Biografier

A Glass of Albarino and A Pillowcase of Bones: sixty-eight interlocking pieces about the puzzle of life. True stories or vignettes of a nomadic life. Born in Birmingham, a working class boy who started work with British Gas at only sixteen years old. A punk, and then a New Romantic he worked at the legendary Rumrunner nightclub. He moved to London and worked from The Marquee to The Wigmore Hall to Drury Lane Theatre, meeting the stars. He left for Luxembourg and a year later moved to Berlin, still with the wall. The night the wall collapsed and the crazy following years, whilst working for the British Military he started his own one man cabaret shows which he later took to seven countries. In 2004 he moved to Madrid. He became an English Teacher. In 2012 he toured as MC with Abba the show, in six countries. Next? Valencia.

At the age of 28, Randal Plunkett inherited the title of Baron Dunsany, alongside Dunsany Castle and the 1,500 hectare estate and found himself at a crossroads - but had no choice but to accept. Now, where once his ancestors had grazing animals on the grounds, Randal has let nature reign WILD.What Randal had was a vision of Dunsany given back to nature. Wild Thing is a brilliant memoir-with-a-mission, showcasing how this poisoned chalice - a cold, leaky, needy castle, with all the responsibilities to the generations before - became a personal journey toward fulfilment, a vital mission toward a better, more sustainable, future, and a call to arms for the environment, and the people who live among it.

This is not an inspirational memoir. This is not trauma porn. This is a memoir about the forces that impact our lives, both good and bad.

Pushing back against a system which feels designed to keep parents isolated and exhausted, Latched Mama founder, Melissa Wirt shows moms how to build a supportive "village" to bring joy and connection back to motherhood.Melissa Wirt thought she had everything-she'd built her own company and moved to a beautiful farm with her family. Then during a personal crisis, she realized: despite having created an online community reaching thousands of moms, she'd also somehow, become utterly isolated.In I Was Told There'd Be a Village, Melissa describes how she began making small changes-leaving behind a damaging Isolation Mindset and developing an advantageous Village Mindset. Using personal anecdotes and stories from moms across the country, this book provides specific, actionable steps to transform oppressive, solitary parenting into a connected, collective (even joyful) endeavor.

Part memoir, part explosive window into the mind of a catfisher, a thrilling personal account of three women coming face-to-face with an internet predator and teaming up to expose them - now in paperback. In 2011, three successful and highly educated women fell head over heels for the brilliant and charming Ethan Schuman. Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan, staying up late into the evenings to deepen their connections with this fascinating man. His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last minute trip cancellations. After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn't after money - he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis. Rather, he ensnared these women in a web of intense emotional intimacy. After the trio independently began to question inconsistencies in their new flame's stories, they managed to find one another and uncover a greater deception than they could've ever imagined. As Anna Akbari and the women untangled their catfish's web, they found other victims and realized that without a proper crime, there was no legal reason for "Ethan" to ever stop.THERE IS NO ETHAN catalogues Akbari's experience as both victim and observer. By looking at the bigger picture of where these stories unfold - a world where technology mediates our relationships; where words and images are easily manipulated; and where truth, reality, and identity have become slippery terms - Akbari gives a page-turning and riveting examination of why stories like Ethan's matter for us all.

A remarkable memoir from one of football's most versatile players and the Ukraine's most invaluable advocate

John Potts Slough, the Union commander at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, lived a life of relentless pursuit for success that entangled him in the turbulent events of mid-nineteenth-century America. As a politician, Slough fought abolitionists in the Ohio legislature and during Kansas Territory's fourth and final constitutional convention. He organized the 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry after the Civil War broke out, eventually leading his men against Confederate forces at the pivotal engagement at Glorieta Pass. After the war, as chief justice of the New Mexico Territorial Supreme Court, he struggled to reform corrupt courts amid the territory's corrosive Reconstruction politics.Slough was known to possess a volcanic temper and an easily wounded pride. These traits not only undermined a promising career but ultimately led to his death at the hands of an aggrieved political enemy who gunned him down in a Santa Fe saloon. Recounting Slough's timeless story of rise and fall during America's most tumultuous decades, historian Richard L. Miller brings to life this extraordinary figure.

