Bøker av Barry Briggs

Korea, June 1950. The "Land of the Morning Calm," freed at last from three and a half decades of Japanese colonial oppression, enjoys the fruits of peace and independence.In the southern countryside a small village celebrates its patriarch's sixtieth birthday, marking, according to tradition, his passage into old age. In the ancient capital of Seoul, an American military advisor pursues his secret, reluctant Korean lover. And just to the north, just above a strange, arbitrary line called the 38th Parallel, a great army, well trained and equipped with Russian-made tanks, prepares in stealth for what its Communist commanders hope will be a brief and glorious war of liberation."Like a shrimp caught between whales:" so Koreans describe the horrific events that followed. For, seeing their own national interests threatened, the great powers--the United States, Soviet Union, and China--transformed Korea into their bloody and tragic battleground.On this fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War, Land of the Morning Storm, presents the epic story of women and men, great and ordinary, powerful and powerless, Korean and American, caught up in this frothing, brutal maelstrom.

It started on a cold, frosty morning in 1951 in Christchurch, New Zealand, with a seventeen-year-old-boy, a crate of sheeps' kidneys and a dream.The boss of the city's Belfast meatworks, had arrived an hour early to set up for the day, when he noticed one of his workers packing up a crate on the countertop. The young lad was battling to move it so the boss went over to help. When asked what time he'd started, the boy replied 'Five o'clock this morning'. Stunned, and amused, the boss told him he'd be earning a good bonus at the end of the week, and wondered aloud what he'd spend it on. But the boy knew, and immediately replied, 'I'm going to race speedway in England.'And he did. That boy was Barry Briggs, and it was just the start of his great adventure. Little did he know he was soon to become the legendary speedway racer more commonly known as Briggo, and later as Barry Briggs MBE. From dangerous encounters in the jungles of Liberia to teaching Steve McQueen to slide a speedway bike, Briggo's incredible story is one of strength, determination and a life lived firmly in the fast lane.