Selvbiografier

Triumphs, Treachery and Toilet Rolls is the astonishing life story of football legend Francis Lee. With searing candour, Lee reveals how he overcame treachery and betrayals to prevail. It's the story of a man who crammed more into one life than anyone could aspire to. This is Franny - uncensored.

Follow the Thunder is the searingly honest autobiography of former Premier League star and record-breaking wonder kid Jason Dozzell, who later faced the consequences of a chaotic life off the field. Dozzell goes on a therapeutic journey of self-reflection to unravel his mental-health issues and encourage others to open up.

For the Love of Darlo is the inspirational autobiography of multi-award-winning writer and Darlington FC devotee Paul Hodgson, who overcame severe disability to achieve his ambitions. Paul's story offers a unique insight into what it was like to grow up in a 'special school' in the unenlightened 1970s.

What if a young horse held a powerful, supernatural secret? What would it take for the truth to be revealed? Elijah Blue Jeans is a true story about an extraordinary black colt with two distinct white paint markings on his shoulders, giving the visual impression of tiny, feathered wings. But who is he really?Blue Jeans brings something quite extraordinary to the paddocks of a humble mountain farm. A brilliant light and radiance that unifies with the heart of anyone close--a pure and Heavenly love. Narrated by a human, a foal, a mare and The Caretaker, this account explores the cycle of life and death in both earthly and celestial pastures. Elijah Blue Jeans is a story about never giving up and the unexpected arrival of timeless miracles.

WHEN legendary music journalist Billy Sloan was fifteen years old he saw The Who play an incendiary live show at Green's Playhouse in Glasgow.

'The crime of fraud, when conducted well, is a fascinating pursuit. It's a test of intellect, determination and stamina. It is a floating mess of fact and fiction that you have to carry in your mind for twenty-four hours a day. It can be used to realize dreams, to slip on any mask required.'Elliot Castro was just a teenager when he began to use his formidable intelligence and charm to swindle millions from the credit card system. No outside individual has ever pulled off this scale of fraudulent activity. But the money wasn't funding an addiction or other criminal enterprises; Elliot was simply a working-class kid with no qualifications who wanted to see the world. From London to New York, Ibiza to Beverly Hills, Castro lived a fantasy life. He stayed in famous hotels, travelled first class and blew a small fortune on designer clothes and champagne. Time after time, Elliot managed to wriggle free of the authorities while his life spiralled out of control. As he juggled aliases, and lied to family and friends, he began to lose his grip on reality. Meanwhile, a detective from Heathrow Police Station was patiently tracking him down. It would soon turn intoan international manhunt. In Other People's Money, Neil Forsyth chronicles Elliot's extraordinary journey. A gripping tale of charm and deceit, filled with humour and heart-stopping suspense, this true story offers a fascinating insight into the mind of Britain's most audacious, and friendliest, credit card fraudster.

A memoir of a lifetime of being with animals

Barbara Villiers was a woman so beautiful, so magnetic and so sexually attractive that she captured the hearts of many in Stuart-era Britain. Her beauty is legendary: she became the muse of artists such as Peter Lely, the inspiration of writers such as John Dryden and the lover of John Churchill, the future great military leader whom we also know as the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Her greatest amorous conquest was King Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with whom she had a tempestuous and passionate relationship for the better part of a decade. But this loveliest of Stuart-era ladies had a dark side. She hurt and humiliated her husband, Roger Palmer, for decades with her unashamedly adulterous lifestyle, she plotted the ruin of her enemies, constantly gambled away vast sums of money, is remembered for the destruction of the Tudor-era Nonsuch Palace, and was known to unleash terrible rages when crossed. Crassly lampooned by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and subjected to verbal and written assaults, she was physically abused by a later, violent spouse. Barbara lived through some of the most turbulent times in British history: civil war, the Great Plague of London, which saw the deaths of around 100,000 people, the Great Fire of London, which destroyed much of the medieval city, and foreign conflicts such as the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Williamite wars, and the War of the Spanish Succession. An impoverished aristocrat who rose to become a wealthy countess and then a duchess, taking her lovers from all walks of life, Barbara laughed at the morals of her time and used her natural talents and her ruthless determination to the material benefit of herself and her numerous offspring. In great stately homes and castles such as Hampton Court Palace, her portraits are widely seen and appreciated even today. She had an insatiable appetite for life, love, riches, amusement, and power. She was simply âEUR¿ravenousâEUR(TM)âEUR¿

