Robert Blair Mayne is still regarded as one of the greatest soldiers in the history of military special operations. He was the most decorated British soldier of the Second World War, receiving four DSOs, the Croix de Guerre, and the Legion d'honneur, and he pioneered tactics used today by the SAS and other special operations units worldwide. Rogue Warrior of the SAS tells the remarkable life story of "Colonel Paddy," whose exceptional physical strength and uniquely swift reflexes made him a fearsome opponent. But his unorthodox rules of war and his resentment of authority would deny him the ultimate accolade of the Victoria Cross. Drawing on personal letters and family papers, declassified SAS files and records, together with the Official SAS Diary compiled in wartime and eyewitness accounts, this is the true story of the soldier.

    A free spirit, she broke away from the conventions that others imposed upon her and lived a life that has seemed to some scandalous, to others liberating.It was Margaret who had an illicit love affair with jazz musician Robin Douglas-Home and letters from that relationship are reprinted here. When Douglas-Home was rejected by Margaret, he killed himself and was replaced by another lover.It is stories such as this, revealed in this book, that paint a portrait of one of the most secretive members of Britain's royal family.

    In the aftermath of the Battle of Britain, airmen filled a small Sussex town where pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe established revolutionary surgical and therapeutic treatments.For the child Liz Byrski, growing up in a small Sussex town, the burnt faces of these airmen filled her nightmares.In her late sixties, Liz returned to make peace with her memories and to speak not only with the survivors – known as the Guinea Pig Club – but with the nurses who played a vital and unorthodox role in their treatment, sometimes at a significant personal cost.

    Having risen through Hammer Horror films to international stardom as Bill Sykes in Oliver!, Reed became, in his own works, 'the biggest star this country has got'. With his legendary off-screen exploits and blunt opinions - especially of his co-stars - he was also one of the most infamous.Bestselling author Cliff Goodwin uses material from first-hand interviews with Reed's family, friends and colleagues and never before seen photographs to explore Reed's eventful career. But he also reveals another side to this unique and complex man.

    It caught the public's imagination during this short but bitter campaign and epitomized the grim determination and professionalism of our troops...Called to action on April 2, 1982, the men of 45 Commando Royal Marines assembled from around the world to sail 8,000 miles to recover the Falkland Islands from Argentine invasion. Lacking helicopters and short of food, they "yomped" in appalling weather carrying overloaded rucksacks, across the roughest terrain. Yet for a month in mid-winter, they remained a cohesive fighting-fit body of men. They then fought and won the highly successful and fierce night battle for Two Sisters, a 1,000-foot-high mountain which was the key to the defensive positions around Stanley.More than just a first-hand story of that epic feat, this book is the first to be written by a company commander in the Falklands War. It offers a vivid description of the "yomp" and infantry fighting, and it also offers penetrating insights into the realities of war at higher levels. It is a unique combination of descriptive writing about frontline fighting and wider reflections on the Falklands War, and conflict in general."This is the real thing, from someone who gave the orders and led from the front, from beginning to bitter end. His account is articulate, poignant and precise, even though thirty years have elapsed . . . highly recommended." --Military History Monthly

    In this new book royal historian Lady Colin Campbell covers The Queen’s Marriage in intimate detail. Using her connections and impeccable sources she recounts details of the inside story of the monarch’s relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh and her close family.

    It was not until 1942 that widely dispersed underground organizations would band together to form a united opposition to the occupying Germans. It was not until then that resistance would become the Resistance - a disciplined multi-national movement that would play a significant part in the outcome of World War II. In each occupied nation, resistance groups would grow, gathering and sending information to London, planning increasingly complex sabotage operations, and assisting thousands of people, particularly Jews, in fleeing Nazi-occupied territories. Their actions would eventually become a focused counteroffensive against the German army in 1944, when Allied troops gathered in Great Britain to prepare for the invasion of France. As their widespread activity weakened German outposts in France and other occupied countries, the Allies would gain the foothold they needed to win the war. This is their story.

    She was just three years old.      She remained in the orphanage until the age of 16, subjected to cruelty and neglect, and starved of love and affection. One of her closest friends was taken away to an asylum after her spirit was broken by repeated beatings, and Maureen herself faced a constant battle against despair. It was an environment from which no one emerged unscathed.      Throughout these tormented years, Maureen dreamed only of escape, and when she was contacted again by her mammy she believed all her dreams were about to come true. Life in the outside world brought its own challenges, however, and Maureen was thrown into turmoil when she discovered that the truth about her past was more murky than she had ever realised.      Annie's Girl stands apart as a poignant testimony to the resilience of the human heart. This touching and evocative memoir is the incredible story of an illegitimate industrial-school survivor's profound struggle to overcome a shame-filled past and solve the mystery of her origins.

