Biography

    Sharing some of the recipes that they brought over, the tomatoes, the garlic, the sausage, the wine, this is a mouthwatering memoir of family and food. It is also a brilliant evocation of life between the wars, a triumphant story of survival against all the odds, that captures the sights and smells of Italian life and culture, at home and abroad.

    It is proving an immensely popular walk and in the first 18 months of its opening in 2003 it attracted almost 400,000 walkers.

    What really happened to missing child Madeleine McCann? Crime writer Chelsea Hoffman delves into the evidence against the girl's parents, as well as the numerous theories in her case, with never-before-seen exclusive interviews and a look at the media madness surrounding this mysterious disappearance.

    But here, for the first time, he tells his own story – and it is full of surprises.The stories from his childhood in Somerset are vivid and moving: his grandfather with his tin leg, his mother at the mills, and his uncle, the ferret keeper, and the black sheep of the family for ‘carrying on’ with married women.Keith Floyd spent a short spell on a local newspaper, and then, in a hilarious episode, joined the army. After he and the Ministry of Defence decided that they did not suit each other, he took his first cooking job as an assistant vegetable cook in a Bristol hotel. The great period of bistros and cafes had dawned and Keith Floyd was in the forefront, cooking in an open kitchen, with Pink Floyd blaring from the speakers.What is wonderful about this book is the vividness of the scenes he paints and the deftness with which he draws the characters – including his several wives. Those who have admired Keith Floyd’s way with a whisk will now be impressed to discover and enjoy his remarkable skill with words.

    Writing in his own words, William Lobban tells how he was born in Exeter Prison to a violent, schizophrenic mother. His upbringing in the East End of Glasgow was just as bleak, and he ended up in care at an early age, destined for a life of violence and insecurity. At a mere 15 years old, he masterminded a daring break-in to a Glasgow pub, and many years of armed robberies, dealing class-A drugs, and gang fights followed. When he wasn’t causing mayhem on the streets, Lobban was serving terms in various high-security prisons, where he was the ringleader and instigator of two of the most serious prison riots of recent years at Perth and Full Sutton and where he took prison officers hostage on two other occasions. In the course of his criminal career, Lobban became enmeshed with the infamous Paul Ferris, who later incriminated him as the murderer of fellow gangster Arthur Thompson Jr. Police also believed that Lobban was the man behind the brutal double killing of Bobby Glover and Joe ‘Bananas’ Hanlon, but none of these charges held up. Finally released from prison in 1998, Lobban decided to walk away from a life of crime, but personal tragedy led to a dependence on alcohol and drugs, which nearly killed him. Only in recent years has he found a measure of peace and stability. He has finally decided to set the record straight, and in this searing exposé of the Glasgow underworld he reveals the true facts behind the crimes that he really committed and those of which he is falsely accused.

     After a four year posting in Islamabad, Frank Carver, a reporter for the London Chronicle, is sent to Germany to cover the country’s most fascinating election campaign since the Second World War. Rudolf Gutman, the first Jew to run for chancellor, is promising to free Germany from the shackles of its past. He is up against Hermann von Tietjen, the charismatic Far Right candidate whose mantra is to rid Germany of the threat from its Muslim immigrants. Carver and Wolfgang Renner, a freelance journalist, believe Tietjen has a more deadly agenda. He is secretly guiding Neo-Nazis in a plot to assassinate Gutman, using cash and contacts of old SS men to hire a killer. They prepare the ground with terrorist attacks that are pinned on islamists, sowing fear and hatred of Muslim immigrants.

 Carver and Renner race to clinch the scoop of their lives. But no one believes them as Tietjen covers his tracks with his devilish gambit that plunges the nation into terror and a trail of killings. As the clock ticks down to election day and the noose tightens around Gutman’s neck, their quest turns into a lone, bloody struggle for survival that brings them face to face with modern Germany’s dark secret. It seems that Carver has run out of time to unmask the assassin and to save Gutman. 'As the European Union faces a resurgence of the right-wing ultranationalism, veteran journalist David Crossland paints a chilling scenario of the threats posed to contemporary German society by neo-Nazi extremists. A real page-turner.' Efraim Zuroff, The Simon Wiesenthal Center

    They learned to be inventive and self reliant in a land untouched by humans after moving more than twelve miles from the nearest road, to a one hundred and sixty acre homestead on the Kenai Peninsula. To a young man just entering his teens this was a dream come true, but the physical labor that had to be done the first year, simply to survive, was more than he had ever imagined. Cutting firewood with a manual cross cut saw, packing water from the spring, working on a sawmill, and packing supplies in to the homestead on his back left little time for hunting and fishing. The family almost starved and froze out that first year, but sheer will power, stubborness, and rugged determination for a better way of life persevered; A family of the greenest chechocko's that ever homesteaded in the land of the midnight sun.

