In this, one of the very first celebrity memoirs, Chaplin displays all the charms, peculiarities and deeply-held beliefs that made him such an endearing and lasting character.Re-issued as part of Melville House’s Neversink Library, My Autobiography offers dedicated Chaplin fans and casual admirers alike an astonishing glimpse into the the heart and the mind of Hollywood’s original genius maverick.Take this unforgettable journey with the man George Bernard Shaw called “the only genius to come out of the movie industry” as he moves from his impoverished South London childhood to the heights of Hollywood wealth and fame; from the McCarthy-era investigations to his founding of United Artists to his “reverse migration” back to Europe, My Autobiography is a reading experience not to be missed.

    Alone and pregnant. Bridget gave birth to a boy, John, who died at the home less than two years later. Her second child was once again delivered into the care of the nuns and was taken from her. She would go on to marry a wonderful man and have a daughter Anna Corrigan, but it was only after Bridget's death that Anna discovered she had two brothers her mother had never spoken about. Anna became compelled to try and uncover any information she could about her baby brothers. What followed was the revelation that the remains of 796 babies were buried on the site of the Tuam Mother and Baby Home. Anna was left to wonder, were her brothers among them? Here, with Alison O'Reilly, she pieces together the mystery.

    And in the process it provides the outsider with a riveting insight into life as a Member.

    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.

    World War One, the rise of Sinn Féin, intense Ulster unionism and conflict with Britain culminated in the Irish war of Independence, which ended with a compromise Treaty with Britain and then the enmities and drama of the Irish Civil War.Drawing on an abundance of newly released archival material, witness statements and testimony from the ordinary Irish people who lived and fought through extraordinary times, A Nation and not a Rabble explores these revolutions. Diarmaid Ferriter highlights the gulf between rhetoric and reality in politics and violence, the role of women, the battle for material survival, the impact of key Irish unionist and republican leaders, as well as conflicts over health, land, religion, law and order, and welfare.

    As the young wife of Bryan Guinness, heir to the Guinness family brewing empire, she lived a gilded life until fascist leader Oswald Mosley turned her head. This ground-breaking biography adopts a new approach in exploring the life of Diana Mitford - removing her from her famous family and fascism to look at the woman behind the myths. Combining the traditional rituals of the upper classes - the debutante season, social movements of the 1920s and social upheaval of the 1930s - allows Diana to be presented as a young woman desperately trying to find her place in a rapidly changing world. Benefitting from never-before published letters, diaries and archives has allowed her story to take shape. It is a character study of a beautiful woman whose charm and personality enthralled all who met her, but whose life would ultimately act as a cautionary tale.

    The lecturer encouraged the class to 'see history all around you', to 'dig deeper and ask why'.It was from these humble beginnings that Catherine began researching the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in County Galway, which she had passed every day as a child on her way to school. Slowly, she began to uncover a dark secret that had been kept for many years: the bodies of 796 babies had been buried in what she believed to be a sewage tank on the grounds. But who were these children, how did they get there and who had been responsible for looking after them?Determined to ask why, Catherine doggedly set about investigating further. Her quest for justice for the Tuam babies and those who went through that home would span over a decade as, often against fierce resistance, she brought to light a terrible truth that shocked the world, impacted the Vatican, and led to a Commission of Investigation in Ireland.Part memoir, part detective story, Belonging is both Catherine's account, and that of those 796 children for whom she came to care so deeply: one of the tender love of a mother and her child; of pain and trauma; of the unforgettable screams which echoed through the corridors as children were taken from their mothers; and of a mystery which continues to this very day, as so many are still left without answers, still searching to know where, and to whom they belong.

    Toby Harnden has stripped away the myth and propaganda associated with South Armagh to produce one of the most compelling and important books of the Troubles. Drawing on secret documents and interviews in South Armagh's recent history, he tells the inside story of how the IRA came close to bringing the British state to its knees. Additionally, for the first time, the identities of the men behind the South Quay and Manchester bombings are revealed.

    Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was the worst disaster in the nineteenth century--it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe. But even more extraordinary than its scope were its political underpinnings, and The Graves Are Walking provides fresh material and analysis on the role that Britain's nation-building policies played in exacerbating the devastation by attempting to use the famine to reshape Irish society and character. Religious dogma, anti-relief sentiment, and racial and political ideology combined to result in an almost inconceivable disaster of human suffering.This is ultimately a story of triumph over perceived destiny: for fifty million Americans of Irish heritage, the saga of a broken people fleeing crushing starvation and remaking themselves in a new land is an inspiring story of revival.Based on extensive research and written with novelistic flair, The Graves Are Walking draws a portrait that is both intimate and panoramic, that captures the drama of individual lives caught up in an unimaginable tragedy, while imparting a new understanding of the famine's causes and consequences.

