But who would have thought that the slim and pale looking boy would become one of the most successful fighter pilots of the war? Almost unknown outside the RAF, Sgt. Pilot J.H. Lacey shot down more enemy aircraft in the Battle of Britain than any other fighter pilot. He shot down the Heinkel 111 which had just bombed Buckingham Palace and had the highest score (twenty-three) of enemy aircraft destroyed, as late as 1941. Thereafter commissioned, early in 1941, he was for a time an instructor at an operational training unit, passing on to others the knowledge that he had won in the toughest series of air battles ever fought. Returning to operations, he served under another fabulous air fighter, ‘Paddy’ Finucane; then was posted to rocket (airborne weapons) development, a task almost as dangerous as combat flying. Later he commanded a famous fighter squadron in the Far East. and shot down the first Japanese he encountered. Unorthodox, autocratic in his command but resentful of unreasonable interference from those above him, Ginger Lacey was a boyish-looking figure with a fantastic gift for leadership, and sharp eyes, bravery and an innate sense of timing. He died in 1989, but his amazing story was recorded by an experienced writer who was a fellow officer in the RAF until 1951 and knew him well. It is a memorable and stirring biography. ‘The best all action war story yet produced.’ - Yorkshire Post ‘A top-scoring story.’ - Evening Standard ‘Fast-moving biography.’ - Sunday Times ‘The best biography of a fighter pilot ever written.’ - Yorkshire Evening Post Richard Townsend Bickers volunteered for the RAF on the outbreak of the second world war and served, with a Permanent Commission, for eighteen years. He wrote a range of military fiction and non-fiction books, including ‘Torpedo Attack’, ‘My Enemy Came Nigh’, ‘Bombing Run’, ‘Fighters Up’ and ‘Summer of No Surrender’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    This biography traces his life from a classic Australian childhood in the suburbs of Brisbane to the glory of captaining the World Cup winning Wallabies.

    A political betrayal. A constitutional crisis. The Palace Letters is the groundbreaking result of one historian’s fight to expose secret letters between the Queen and the then Australian governor general, Sir John Kerr, during the dismissal of prime minister Gough Whitlam in the 1970s. Whitlam was a progressive prime minister whose reforms proved divisive after two decades of conservative leadership in Australia. When he could not get a budget approved, it sparked a political deadlock that culminated in his unexpected and deeply controversial dismissal by Kerr.More than 200 letters between Kerr and the Queen from the period exist in the archive, and historians have long believed that they could reveal the extent to which Buckingham Palace knew about or approved of the dismissal. But until now they have remained hidden in the National Archives of Australia, protected from public scrutiny through their designation as ‘personal’.In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a 10-year campaign and a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she secured a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia. On 29 May 2020, the court ruled in her favour, requiring the correspondence to be released.Now, Professor Hocking is able to reveal the previously hidden trove of letters. And, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr’s archives and submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the role of High Court judges, the Queen’s private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr’s actions, and any prior involvement of the Queen and Prince Charles in Kerr’s planning.

    People talk about it like it’s so easy. But how do you do it in a way that fits your style, protects your relationship with baby and actually works? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you. In this quick and easy guide, I’ll distill all the basics from the best resources out there on baby sleep. I skip the parent shaming and a ton of fluff that the other books are filled with, and I’ll give you the best cliff’s notes version out there so that in an hour or so you can be a sleep-expert, too. I'll explain why sleep is so important, and tell you the biggest secret out there about smooth sleep training (hint: it has nothing to do with how much crying you can tolerate). Parenting isn’t one size fits all, so I give you three solid options that can fit anyone’s paradigm and I'll walk you through a 14-day plan to revolutionize sleep for everyone. What are you waiting for? Let's get your sleep on!