An autobiography of Edgar Henry Baskerville born in Sydney Australia, covering his early childhood experiences to adventures he had as a teenager including hitchhiking to Queensland and Victoria and a stint in the army. From labourer to Accountant and Barrister. Over three years in the Cook Islands starting from beachcomber with a wife and four small children to head of a Government Department there including an episode as Master of Ceremonies to Prince Phillip and Lord Mountbatten. Back to Australia and later conversion to Islam. Performing Haj and three months Khuruj in India and Pakistan. Experiences during Haj and Khuruj. Three Marriages and a fifth child. Some old age philosophical reminiscences and reflections.

Wadda Life captures Derek Massey's journey through diverse cultures, risks, and remarkable experiences in a continent that quickly became home.

T. E. Lawrence, soldier and writer, the co-leader with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia of the Arab Campaign during the First World War, became a legend in his own lifetime. And yet to this day there is much about him which remains a mystery: two aspects of his character being of particular interest. This first is why, having become a famous figure with the world at his feet, did he choose, subsequently, to live a life of obscurity in the lower ranks of the armed services?The second concerns Lawrence's sexuality. Some of his biographers have been accused of bringing 'sex' into their volumes, for reasons of sensationalism and publicity. To be fair, however, it was Lawrence himself who first raised the subject, by including in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom (an account of the Desert Campaign), details of how he was captured and raped by the Turks. Lawrence, who never married, is known to have engaged in masochistic rituals. So, what was the true nature of, and explanation for his sexuality?This is the challenge of The Real T. E. Lawrence.

'An icon of British and wider Black British culture.' GQAn unconventional memoir filled with brave and inspiring stories, hard-earned wisdom and the keys to discovering true success and fulfilment.If art imitates life then Ashley Walters is living proof. From his explosive performance as the drug dealer Dushane in Top Boy to his turn as an undercover detective in Bulletproof, to his time as a member of one of Britain's most notorious music collectives, So Solid Crew, Ashley's career has always explored the same conflicting forces that have governed his life. Good and evil. Honour and shame. Failure and success. Happiness and despair.Born on a London council estate, surrounded by drug and gang culture, his father in and out of prison, Ashley found purpose in the performing arts but could never truly escape his environment. At 15, he was stabbed in the neck and left for dead. At 18, he had a gun held to his head as he cradled his newborn son. At 20, he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.Through a series of hard lessons, Ashley realised he had to master his own mindset and start to take control of his future. Shared here for the first time, Always Winning is the framework he built to guide him on the path to a more positive, fulfilled existence.Packed with intimate stories from his own struggles with identity, addiction, family and fame, this book reveals how anyone can embrace the principles of Always Winning to guide them towards true purpose, inner peace and outward success.

In this lyrical, radically expansive self-portrait, celebrated poet, author, and lecturer Sophie Strand explores-with searing insight and honesty-the intersecting spaces of her own chronic illness, the complex ecology of a changing world, and the very nature of the stories we tell ourselves. At age sixteen Sophie Strand-bright, agile, fearless-is suddenly beset by unexplained, debilitating illness while on a family trip abroad. Her once vibrant life becomes a tangled miasma of medication, specialists, anaphylaxis, and seemingly never-ending attempts to explain what has gone so terribly wrong. And, for many years thereafter, Sophie's life becomes subsumed with ideas not of "health," but of explanation, and the narrative of how and why she became sick. But slowly, through both profound fatigue with the medical industrial complex and a deeply entwined relationship with the natural world, she comes to another, more fundamental understanding of what has happened to her body. What if sickness is not a separation from the body? What if health is not quite so easy to see? What if physical pain leaves us no choice but to return to our bodies, the pinpricks and lightning of illness stitching us back into a physical presence our society has taught us to ignore? In a work both expansively tender and shockingly frank, Sophie Strand offers readers a window onto her own winding journey through the maze of chronic illness-a web not unlike those created by the mycorrizhal fungi whose networks she begins to see as a metaphor for the profound connections between all species and the earth. Grounded deeply in the mountains of the Hudson Valley, each moment of this far-reaching narrative snakes its way through the multi-layered ecology of the land around us, from the stunningly powerful pollen of a phlox plant to the unexpected beauty and wisdom of the woodchuck. The Body Is a Doorway dives into the murky waters of sickness and trauma, as well as the resonant challenges and joys of friendship, young adulthood, first love, and fertility. Throughout, in precise, sparkling language, it explores questions both personal and universal: Is there healing beyond the human? Beyond the hope for a cure or a happy ending? Is there something wilder and more symbiotic beyond narrow ideas of well-being?