    The Band of Brothers had been deployed to the most violent places in Iraq, and some of the soldiers were suffering from what they had seen and done in combat. Without much time to recover, they were sent back to the front lines. After their second tour of duty, the battalion was renamed the Lethal Warriors, and, true to their name, the soldiers once again brought the violence home.Lethal Warriors brings to life the chilling true stories of these veterans—from their enlistment and multiple tours of duty to their struggles with ptsd and their failure to reintegrate in society. With piercing insight and employing his relentless investigative skills, journalist David Philipps shines a light not only to this particular unit, but also to the painful reality of ptsd as it rages throughout the country.By exploring the evolving the science and the stigma of war trauma throughout history—from "shell shock" to "battle fatigue" to "combat stress injuries"—Philipps shows that this problem has always existed and that, as the nature of warfare changes, it is only getting worse. In highlighting the inspiring stories of the resilient men and women in the armed forces who have the courage to confront the issue and offer a potential lifeline to the soldiers, Lethal Warriors challenges us to deal openly, honestly, and intelligently with the true costs of war.

    In the film, Johnson – now a Liberian senator – calmly sips a Budweiser as the naked Doe’s ears are hacked off. Unsurprisingly, Dalrymple forms the professional opinion that Johnson is a psychopath.Monrovia was once a peaceful and reasonably ordered city; now, it has been almost completely sacked. Burnt-out cars are everywhere; doors have been chopped up for firewood; rubble lines the streets, with the vandalism forming a systematic attempt to destroy every vestige of the old regime (and, the author speculates, of civilisation itself). The destruction of the university and library, for instance, seems to be little more that the revenge of the ignorant upon the educated. In a local hospital (once the pride of West Africa, now long ruined and abandoned), the professor of surgery’s office has been ransacked, and medical books and papers have been ripped up; in another, infant welfare records have been smeared with faeces. In the wrecked Centennial Hall, the body of a beautiful Steinway grand piano lies on the floor, its legs senselessly sawn off. In a Lutheran church, Dalrymple finds the floor covered in the blood silhouettes of 600 Liberians massacred by Doe’s soldiers.Dalrymple – who achieves the near-impossible by making a book about such barbarism at times amusing – lays much of the blame for what happened at the feet of Western intellectuals and their African counterparts.Monrovia Mon Amour is a profoundly moving and interesting book about a country which is little-understood and less visited.

    Patrick and presents the authentic, stirring account of one of the greatest missionaries who ever lived. Patrick gave up a comfortable life as an upper-class citizen of Roman Britain to live in poverty, suffering, and constant danger in Ireland. Although ridiculed and rejected by his own people in Britain, Patrick changed the course of an entire nation.

    An Australian classic. Depicts the enduring hardships of life in the Australian outback and the battles against sexist and racial prejudices.

    . . Charles Ramsey gives a roller coaster account of his life before, during, and after the dramatic rescue of three kidnapped women in Cleveland . . .Global news media declared him a hero. Well-wishers mobbed him. The Internet made him a viral sensation. It couldn't have happened to a less likely guy. Now, read how it all went down.Ramsey was in the wrong place at the right time when he answered a young woman's cry for help, kicked in his neighbor's locked front door, and got her the hell out of there--leading to the astonishing rescue of three young women--Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight--who had been missing for a decade.Reporters and TV cameras flocked to a neighborhood--and a man--they otherwise would have ignored. Ramsey was ready, with plenty to say."Bro, I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms . . . Dead giveaway." It was a quote that launched a thousand Internet memes . . .In this book Ramsey walks us step-by-step through the day of the rescue and talks about living right next door to Ariel Castro--outwardly charming, secretly a monster.He tells about life before the rescue--growing up a privileged black kid in a white suburb, seeking out trouble over and over, getting kicked out of school, selling drugs, going to prison, and ultimately finding work as a dishwasher and landing by chance on gritty Seymour Avenue.And he shares what it's like to become an instant celebrity, when suddenly everybody wants a piece of you. (For example, he learned the hard way that when a big TV network flies you to New York City for an interview, that doesn't mean they also bought you a ticket back home to Cleveland!)This is a wild, eye-opening tale told with a sharp sense of humor.

    He wrote the classic on which George C. Scott based his film portrayal.

    Failing to gain recognition for his music in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Prize and his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. His albums went gold from Bulgaria to Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism; everywhere he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at the height of his fame, right after 60 Minutes had devoted a segment to him, finally giving him the recognition he had never attained at home, he drowned in mysterious circumstances in East Berlin.Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and Eastern Europe, her own journey mirroring his. As she traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure, his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world. Encountering the characters— musicians and DJs, politicians and public figures, lovers and wives—who peopled Reed's life, Nadelson was drawn further and further into a seedy, often hilarious subculture of sex, politics, and rock 'n' roll. Part biography, part memoir and personal journey, Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly improbable life