- Table View
- List View
Made in South Africa: A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress
by Lwando XasoLike so many of her generation, Lwando Xaso came of age alongside the beginnings and growth of South Africa’s constitutional democracy. Her journey into adulthood was a radically different one from that of earlier generations, marked by hope that changing perceptions would usher in a new and free society.Made in South Africa – A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress, is a vibrant collection of essays in which Lwando examines with incisive clarity some of the events that have shaped her experience of South Africa – a country with huge potential but weighed down by persistent racism and inequality, cultural appropriation, sexism and corruption, all legacies of a complicated history.As a young lawyer intent on climbing the corporate ladder, Lwando’s life’s direction was changed by a personal experience of the oppressive capacity of a supposedly democratic government when it unjustly fired a close family friend and mentor from a senior government position. She found herself on his legal team and the turmoil the case created within her led her to further her studies in constitutional law, and to pick up her pen and share with a wider audience her views of what was happening in her beloved country.Her outlook was further shaped by her experience of clerking at the Constitutional Court for Justice Edwin Cameron, which deepened her respect for the South African Constitution, and what it really means for a resilient people to strive continually to live up to its moral and legal standards.Lwando’s writing reflects her unflinching resolve to live according to the precepts of our groundbreaking Constitution and offers a challenge to all South Africans to believe in and achieve ‘the improbable’.
Back on Top: Confessions of a High-Class Escort - from the author of the bestselling HOOKED
by Samantha XHigh-profile escort, journalist, author, mum and sex-industry pioneer. A woman who prides herself on staying true and being empowered - even mentoring other women - yet who, when it comes to her own life, had become a dishevelled bloody mess. We left Samantha X confused at the end of HOOKED - should she stay escorting or hang up her high heels? In this fascinating, compelling sequel we see Samantha grow in to her new role as boss of her escort agency Samantha X Angels, how she deals with the girls, falling in love with Mr Big (while still managing to sneak in a few clients) ... and much, much more!BACK ON TOP is fast-paced and occasionally outrageous, told with the flair readers loved in HOOKED. Samantha X does not hold back when it comes men, love, sex - and getting herself back on top.
Two Sons in a War Zone: Afghanistan: The True Story of a Father's Conflict
by Stephen WynnWhen soldiers go to war, what do their families and friends experience? There is huge public support for the military, who risk their lives in faraway war zones, but do we really have any idea what their ‘nearest and dearest’ go through while the troops are away?This book started out as a diary of a year in the life of Stephen Wynn, a police officer who happens to have two sons in the military. The diary was his mechanism for coping with the passion, distress and rage he felt while his sons - Luke and Ross - were on active service in Afghanistan. Two Sons in a War Zone is his compelling true story, illustrating the raw inner conflict between one man’s pride for his sons and their chosen profession, and his natural fears for their safety. In vivid, everyday language he describes the intense experiences - the joys and sorrows - of being a ‘loved one’ at home, whilst his sons battle a deadly foe in gruelling and treacherous conditions.Stephen describes Luke’s and Ross’s personal stories - why they joined the military and how they relate to the work - and quotes from private letters and documents. Both sons are injured whilst on their first tour of duty (one narrowly escaping serious harm from a bullet wound) but thankfully they return safely home.Nobody reading this book will have any doubt about the sacrifices made by soldiers who go to war, as well as the anguish their loved ones experience at home.‘I promised myself that I would not hide my feelings from anyone. I would not be wilfully ignorant of the risks my sons were facing out there. Though they were men, to me they were still boys, and they would be facing boys like themselves; boys, and men younger than me, who would shoot at them. Knowing this, how would I get through a single day? Would I have to bottle up how I felt? No, I’d be open, and honest...’
After Sappho
by Selby Wynn SchwartzIt’s 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her – and who she has also been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name; and her life, alongside it. 1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted... But she is sure she can sell a painting – and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered.... In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller – and fuller.Sarah Bernhardt – Colette – Eleanora Duse – Lina Poletti – Josephine Baker – Virginia Woolf... these are just a few of the women sharing the pages of a book as fierce as it is luminous. Lush and poetic; furious and funny; in After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz has created a novel that celebrates the women and trailblazers of the past – their constant efforts to push against the boundaries of what it means, and can mean, to be a woman – that also offers hope for our present, and our futures.
The Power of the Paddle
by Jordan WylieDjibouti, a tiny country on the Horn of Africa at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden, has become a refuge for people fleeing from neighbouring war zones. It’s here that former soldier and extreme adventurer Jordan Wylie visited various refugee camps and orphanages and saw first-hand the grim lives of many of the children, deprived of so many of the basic things which most children in the UK simply take for granted.Determined to raise funds and awareness to build a new school for some of these children, Jordan embarked on a series of extraordinary adventures, becoming the first person to row solo and unsupported across the pirate-infested Bab-el-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa; running a series of extreme marathons in ice-cold climates around the world; and stand-up paddleboarding for longer and further than anyone ever had before at sea, in an attempt to circumnavigate mainland Great Britain, where he faced angry fisherman, busy shipping lanes, military firing ranges, crazy teenagers on jet-skis, psychotic jellyfish and, finally, Covid-19.This is the inspirational true story of the lengths to which one man went to fulfil a dream and keep his promise of making a positive contribution to the lives of the people, especially children, in the war-torn countries he’d come to know so well through his travels.
