Book picks similar to
From A Clear Blue Sky by Timothy Knatchbull
non-fiction
ireland
biography
memoir
What's It All About
Michael Caine - 1992
Now, with easy charm and humor, the Academy Award-winning actor brings to life his lean years and his triumphs, his treasured friendships and his passionate love affair with his wife, Shakira. Illustrated.
The Duke: 100 Chapters in the Life of Prince Philip
Ian Lloyd - 2021
Quench The Lamp
Alice Taylor - 1990
Her tales of childhood in rural Ireland hark back to a timeless past, to a world now lost, but ever and fondly remembered. The colorful characters and joyous moments she offers have made her stories an Irish phenomenon, and have made Alice herself the most beloved author in all of the Emerald Isle.
Confessions of an Actor
Laurence Olivier - 1982
Laurence Olivier, Confession of an Actor: An Autobiography, by Olivier, Laurence
Stuff Brits Like: A Guide to What's Great About Great Britain
Fraser McAlpine - 2015
With the help of Stuff Brits Like, you will soon discover the joy of these and many more delightful British peculiarities and can develop an upper lip as stiff as any you’ve seen on Downton Abbey. British native Fraser McAlpine set out to do for his countrymen what Stuff Parisians Like did for their neighbors across the channel—offering a guide to their particular tastes and eccentricities with all the cheeky wit you might expect from the people who gave you Noël Coward and Eddie Izzard. You may know to say football instead of soccer and crisps instead of chips. You may even know why taking the piss is more fun and less unsanitary than it sounds. But with Stuff Brits Like, you’ll be ready for the next pub quiz in no time.
Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister
Robert Hutchinson - 2007
Hutchinson tells his story with infectious relish and vividly evokes the politics and personalities of this extraordinary decade.' (Anne Somerset LITERARY REVIEW)'Hutchinson tells the horrible story admirably and compellingly, acknowledging Cromwell's rare abilities, while making no excuses for his character... ' (Allan Massie THE OBSERVER)'a rollicking good read' (Harry Reid THE HERALD)'vigorous, pacey and focused... an effective portrait of "Henry VIII's most notorious minister"' (BBC HISTORY)
The Haunting
Paul Doherty - 1997
Oliver is a hard-working, committed priest, and he has one gift - that of the exorcism of 'divining spirits'. The Archbishop tells Oliver that Lady Seaton, owner of Candleton Hall in Norfolk, has appealed to the Church for assistance in allaying the terrifying and haunting experiences taking place at the Hall. Father Oliver goes to Candleton and within hours, he and his sister Emma have first-hand experience of the phenomena: pools of blood form on the floor, a woman dressed in black walks the Long Gallery, the sound of knocking, cries in the night and hurried footsteps and, above all, a sense of malevolence which seeps through the house. Painstakingly, Oliver, a natural scholar, delves into the family secrets of the Seatons and finds chilling truths which span four centuries.
Brown on Resolution
C.S. Forester - 1929
Alone on the barren island of Resolution in the South Pacific, he fights against the might of a German battleship. This is the first of C.S.Forester's novels about the sea.
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Rudolf Besier - 1930
A family chronicle based on two romances--that of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning and that of her sister and a soldier.
Royal Service: My Twelve Years As Valet to Prince Charles
Stephen P. Barry - 1983
Dream It! Do It! (The People, The Places, The Projects): My Half-Century Creating Disney's Magic Kingdoms
Martin Sklar - 2013
He spent his first decade at Disney as "the kid," the very youngest of the creative team Walt had assembled at WED Enterprises. But despite his youth, his talents propelled him forward into substantial responsibility: he became Walt's speech writer, penned Walt's and Roy's messages in the company's annual report, composed most of the publicity and marketing materials for Disneyland, conceived presentations for the U.S. government, devised initiatives to obtain sponsors to enable new Disneyland developments, and wrote a twenty-four-minute film expressing Walt's philosophy for the Walt Disney World project and Epcot. He was Walt's literary right-hand man.Over the next forty years, Marty Sklar rose to become president and principal creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, and he devoted his entire career to creating, enhancing, and expanding Walt's magical empire. This beautifully written and enlightening book is Marty's own retelling of his epic Disney journey, a grand adventure that lasted over half a century.
The Last Escape: The Untold Story of Allied Prisoners of War in Europe 1944-45
John Nichol - 2002
With the Russian Red Army closing in from the east and Allied troops advancing from the west, Hitler forced the POWs deeper into the heart of Germany. Over the next several months these prisoners were forced to walk more than 500 miles through the severest of winter conditions, and hundreds died from exhaustion, disease, and starvation. Here—for the first time—interviews with the POWs who survived as well as their diaries and letters bring this astonishing tale of endurance and courage to life.
Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret
Craig Brown - 2017
She cold-shouldered Princess Diana and humiliated Elizabeth Taylor.Andy Warhol photographed her. Jack Nicholson offered her cocaine. Gore Vidal revered her. John Fowles hoped to keep her as his sex-slave. Dudley Moore propositioned her. Francis Bacon heckled her. Peter Sellers was in love with her.For Pablo Picasso, she was the object of sexual fantasy. “If they knew what I had done in my dreams with your royal ladies” he confided to a friend, “they would take me to the Tower of London and chop off my head!”Princess Margaret aroused passion and indignation in equal measures. To her friends, she was witty and regal. To her enemies, she was rude and demanding.In her 1950’s heyday, she was seen as one of the most glamorous and desirable women in the world. By the time of her death, she had come to personify disappointment. One friend said he had never known an unhappier woman.The tale of Princess Margaret is pantomime as tragedy, and tragedy as pantomime. It is Cinderella in reverse: hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled.Combining interviews, parodies, dreams, parallel lives, diaries, announcements, lists, catalogues and essays, Ma’am Darling is a kaleidoscopic experiment in biography, and a witty meditation on fame and art, snobbery and deference, bohemia and high society.
Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
Anne Glenconner - 2019
As seen on Netflix's The Crown.Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the 5th Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive the vipers of court life with her sense of humor intact. A unique witness to landmark moments in royal history, Maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret until her death in 2002, Anne's life has encompassed extraordinary drama and tragedy. In Lady in Waiting, she will share many intimate royal stories from her time as Princess Margaret's closest confidante as well as her own battle for survival: her broken-off first engagement on the basis of her "mad blood"; her 54-year marriage to the volatile, unfaithful Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, who left his fortune to a former servant; the death in adulthood of two of her sons; a third son she nursed back from a six-month coma following a horrific motorcycle accident. Through it all, Anne has carried on, traveling the world with the royal family, including visiting the White House, and developing the Caribbean island of Mustique as a safe harbor for the rich and famous-hosting Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Raquel Welch, and many other politicians, aristocrats, and celebrities.
The Myth of Hitler's Pope: Pope Pius XII and His Secret War Against Nazi Germany
David G. Dalin - 2005
Dalin provides a ringing defense of the wartime pontiff, arguing that Holocaust-era Jews justly regarded Pius as their protector, not their tormentor.