Search Results for: true story

Disease is the true serial killer of human history: the horrors of bubonic plague, cholera, syphilis, smallpox, tuberculosis and the like have claimed more lives and caused more misery than the depredations of warfare, famine and natural disasters combined.

Murderous Contagion tells the compelling and at times unbearably moving story of the devastating impact of diseases on humankind – from the Black Death of the 14th century to the Spanish flu of 1918-19 and the AIDS epidemic of the modern era. In this book Mary Dobson also relates the endeavours of physicians and scientists to understand and identify the causes of diseases and find ways of preventing them.

This is a timely and revelatory work of popular history by a writer whose knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, her subject shines through her every word.

Is it every woman’s fate to turn into her mother? This is renowned writer and journalist Virginia Ironside’s poignant and blackly funny memoir of life with fashion professor and media icon Janey Ironside.

Stylish, beautiful and self-loathing, Janey Ironside was to lead a cultural revolution. In 1956 she became Professor of Fashion at the Royal College of Art, then an extraordinary appointment for a young mother. Discovering and promoting designers like Ossie Clark and Bill Gibb, she changed the way people dressed around the world and herself became a fashion icon. Yet the qualities that made her great – wit, talent and drive – did not bring happiness to either her or her family. Having grown up in colonial India, Janey suffered a painful childhood separation from her parents.

She married dashing artist Christopher Ironside, but eking out wartime rations ill-suited a woman whose idea of divine punishment was ‘to spend eternity washing up.’ Dress-making soon filled the void, while her daughter Virginia endured a string of au pairs, embarrassing outfits and acute loneliness. As Virginia fought to be her own person, plunging into the swing of the sixties as a rock journalist, she was caught between a father she adored and a mother bent on self-destruction. Now a renowned writer, she has drawn a startling portrait of a gifted woman in a time of extraordinary change. Blackly comic, beautifully written and deeply moving, JANEY AND ME reflects the universal struggle to emerge from our parents’ shadow.

Here, for the first time, is an intimate and fascinating portrait of Rudolf Nureyev off-stage – a man who was an exacting, unpredictable, parsimonious and often immature individual, yet who, at the same time, aroused great affection in a host of friends.

Simon Robinson frankly recalls his eventful year working for Nureyev. He did everything for this hopelessly impractical dancer except be his lover, much to Nureyev’s disappointment. It was the Russian’s insatiable sexual appetite that eventually destroyed him.

Nureyev had six houses on three continents but no staff in any of them and he couldn’t cook, drive, write a letter, tie a necktie or even change a light bulb. In 1990 Simon Robinson, until then professional crew on a racing yacht, became his PA. For the next twelve months they travelled from the Caribbean to America to Europe, living in luxury in Nureyev’s New York and Paris apartments and in spartan isolation on his tiny Mediterranean island.

Nureyev’s explosive nature was exhausting to live with and many times during their year together Robinson nearly quit – and Nureyev nearly sacked him. It didn’t happen, however, because Nureyev needed his PA’s calm reliability to ballast his own rocky life, and because Robinson knew that genius must make its own rules.

Of picking, washing and cleaning my pretty little toes, which he took great delight in, and in which pleasurable, innocent, and inoffensive pastime he as often spent hours; twas the greatest gratification to him on earth, nor did he (said she) indulge in any other in all the time we spent together, he never was even rude enough to give me a kiss.
So emerged the first expose of foot fetishism in the eighteenth-century. Revelations and racy anecdotes about the lives of the rich and famous of Dublin and London abound within Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore.

From a violent domestic background, Peg blitzed her way through balls and masquerades creating scandals and gossip wherever she went, leaving dukes, barristers and lieutenants stranded in her wake. She was the first madame ever to write her memoirs, thereby setting the template for the whore’s memoir. She wrote not merely to reveal herself but to expose the shoddy behaviour of others and her account of her life. In Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore, Julie Peakman brings her subject and the world through which she moved to glorious, bawdy life.

A major source for the BBC drama The Reckoning


Winner of the 2015 Gordon Burn Prize and the 2015 CWA Non-Fiction Dagger


Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the James Tait Black Prize


‘An astonishing account’ Observer


‘A compulsive, colourful and chilling read’ Sunday Times


‘An extraordinary book’ Mail on Sunday


Dan Davies spent more than a decade on a quest to find the real Jimmy Savile, and interviewed him extensively over a period of six years before his death. Dan also interviewed scores of people, many of them unobtainable while Savile was alive.


Jimmy Savile was cynical, calculating and predatory. He revelled in his status as a Pied Piper of youth and used his power to abuse the vulnerable and underage, all the while covering his tracks by moving into the innermost circles of the establishment.


IN PLAIN SIGHT is a devastating and definitive account of a national figure turned national disgrace.

An autobiography from golf’s freshest, most individual voice

Ian Poulter is one of golf’s most charismatic figures, with an appeal extending way beyond his sport. Here he tells his inspirational story, from his early rejection as an Spurs youth player, right through to his match-winning contributions to successive European Ryder Cup Triumphs.

Poulter went from an Assistant Professional staffing the club shop to a global superstar, turning pro when he still had a handicap of 4 but the drive and self-belief to make it to the top.

His infectious optimism, will power and flair have ensured he remains one of the biggest names on the tour. As well as insights into the crucial moments in his career, and the life of a professional golfer, he talks about his passions outside the game, including his own riotous brand of clothing. Just as Poulter’s appearance on the scene came as a refreshing antidote to a sport that was staid and stuffy, so his own book is as forthright and passionate as Poults himself.