    All of the laughs, the scraps, the yarns and the characters: they all left a mark on me. And I wouldn’t change any of it."Bob Murphy has never been a typical footballer.Music buff, Age columnist and Winnebago driver, he is as comfortable in a Fitzroy café or the front bar of a grungy pub as he is in the locker room.In this unique memoir, Murphy takes the reader inside his seventeen-year career, including his three years as captain of the Western Bulldogs, exploring the people, places and events that shaped him. From playing backyard cricket in 1980s Warragul to Community Cup with Paul Kelly in the 2000s, and from the joy of marrying his high school crush to the agony of a season-ending ACL rupture: the man described as the spirit of the Bulldogs has soul, and it’s made of leather.How did the country kid with a gypsy’s heart become an All-Australian captain? What’s it like to have your club reach the AFL Grand Final for the first time in sixty-two years, and have to cheer from the sidelines? How does it feel to realise you can no longer do the things that made you great?The great Australian football bard Martin Flanagan has long insisted Bob Murphy has a book in him like no footballer has written. Leather Soul proves him right.

    New South Wales has Eddie Obeid.Meet Australia's most corrupt politician whose brazen misdeeds were on a scale said to be "unexceeded since the days of the Rum Corps".From the shadows Obeid ran the state as his fiefdom, making and unmaking premiers. Along the way he pocketed tens of millions of dollars following corrupt deals. This explosive book chronicles the grubby deals the powerbroker had been making for decades before he was exposed. His tentacles stretched through all levels of government, encircling almost every precious resource - coal leases, Circular Quay cafes, marinas, even the state's water. All of them were secret money-spinners for Obeid and his family.Above ground, below ground, in the air, on the water, there was no domain beyond Obeid's grasp. Now, many of the key politicians of his era have given a candid account of Obeid's pernicious backroom influence.Following their groundbreaking investigations, the award-winning journalists Kate McClymont and Linton Besser have unearthed the vast but secret empire Obeid built over the decades, producing an authoritative account of how he got away with so much for so long.

    I made my way to the remotest islands, the hottest deserts and the coldest of climates. I was robbed, suffered injuries, got sick and depressed. I covered around 320,000 kilometres by plane, train, boat, bus and car and ran just over 2300 race kilometres. It proved to me that you can do whatever you want to – just find the starting line, believe in yourself, and Run Like Crazy!When Tristan Miller lost his job as a result of the global economic crisis, he set himself a huge personal challenge. He would spend a year seeing the world, each week running an official marathon in a different country. This is the story of an ordinary man who chased his dream, 42.2 kilometres at a time.

    Cricket is a funny old game - even when rain stops play! Now you can read not only the most popular stories by five of the game's all-time great characters - Richie Benaud, Dickie Bird, Henry Blofeld, Brian Johnston and Fred Trueman - but also the humour and insights of modern players including Michael Atherton, Andrew Flintoff, Darren Gough, Kevin Pietersen and Shane Warne. Crammed full of dozens of hilarious anecdotes about legendary Test cricketers such as Ian Botham, Geoffrey Boycott, Denis Compton, Michael Holding and Merv Hughes - plus broadcasting gaffes, sledging, short-sighted umpires and the first male streaker at Lord's!

    Yet the Japanese attack on 19 February 1942 was the first wartime assault on Australian soil. The Japanese struck with the same carrier-borne force that devastated Pearl Harbor only ten weeks earlier. There was a difference. More bombs fell on Darwin, more civilians were killed, and more ships were sunk. The raid led to the worst death toll from any event in Australia. The attackers bombed and strafed three hospitals, flattened shops, offices and the police barracks, shattered the Post Office and communications centre, wrecked Government House, and left the harbour and airfields burning and ruined. The people of Darwin abandoned their town, leaving it to looters, a few anti-aircraft batteries and a handful of dogged defenders with single-shot .303 rifles. Yet the story has remained in the shadows. Drawing on long-hidden documents and first-person accounts, Peter Grose tells what really happened and takes us into the lives of the people who were there. There was much to be proud of in Darwin that day: courage, mateship, determination and improvisation. But the dark side of the story involves looting, desertion and a calamitous failure of leadership. Australians ran away because they did not know what else to do. Absorbing, spirited and fast-paced, An Awkward Truth is a compelling and revealing story of the day war really came to Australia, and the motley bunch of soldiers and civilians who were left to defend the nation.-Booktopia