    The most ambitious and personal account ever written about Hollywood's most gracious star-Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris is a "moving portrayal" (The New York Times Book Review) that truly captures the woman who captured our hearts...With the insights of family and friends who never before spoke to a Hepburn biographer-and never-before-published photographs-Paris has created an in-depth portrait of the actress, from her childhood in Nazi-occupied Europe, through her legendary career, and into her UN ambassadorship.

    The sisters nurture Gabrielle’s exceptional sewing skills, a talent that will propel the willful young woman into a life far removed from the drudgery of her childhood.Transforming herself into Coco—a seamstress and sometime torch singer—the petite brunette burns with ambition, an incandescence that draws a wealthy gentleman who will become the love of her life. She immerses herself in his world of money and luxury, discovering a freedom that sparks her creativity. But it is only when her lover takes her to Paris that Coco discovers her destiny.Rejecting the frilly, corseted silhouette of the past, her sleek, minimalist styles reflect the youthful ease and confidence of the 1920s modern woman. As Coco’s reputation spreads, her couturier business explodes, taking her into rarefied society circles and bohemian salons. But her fame and fortune cannot save her from heartbreak as the years pass. And when Paris falls to the Nazis, Coco is forced to make choices that will haunt her.An enthralling novel of an extraordinary woman who created the life she desired, Mademoiselle Chanel explores the inner world of a woman of staggering ambition whose strength, passion and artistic vision would become her trademark.

    Now he shares his recollections of those encounters, providing a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes.Far from starry-eyed where Tony Blair Co are concerned, he looks back also to the Britain of his youth and castigates those responsible for its decline to "a Third World country … misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic".Controversial, witty and revealing – or "curmudgeonly", "reactionary", "undiluted spleen", according to the critics – The Light's on at Signpost has struck a chord with a great section of the public. Perhaps, as one reader suggests, it should be "hidden beneath the floorboards, before the Politically-Correct Thought Police come hammering at the door, demanding to confiscate any copies".

    She was a natural orator, and students and scholars of the Irish language came from far and wide to visit her. In this book, as an old lady, she muses and reflects on the days of her youth, recounting tales which evoke characters and an era now dead, and capture the superstitions and hard life of her beloved island.

    Her irresponsible Da is dead. She is grief-stricken and alone – but for the first time in her life free to please herself. After her mother deserted the family, Ivy became the sole provider for her Da and three brothers. Pushing a pram around the well-to-do areas of Dublin every day, she begged for the discards of the wealthy which she then turned into items she could sell around Dublin’s markets. As she visits the morgue to pay her respects to her Da, a chance meeting introduces Ivy to a new world of money and privilege, her mother's world. Ivy is suddenly a woman on a mission to improve herself and her lot in life. Jem Ryan is the owner of a livery near Ivy’s tenement. When an accident occurs in one of his carriages, leaving a young girl homeless, it is Ivy he turns to. With Jem and the people she meets in her travels around Dublin, Ivy begins to break out of the property-ridden world that is all she has ever known. Through Streets Broad and Narrow is a story of strength and determination in the unrelenting world that was Dublin tenement life.

    In the Magdalene laundries, girls and women were incarcerated and condemned to servitude. And in the mother-and-baby homes, women who had become pregnant out of wedlock were hidden from view, and in most cases their babies were adopted - sometimes illegally.Mortality rates in these institutions were shockingly high, and the discovery of a mass infant grave at the mother-and-baby home in Tuam made news all over the world. The Irish state has commissioned investigations. But the workings of the institutions and of the culture that underpinned it - a shame-industrial complex - have long been cloaked in secrecy and silence. For countless people, a search for answers continues.Caelainn Hogan - a brilliant young journalist, born in an Ireland that was only just starting to free itself from the worst excesses of Catholic morality - has been talking to the survivors of the institutions, to members of the religious orders that ran them, and to priests and bishops. She has visited the sites of the institutions, and studied Church and state documents that have much to reveal about how they operated. Reporting and writing with great curiosity, tenacity and insight, she has produced a startling and often moving account of how an entire society colluded in this repressive system, and of the damage done to survivors and their families. Republic of Shame is an astounding portrait of a deeply bizarre culture of control.