    When thinking, remembering,implementing, impressing and quoting become inseparable tools for winning, it istime to set the brain diet right!Casson has attempted to do just that in this book, which is a complete manual tounlock the powers of your mind and open the reservoir of your potential. Use thesimple tips to pave your path to success. Build your brain strong enough to fightall odds and reach the pinnacle of success, without much ado.

    So what made him risk it all for the gruelling, year-long SAS Selection course, with a better than ninety per cent chance of failing to win the toughest badge in the British Army at the end of it? Over the months of combat patrols, press-ups, punishing runs and Gas! Gas! Gas!, the ordeals of Long Drag and hostile interrogation, Ballinger learnt that who you think you are and what the Army wants you to be are very different things, and the end product of Selection bears little relation to either. This vivid, often funny account of the varied characters who commit so much to training for the 'misfits regiment' is remarkable both for its unromantic authenticity, and for its objective attempt to find out why. A question, Ballinger discovered, that few, if any, in the SAS could answer.

    On the way, he analyses some of the alternative explanations that have been offered, including the conspiracy theories, and looks at the latest information from the Far East.Some recently published works on this subject were rushed into print before the few indisputable facts were known, and many have been based on little more than the author's personal opinion, almost irrespective of these facts, or have been founded on apparently factual information that has since been discredited. This book starts off with no preconceptions at all. The author looks only at the facts of the matter, and has worked out a possible and believable explanation that covers everything we know about this flight from take-off to its ultimate fate. He also explains exactly how the aircraft systems - things like SSR, ACARS and ADS-B - work, and provides an overview of the satellite communications system that was able to provide basic tracking data for the aircraft long after voice communications ceased.He explains the crucial significance of the position where the aircraft vanished from Malaysia's radar screens, and why that precise location was chosen by the perpetrator of this disappearance. And he shows why the route that the aircraft subsequently followed was not accidental, but entirely deliberate, and chosen for one very specific reason.He concludes his analysis by explaining approximately where the aircraft is now, and why no confirmed wreckage from the aircraft has been found anywhere.As a military controller, Peter Lee has previously been involved in aircraft accident and investigation procedures as apart of his job. He was solely responsible for deducing the precise reason, and specific sequence of events, that led to the loss of a Royal Navy Sea Harrier in the North Irish Sea some years ago, an event that at first sight appeared completely inexplicable, and was the principal expert witness at the subsequent Board of Inquiry. In the case of flight MH 370, he has turned that same critical eye on this disappearance, and his suggested explanation for what happened is both logical and believable.If you read no other book about this mystery, read this one.

    She also tries to kill herself every few years, without success. I hope she never succeeds, but one wonders if she is any good at anything.’ BARKIN, Ellen Ellen boasted of having an affair with George Clooney: ‘Yes, I have fucked George Clooney. I’m very proud of it, actually. If you don’t have chemistry with George Clooney, you need to check your pulse.’ BARRYMORE, John A very young Anne Baxter worked with Barrymore on ‘The Great Profile’ in 1940: ‘He was in terrible shape. In the morning, he was so wasted that his man would have to carry him in and set him down in an easy chair. Then he’d pour Barrymore a Coke. No response. Then he’d shake in some rum flavouring and this great actor would suddenly spring to life. Amazing. Once we were waiting for a take and I asked him why he read his lines from chalkboards. Couldn’t he remember his lines? And he stood up and recited a Hamlet soliloquy. He never made a pass at me, but it was hard going for our resident vamp, Mary Beth Hughes. She bent over once to fix her stockings and he instantly leapt up to pinch her behind.’ BEATTY, Warren Cher slept with him when she was a teenager: ‘Warren has probably been with everybody I know, and unfortunately I am one of them. But since I was only 16 maybe I can get out of it with that. I don’t know if I was a bimbo then, but I had pretty low self-esteem. He was technically good, but I felt nothing.’ He rather ungallantly told of Jane Fonda’s extraordinary sexual prowess: ‘…her ability to virtually unhinge her jaw. Like a python that swallows prey much larger than itself.’ BOW, Clara Louise Brooks’ husband considered Clara to be beneath them: ‘She wasn’t acceptable socially. Eddie Sutherland, my husband, gave absolutely the best parties in Hollywood. So I asked him one day to invite Clara Bow and he said, ‘Oh, good heavens, no! We can’t have her. We don’t know what she’d do. She’s from Brooklyn.’ BOYD, Stephen Brigitte Bardot once asked him to marry her: ‘I don’t know if she was joking, but I said no. I did not explain that I couldn’t marry an actress who could never be faithful to me. Or at least try. Like, I would at least try, for the first year or two.’ BRANDO, Marlon A drunken Brando disgraced himself on national television when he guested alongside Zsa Zsa Gabor on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and propositioned her: ‘Do you know what I want to do with that girl, Johnny? I want to fuck her! Zsa Zsa, a man can only do one thing with you: throw you down and fuck you!’ BRYNNER, Yul Ingrid Bergman and Brynner did not get along making ‘Anastasia’ (1956): ‘Yul Brynner was shorter, I suggested putting a little block under him. ‘You think I want to play it standing on a box? I’ll show the world what a big horse you are!’ I never had a complex about my height after that.’ After Steve McQueen up-staged him one too many times during the filming of ‘The Magnificent 7’ in 1960, Brynner issued him a warning: ‘If you don’t stop that I’m going to take off my hat, and then no-one will look at you for the rest of the film.