    On a sunny Sunday 29 years later, Carleen and Maurice Bryant's beloved first-born loaded the boot of his yellow Volvo with guns and ammunition and returned to Tasmania's historic Port Arthur settlement, scene of many idyllic childhood summers. There, the young man with the striking surfie hair and mesmeric eyes, calmly shot 35 people dead and injured another 21. His crime, the world's worst killing spree by a lone gunman, horrified the nation and changed Australia forever.Thirteen years on, Robert Wainwright and Paola Totaro, both senior news writers, delve backwards over five generations and across two hemispheres to unravel the complete story of Bryant's life and reveal why he committed this heinous crime. They have uncovered Bryant's family history, spoken to his mother, his psychiatrists, lawyer and others who knew him, to piece together the story of eccentric and disparate characters whose lives intersected – with catastrophic results. From Bryant's shocking behind-the-scenes confessions to his own 11th-hour attempt to turn back, this book asks if the Port Arthur massacre could have been prevented. And explains why it could happen again.

    Well known as the most notorious, bloody, and ruthless band of mercenaries in the world, in 1998 the Legion accepted Tony Sloane at the age of 18, inviting him as an elite member of this secret and mysterious fighting force. The legend and the myths of the Legion captivated Sloane and he quickly learned that life as a legionnaire was not just about physical training, but also about pledging mind and soul to the missions and operations.

    My list goes: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Doors, and then I stall on the fifth. Creedence? The Band - although they're mostly Canadian. Simon and Garfunkel? Jefferson Airplane? The Lovin' Spoonful? But I plump for The Monkees."-Robert Forster In The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, Robert Forster takes readers on an exhilarating trip through the past and present of popular music - from Bob Dylan, AC/DC and Nana Mouskouri through to Cat Power, Franz Ferdinand and ... Delta Goodrem. To accompany Forster's acclaimed writing for The Monthly, there are some stunning new pieces - 'The 10 Rules' and 'The 10 Bands I Wish I'd Been In' and an appreciation of Guy Clark - as well as a reflection on The Velvet Underground, a short story about Normie Rowe and a moving tribute to fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan. Funny and illuminating, The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll shows a great critic at work.

    For the soldiers and officers of Australia's Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment, this is not just their professional motto, but a creed that shapes their lives. the SAS is among the world's most respected special forces units, a crack team of men from the Australian Defence Force who can be relied upon to handle the most difficult, strategically sensitive and dangerous of military tasks. Now The Amazing SAS provides a thrilling insight into the way this country's SAS soldiers are selected and trained, and reveals fascinating details about recent SAS deployments: East Timor, the 2000 Olympic games, the Tampa, the Afghanistan campaign and the regiment's action-packed mission in Iraq. The Amazing SAS draws on interviews with General Peter Cosgrove, Prime Minister John Howard, Chief of Army Lieutenant General Peter Leahy, former SAS commanding officers Gus Gilmore and tim McOwan, and many SAS soldiers and officers.

    He's part of two Richmond Premiership sides, he was an All-Australian in 2019, and with over 200 games to his names he remains a key part of a champion team.Picked at number 42 in the 2006 National Draft by Essendon, Houli played 26 games for the Bombers before moving in 2011 to Tigerland, where rookie coach Damien Hardwick was assenting the team that six years later would achieve the seemingly impossible and claim Richmond's 11th Premiership. Another flag followed two years later, with Houli close to best on ground in both deciders.Yet, it's as the AFL's most prominent Muslim player that Houli is best known - and his strong Muslim values are at the heart of the man he is. Writing for the first time, Houli explores the experiences and beliefs that sparked his trailblazing success as a Muslim footballer, and that established him as a teaching voice within the AFL community for inclusion, understanding, and tolerance.Co-authored with acclaimed broadcaster and writer Waleed Aly, 'Bachar Houli: Faith, Football, and Family' tells the unique story of one of football's most fascinating men.©2020 Bachar Houli, Waleed Aly (P)2020 Penguin Random House Australia