Hersch effectively uses his fatherâEUR(TM)s unusual story to convey the horrors of the Holocaust. A valuable addition to Holocaust literature. - Publishers WeeklyHersch's amazing tale is told for the first time by his son Jack who has retraced his footsteps for his new book. - The Daily MailIn a warm and emotionally engaging story, Jack digs deeply into both his father's life and his own, revisiting - and reflecting on - his father's time at the hands of the Nazis during the last year of the Second World War, when more than mere survival was at stake - the fate of humanity itself hung in the balance. - GoodReadsIn June 1944, the Nazis locked eighteen-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruelest camp in the Reich. After ten months in the granite mines of MauthausenâEUR(TM)s nearby sub-camp, Gusen, he weighed less than 80lbs, nothing but skin and bones. Somehow surviving the relentless horrors of these two brutal camps, as Allied forces drew near Dave was forced to join a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over thirty miles away. Soon after the start of the march, and more dead than alive, Dave summoned a burst of energy he did not know he had and escaped. Quickly recaptured, he managed to avoid being killed by the guards. Put on another death march a few days later, he achieved the impossible: he escaped again. Dave often told his story of survival and escape, and his son, Jack, thought he knew it well. But years after his fatherâEUR(TM)s death, he came across a photograph of his father on, of all places, the Mauthausen MemorialâEUR(TM)s website. It was an image he had never seen before âEUR" and it propelled him on an intensely personal journey of discovery. Using only his fatherâEUR(TM)s words for guidance, Jack takes us along as he flies to Europe to learn the secrets behind the photograph, secrets his father never told of his time in the camps. Beginning in the verdant hills of his fatherâEUR(TM)s Hungarian hometown, we travel with Jack to the foreboding rock mines of Mauthausen and Gusen concentration camps, to the dust-choked roads and intersections of the death marches, and, finally, to the makeshift hiding places of his fatherâEUR(TM)s rescuers. We accompany JackâEUR(TM)s every step as he describes the unimaginable: what his father must have seen and felt while struggling to survive in the most abominable places on earth. In a warm and emotionally engaging story, Jack digs deeply into both his fatherâEUR(TM)s life and his own, revisiting âEUR" and reflecting on âEUR" his fatherâEUR(TM)s time at the hands of the Nazis during the last year of the Second World War, when more than mere survival was at stake âEUR" the fate of humanity itself hung in the balance.

William and Mary, BritainâEUR(TM)s most mysterious monarchs, were married for reasons of dynastic convenience. Their union gradually developed into a happy and successful one, despite WilliamâEUR(TM)s frequent absences on military campaign. They shared interests such as art and gardening, both of which they practised at their palace retreat, Het Loo. Despite the fact that Mary was heir presumptive to her father, the Duke of York, they might have expected to remain in the Netherlands for the rest of their lives. Midway through their marriage, their way of life changed substantially when MaryâEUR(TM)s father, now King James II, was rejected by his English and Scottish subjects because of his fervent Catholicism. William, a foreigner, was accepted as a replacement primarily because of his British queen. The couple had Kensington Palace built, to a design by Sir Christopher Wren, and their renovations at Hampton Court Palace, also by Wren, gave the palace much of its present character. The monarchy was now fully answerable to Parliament, but wives were still generally subservient to their husbands. William and Mary ruled jointly for only seven years, with Mary working conscientiously to maintain order in the country during her husbandâEUR(TM)s absences. William continued to reign alone for only a further seven years after MaryâEUR(TM)s death. Their fourteen years on the throne were critical ones in the history of the British Isles, and the world of William and Mary was one that in many ways would be recognisable to us today.