    After a life altering accident Alex and his wife Gail are forced to discover what the people around them are really made of. Their young family is thrown into an alien world of medical emergencies, insurance nightmares, life-and-death decisions, and family politics. Gail has to put her own needs aside in order to take care of their small children, support her quadriplegic husband, and try to create an awareness of the dangers that lie beyond the water's edge. These sacrifices come at a cost that only gradually reveals itself.

    And with G-d's help, he saved not only himself but also his parents and a host of friends, relatives, and strangers from almost certain death. If Ludvik Wieder's adventures were fiction, they would seem too contrived. But everything told is the unembellished truth. At the age of 26, Ludvik had it all—health, wealth, good looks, popularity, and a growing business in one of Europe's brightest capitals. Then, one dreadful Sunday in the spring of 1943, the Nazis marched into Budapest and imposed a series of repressive measures that threatened the life of every Jew in Hungary. From that day on, all that mattered was survival. Suddenly, life hung by a shred of paper— the proper “Aryan” identification. Determined to survive, Ludvik boldly entered the black market to buy those precious scraps of false identity that might save him and his loved ones from disaster. Soon he was living a double life, outwardly forsaking his Orthodox Jewish upbringing to pose as a gentile, at the same time clinging steadfastly to his beliefs, never for a moment forgetting who he was and where he came from. Soon he became a master of deception— whether it was posing as a trusted “gentile” factory employee, disguising himself as a drunken peasant, or assuming the dress and manner of a member of the Hungarian S.S. Somehow, he had the capacity to enlist the aid of an unlikely assortment of non-Jews, who helped him at the peril of their lives—among them, a peasant woman who befriended him in prison and offered her home as his haven for the duration of the war… a Hungarian Air Force officer, who “adopted” Ludvik's niece as his own illegitimate child, lent him his apartment as a hiding place and smuggled a series of vital ID papers to him… the Skid Row derelict who saved the life of Ludvik's nephew by pretending to be the boy's uncle. The book traces Ludvik's life, beginning with his placid, essentially easygoing boyhood in Czechoslovakia. Then, in 1940, after the Hungarian takeover, he was inducted into forced labor. It describes the cruelty and black humor of the labor camp, which helped him to develop the cunning and ingenuity that enabled him to sharpen his survival skills and avoid being sent to fatal service on the Russian front. The story then focuses on the Nazi occupation, culminating in Ludvik's near-execution at the hands of his Russian liberators. Armed with optimism, unswerving faith in the Almighty, and his own resourcefulness, Ludvik never let fear keep him from doing whatever was necessary to save himself and his fellow Jews. Throughout his heart-stopping adventures —and even in the darkest moments of despair, when events propelled him to the brink of suicide—Ludvik was motivated to go on by consummate devotion to his beloved mother. He knew he had to survive, for he had promised her he would.

    Chambers introduces young actors to the challenges of performing scenes written in true industry-standard style in preparation for professional stage and screen auditions. +30 teen-friendly scenes are incorporated. An interview with the commercial casting agents of Felicity and the Practice gives kids/teens the one-up on current industry requirements for young actors. A glossary of industry terms, index and extensive bibliography of basic to challenging plays teens should read are also included as a study aid. The scenes in the book are all original, and focus on teen lifestyle and experiences.