as far from the Belgian border as possible, knowing that the Germans will easily invade the tiny country. Given a Buick for the trip by his father-in-law, André, his family, his brother's family and his parents, pile in the car and flee across the border to France just days ahead of the Nazi invasion of Belgium. Seeking survival and a meaningful God, André leads his family deep into the Cévennes Mountains of the south of France. Non-practicing but part of a large Jewish family, they find protection among the Protestant Huguenots. When the Gestapo orders the arrest of the Severins, the French Marquis hides the family as Andr? joins the Resistance. In This Hospitable Land is a tale of simple courage and the depths of human compassion in a time of horror.

    In the Great War, when fliers were still "knights of the air," Luke was an ungallant loner, a kid from Arizona who collected tarantulas, shot buzzards, and boxed miners. But during two torrid weeks in September 1918, he was the deadliest man on the Western Front. In only ten missions, he destroyed fourteen heavily-defended German balloons and four airplanes, a rampage unequaled even by the dreaded von Richtofen, and the second highest American tally of the entire war. Cocksure and constantly reprimanded, Luke was actually under arrest on the day of his final flight, but he stole a plane to join the fatal action that won him the first Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to a pilot. Blaine Pardoe retraces and refreshes Frank Luke's story through recently discovered correspondence. What emerges is a portrait of a life out of an "Old West" that was, by the late Teens, colliding with modernity. Frantic, short, and splendid, the life of Frank Luke, Jr. dramatizes the tragic intervention of an American spirit in the war that devastated Europe.

    Jan's father has been summarily executed by the Nazis. His mother and his older sister Maria have disappeared, and his younger sister Lena has been removed to a remote farm in the German countryside. With Europe is in the throes of war, the ten-year-old boy embarks on a personal journey to reunite the family he has been violently torn from. The experiences he goes through and the horror he faces during this desperate quest will change his life for ever. While examining the devastating effects of war on ordinary families, "The Search" provides an exploration of fear and loss, and of the bond between parents and children. Riveting, moving, at times disturbing, Maureen Myant's debut novel will haunt its readers for a long time after they have put it down.

    The war is over, but for some the fight for survival is only just beginning. Alix, the aristocratic daughter of a German resistance fighter, is alone and desperate to flee before the Reds come. But when a ferocious snowstorm descends she must return to the shelter of her abandoned ancestral home. There, she is shocked to find her childhood sweetheart Gregor. As old passions are rekindled, a couple break into the house to hide - the man, dressed in Gestapo uniform, is a stranger, but his companion is altogether more familiar.By morning, the blizzard has died down but the Reds are back. The woman and her Nazi escort are dead, and Gregor has vanished. Alone and terrified, Alix runs for her life, and embarks upon an extraordinary and heartbreaking journey. It will take sixty years and the fall of another empire - Communism - before the riddles of that fateful night can be deciphered. "Restitution" is a memorable novel about love and betrayal, hatred and heroism - a reminder that, even in the worst of times, the most courageous acts of kindness are possible.

    In the first section which gives its title to the collection, a poetic sequence retells a real-life love affair from beginning to end, from the encounter to the break-up, through memories of love as it is remembered by the author and through the lens of pivotal and memorable movie scenes that seem to mirror her own experiences. With ritualistic cadence and use of the long line, the poems in this collection weave a web of stories that illustrate the ongoing interplay of personal experience and art, photographs, music and films that haunt us and make us who we are.

    But Suite Française was only the coda to the brief yet remarkably prolific career of this nearly forgotten, magnificent novelist. Here in one volume are four of Némirovsky’s other novels–all of them newly translated by the award-winning Sandra Smith, and all, except DAVID GOLDER, available in English for the first time. DAVID GOLDER is the novel that established Néirovsky’s reputation in France in 1929 when she was twenty-six. It is a novel about greed and lonliness, the story of a self-made business man, once wealthy, now suffering a breakdown as he nears the lonely end of his life. THE COURILOF AFFAIR tells the story of a Russian revolutionary living out his last days–and his recollections of his first infamous assassination. Also included are two short, gemlike novels: THE BALL, a pointed exploration of adolescence and the obsession with status among the bourgeoisie; and SNOW IN AUTUMN, an evocative tale of White Russian émigrés in Paris after the Russian Revolution. Introduced by celebrated novelist Claire Messud, this collection of four spellbinding novels offers the same storytelling mastery, powerful clarity of language, and empathic grasp of human behavior that would give shape to Suite Française. (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Taking issue with generations of scholars who separate the Holocaust from Germany s military ambitions, historian Jeremy M. Black demonstrates persuasively that Germany s war on the Allies was entwined with Hitler s war on Jews. As more and more territory came under Hitler s control, the extermination of Jews became a major war aim, particularly in the east, where many died and whole Jewish communities were exterminated in mass shootings carried out by the German army and collaborators long before the extermination camps were built. Rommel s attack on Egypt was a stepping stone to a larger goal the annihilation of 400,000 Jews living in Palestine. After Pearl Harbor, Hitler saw America s initial focus on war with Germany rather than Japan as evidence of influential Jewish interests in American policy, thus justifying and escalating his war with Jewry through the Final Solution. And the German public knew. In chilling detail, Black unveils compelling evidence that many everyday Germans must have been aware of the genocide around them. In the final chapter, he incisively explains the various ways that the Holocaust has been remembered, downplayed, and even dismissed as it slips from horrific experience into collective consciousness and memory. Essential, concise, and highly readable, The Holocaust: History and Memory bears witness to those forever silenced and ensures that we will never forget their horrifying fate."