The story of King Henry VIII, a man who married six times only to execute two of those wives, is part of Great BritainâEUR(TM)s national and international identity. Each year, millions of people walk around the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and Hever Castle, plus many other historical sites, taking in and hoping to glean some sense of the man and the myth, and yet there is a period from Henry VIIIâEUR(TM)s life which remains largely overlooked, a period in which he chose not to execute wives, servants or ministers, but instead turned on another group entirely - his own family. Like practically all members of the nobility of the time, Henry VIII descended from King Edward III, which ensured a ready-made crop of royal cousins were in abundance at his court, and awkwardly for the king, these cousins often possessed much greater claims to the throne than he did. The house of Tudor was one which should never have been, let alone taken the throne. Upstarts in every sense of the word, their ancestry, whilst (almost) noble, was by no means as grand as many a family in England, and it is against this backdrop that this book was created. The Pole family, the subjects of the story, were royalty in secret. Lady Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, the family matriarch, was a niece of King Edward IV and Richard III, making her a first cousin of Elizabeth of York, the first Tudor queen consort, and thus a first cousin once removed of Henry VIII. Margaret Pole was, therefore, one of the most senior members of the nobility at the Tudor court, and through her, her sons, her daughter, and her grandchildren possessed a dangerous name and dangerous bloodline, which put them on a collision course with the most volatile man ever to sit the throne of England. They were the old guard, the house of Plantagenet, the greatest ruling dynasty in English history, the true royal family, and this, coupled with the monumental shifts which England underwent during the reign of Henry VIII, all but ensured their destruction. For centuries, their story has been overlooked, or at best, fleetingly covered, but when one digs deep, a story as audacious and juicy as itâEUR(TM)s possible to be soon emerges.

In the Fall of 1947, an eighty-four-year-old woman receives an extraordinary invitation. Though much that happened was a lifetime ago and in a different world, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, now the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, holds the heavy vellum envelop for a moment in her hands. Within is the end of a long journey seeking vindication for a husband who gave his life to the service of the Royal Navy and received, in return, ingratitude. Within is the reminder of a life lived with her family that is mostly gone. However, for one exquisite moment, it returns as she opens the envelope:_The Lord Chamberlain is commanded by Their Majesties to invite The Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven to the Ceremony of the Marriage of Her Royal Highness The Princess Elizabeth,  with Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, Royal Navy in Westminster Abbey, on Thursday, 20th November 1947, at 11.30 oâEUR(TM)clock, a.m._Thus begins the story of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Victoria, the eldest daughter of Princess Alice and Prince Ludwig of Hesse, was born in April 1863\. One of the envied grandchildren of Queen Victoria, she was related to most of the Royal Families of Europe âEUR" a member of the fabled âEURœRoyal MobâEUR?. The obstacles that characterized VictoriaâEUR(TM)s life began with her motherâEUR(TM)s untimely death. Queen Victoria helped her granddaughter shoulder the responsibilities of caring for the motherless family, writing letters of advice and guidance, a correspondence lasting some thirty years. In April 1884, Victoria married the dashing Prince Louis of Battenberg, an officer in the Royal Navy, who eventually became BritainâEUR(TM)s First Sea Lord. Their daughter, Alice, was the future mother of Prince Philip and their youngest child, another Louis, was Viceroy of India. On the eve of World War I, Prince Louis of Battenberg, was forced to resign because of his German surname, which he later changed to Mountbatten. VictoriaâEUR(TM)s sister, Alix, who had taken the name Alexandra when she married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and her entire family was murdered in 1918. Progressive and intelligent, Victoria was the lynchpin of her family. Through cataclysms, both familial and historical, travelling from pre-revolutionary Russia to the British Mandate of Palestine, VictoriaâEUR(TM)s life was as exciting as it was triumphant.