An astonishing true story of mountaineering survival

On 5 January 2003, former Special Forces soldier Ken Jones was caught in a devastating avalanche as he climbed in the frozen wilderness of Romania’s Transylvanian Alps. Flung from a cliff, he regained consciousness to find himself shrouded in darkness, separated from his supplies, suffering from overexposure in the sub zero-temperatures and in horrendous pain from a broken leg and shattered pelvis. Heavily frostbitten and bleeding internally, Ken dragged himself to safety over three agonizing days only to discover that his true ordeal had yet to begin.

His account of life saving surgery and his battle to walk again is a classic tale of triumph over adversity and what it means to never give up. Heart stopping and inspiring to the very last page, Ken Jones’s story of endurance and survival is an unforgettable testament to the strength of the human spirit.

The broadcast that George VI made to the nation on the outbreak of war in September 1939 – which formed the climax of the multi Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech – was the product of years of hard work with Lionel Logue, his iconoclastic Australian-born speech therapist. Yet the relationship between the two men did not end there. Far from it: in the years that followed, Logue was to play an even more important role at the monarch’s side.

The King’s War follows this relationship through the dark days of Dunkirk and the drama of D-Day to eventual victory in 1945 – and beyond. It is written by Peter Conradi, a Sunday Times journalist, and Mark Logue, Lionel’s grandson, whose previous book, The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy, was a best-seller in Britain and America and translated into more than 20 languages.

The King’s War is a fascinating portrait of two men and their respective families – the Windsors and the Logues – as they together faced up to the greatest challenge in Britain’s history.

It is the night of 28 March 1942. Royal Navy and British commandos are poised to assault the German-held port of Saint-Nazaire in what will be one of the most audacious and daring raids of the Second World War. The plan is simple: to drive an old destroyer, packed with three tons of explosive, at full speed into the outer gate of the Normandie dock. The aim is to destroy the base from which the formidable battleship Tirpitz would be able to devastate the convoys supplying Britain from the United States.  ‘Operation Chariot’ was to be dramatically successful, but at a great cost. Fewer than half the men who went on the mission returned. In recognition of their valour, eighty-nine decorations were awarded, including five Victoria Crosses. 

Into the Jaws of Death is the true story of how the decisive courage of a small group of men changed the course of the war.

The Sunday Times No.1 bestseller.

‘Sixty special forces against 100,000 – a feat of British arms to take the breath away’ Frederick Forsyth.

They were branded as cowards and accused of being the British Special Forces Squadron that ran away from the Iraqis. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ten years on, the story of these sixty men can finally be told.

In March 2003 M Squadron – an SBS unit with SAS embeds – was sent 1,000 kilometres behind enemy lines on a true mission impossible, to take the surrender of the 100,000-strong Iraqi Army 5th Corps. From the very start their tasking earned the nickname ‘Operation No Return’.

Caught in a ferocious ambush by thousands of die-hard fanatics from Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen, plus the awesome firepower of the 5th Corps’ heavy armour, and with eight of their vehicles bogged in Iraqi swamps, M Squadron launched a desperate bid to escape, inflicting massive damage on their enemies. Running low on fuel and ammunition, outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and outgunned, the elite operators destroyed sensitive kit and prepared for death or capture as the Iraqis closed their deadly trap.

Zero Six Bravo recounts in vivid and compelling detail the most desperate battle fought by British and allied Special Forces trapped behind enemy lines since World War Two. It is a classic account of elite soldiering that ranks with Bravo Two Zero and the very greatest Special Forces missions of our time.

Perfect for fans of Tanith Lee and Joyce Carol Oates, this extremely dark and disturbing novel by award-winning author Lisa Tuttle is ‘Impossible to forget’ Neil Gaiman.

Be careful what you wish for . . .

As a child, Agnes Grey dreamed of the perfect friend to ease her loneliness: a doll that would talk to her, tell her stories, share her secrets, just like her Aunt Marjorie used to have.

So when she receives an old-fashioned porcelain doll as an adult, painted to look like an old-world gentleman, she’s certain her dreams have come true. But as the line between fantasy and reality begins to blurs, Agnes discovers that every dream has its price and every wish must be paid for . . .

‘A strong, poignant, and outright magical tale’ New York Review of Science Fiction

In this exclusive short story from critically acclaimed and award-winning author Lisa Tuttle, a woman is haunted by an experience she had as a five-year-old, when she believed she had seen herself with her true love in the future…

‘The Walled Garden’ was originally written for Hidden Turnings, a YA fantasy anthology edited by Diana Wynne Jones and was reprinted in Lisa Tuttle’s collection Ghosts and Other Lovers and The Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tokas were the talk of pre-war Paris. Photographed by Cecil Beaton and Man Ray, painted by Picasso and written about by Hemingway, they were at the heart of Parisian cultural and literary life.

Alice, convinced that Gertrude was a genius, cooked for her, typed her manuscripts and fought to obtain the fame she was convinced Gertrude was due. Alice said Gertrude was the happiest person she had ever known, and was besotted with her for the many years they were together. They were indomitable, charismatic, and wildly eccentric, driving around in ‘Auntie’, their Ford, with Basket, their cherished poodle. In Gertrude and Alice, award-winning writer Diana Souhami brings these two extraordinary women, and the fascinating world in which they moved, to vivid life.

Since the beginning of time mankind has struggled with the big questions surrounding our existence. Whilst most people have heard of Socrates, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, many are less clear on their theories and key concepts.

In The Great Philosophers, bestselling author Stephen Law condenses and deciphers their fundamental ideas. Avoiding the technical jargon and complex logic associated with most books on philosophy, Law brings the thoughts of these great thinkers, from Confucius and Buddha to Wittgenstein and Sartre, to life.