Daughter, Wife, Princess, Widow and Queen: Anne Neville had many faces. Shakespeare presents her to us as a woman consumed with rage, bitterness and grief. He has her cursing the killer of her husband and father, before marrying him and condemning herself to despair. She rages, screams and weeps but ultimately she is shown as nothing more than a passive victim of the men who used and exploited her. This could not be further from the truth. Born into one of the most powerful dynasties in medieval England, Anne knew her worth, and her power. She was a great survivor escaping the tide of blood that consumed England not just alive but emerging with a crown on her head. Tragedy would untimely engulf her, the death of her son ended all her hopes for a lasting legacy and her premature death was subject to rumour and speculation. But there is undoubtedly more to Anne than her marriage and her end. She is fascinating, elusive, a powerbroker and very much her fatherâEUR(TM)s daughter. This is AnneâEUR(TM)s story.

George Hudson was the greatest British railway entrepreneur of the 19th century. In 1848, he controlled over 1,000 miles of railway and, when it came to railway promotion, it seemed he could do no wrong. However, in early 1849 it came to light that some of his business methods had been less than ethical and he was forced to relinquish the chairmanship of each of his companies. His fall from grace was spectacular and his detractors, of whom there were many, were quick to denounce him as a fraudster, a charlatan and a crook. Even today, when the name George Hudson is mentioned, these same insults are often levelled at him. This new biography takes a fresh look at HudsonâEUR(TM)s extraordinary life, from his humble beginnings as a farmerâEUR(TM)s boy, to becoming Lord Mayor of York before catching the railway bug. He was MP for Sunderland between 1845 and 1859\. After his fall from grace, Hudson endured a 20-year court battle with the York and North Midland Railway (subsequently the North Eastern Railway) for outstanding debts. Hudson made many mistakes in creating his railway empire, but did he deserve all the vitriol that still accompanies his reputation? In seeking to answer this question, Matthew Wells looks at the evidence, including what was said about Hudson during his lifetime and what Hudson himself had to say about the actions he took.

This is the incredible story of David Charles "Mad Dog" Dolby and fierce firefight in Vietnam in 1966 that would see him awarded the Medal of Honor. As exceptional a feat as that was, Dolby would return to Vietnam for four additional tours. In 1967 he was assigned to the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, the famous Screaming Eagles. On his third tour in 1969 he would join C Company (Ranger), 75th Infantry (Airborne), First Field Force Vietnam. For his final two tours in 1970 and 1971, Dolby would act as an Adviser to the Vietnamese Rangers, and finally to soldiers of the Royal Cambodian Army.

Legendarily reticent, perverse and misleading, Prince is one of the few remaining 80s superstars who still, perhaps, remains unexplained. Now a firm fixture in the pop canon, where such classics as 'Purple Rain', 'Sign o' the Times' and 'Parade' regularly feature in Best Ever Album polls, Prince is still, as he ever was, an enigma. His live performances are legendary (21 Nights at the O2 in 2007) and while recent releases have been modestly successful at best, his influence on urban music, and R'n'B in particular, has never been more evident. The Minneapolis Sound can now be heard everywhere. Matt Thorne's Prince, through years of research and interviews with ex-Revolution members such as Wendy and Lisa, is an account of a pop maverick whose experiments with rock, funk, techno and jazz revolutionised pop. With reference to every song, released and unreleased, over 35 years of recording, Prince will stand for years to come as the go-to book on the Great Man.

Margaret More Roper may be remembered as the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, but she was much, much more. Well-educated, loyal, passionately pious, and a skilled writer and translator, Margaret inspired a generation and proved to Tudor England and beyond just how accomplished a woman could be. Her life provides a window into the turbulent times of the English Reformation and life at the court of King Henry VIII. In this biography, Margaret is presented in her own right and given the attention and acknowledgement she so richly deserves.

Over Land and Sea is the story of West Ham United in Europe, exploring the rich history of the Hammers' European fixtures dating back more than a century. While West Ham's success in Europe has been largely in competitions that no longer exist, there's a great deal to discover about their wider European story.