Running For My Life
by Jordan WylieThis is the extraordinary true story of how a former British soldier turned extreme adventurer set out to run marathons in the world’s most dangerous countries. In 2018, Jordan Wylie trained and ran in Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan to raise awareness of the plight of children suffering in war zones as well as the funds to help provide education.Risking his life in some of the most hostile places in the world, Wylie defies suicide bombers, official advice, dehydration and exhaustion, as well as his own mental and physical health issues in an incredible tale of endurance and tenacity against the odds.His first race, in Somalia, is moved to Somaliland after a suicide bomber kills 600 people. Running the Baghdad half-marathon brings back painful memories of friends and colleagues he lost when he served there. Finally, at the Afghanistan marathon, he provides a high-profile target for the Taliban, who murder seventeen people the day before he arrives.What makes these three runs even more challenging is the fact that Jordan is affected not just by mental health issues from his own experiences, but also with epilepsy. Alongside the more extreme obstacles, Jordan has to overcome self-doubt – and the doubt of others – to show what can be achieved with belief and fortitude.
Is there a Pigeon in the Room?: My Life in Schools
by Cameron WylieIs There a Pigeon in the Room? is a deeply personal book about Cameron Wyllie’s remarkable four-decade career in teaching. It’s a tapestry of anecdotes and reflections on topics like drugs, parenting and sex education, laced with stories about memorable individuals.What did he say to the Third Year after drinking too much gin with the Head? Who was Adolf? What happened to the horrible bus driver? While the intention is to make the reader laugh plenty, Cameron also deals with discipline, refugees, tragic events, his own status as a gay man and tells us the story of Tes, an Eritrean boy who inspired hundreds of young people with his love of education.Cameron taught over 8,000 students in his career. Having been once described as ‘the place where Jean Brodie meets Kenneth Williams’ the book also charts the surprising trajectory of a career which culminated in his appointment as Principal of George Heriot’s, one of Edinburgh’s most prestigious schools.
Everything is Teeth (Pantheon Graphic Library)
by Evie Wyld Joe SumnerEvie Wyld was a girl obsessed with sharks. Spending summers in the brutal heat of coastal New South Wales, she fell for the creatures. Their teeth, their skin, their eyes; their hunters and their victims. Everything is Teeth is a delicate and intimate collection of the memories she brought home to England, a book about family, love and the irresistible forces that pass through life unseen, under the surface, ready to emerge at any point.
Caesar: A Life in Western Culture
by Maria WykeMore than two millennia have passed since Brutus and his companions murdered Julius Caesar—and inaugurated his legend. Though the assassins succeeded in ending Caesar’s dictatorship, they could never have imagined that his power and influence would only grow after his death, reaching mythic proportions and establishing him as one of the central icons of Western culture, fascinating armchair historians and specialists alike. With Caesar, Maria Wyke takes up the question of just why Julius Caesar has become such an exalted figure when most of his fellow Romans have long been forgotten. Focusing on key events in Caesar’s life, she begins with accounts from ancient sources, then traces the ways in which his legend has been adapted and employed by everyone from Machiavelli to Madison Avenue, Shakespeare to George Bernard Shaw. Napoleon and Mussolini, for example, cited Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in defense of their own dictatorial aims, while John Wilkes Booth fancied himself a new Brutus, ridding America of an imperial scourge. Caesar’s personal life, too, has long been fair game—but the lessons we draw from it have changed: Suetonius derided Caesar for his lustfulness and his love of luxury, but these days he and his lover Cleopatra serve as the very embodiment of glamour, enticingly invoked everywhere from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to the hit HBO series Rome. Caesar is the witty and perceptive work of a writer who is as comfortable with the implications of Xena: Warrior Princess as with the long shadow cast by the Annals of Tacitus. Wyke gives us a Caesar for our own time: complicated, hotly contested, and perpetually, fascinatingly renewed.
The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family
by Bertram Wyatt-BrownThe novels of Walker Percy--The Moviegoer, Lancelot, The Second Coming, and The Thanatos Syndrome to name a few--have left a permanent mark on twentieth-century Southern fiction; yet the history of the Percy family in America matches anything, perhaps, that he could have created. Two centuries of wealth, literary accomplishment, political leadership, depression, and sometimes suicide established a fascinating legacy that lies behind Walker Percy's acclaimed prose and profound insight into the human condition. In The House of Percy, Bertram Wyatt-Brown masterfully interprets the life of this gifted family, drawing out the twin themes of an inherited inclination to despondency and an abiding sense of honor. The Percy family roots in Mississippi and Louisiana go back to "Don Carlos" Percy, an eighteenth-century soldier of fortune who amassed a large estate but fell victim to mental disorder and suicide. Wyatt-Brown traces the Percys through the slaveholding heyday of antebellum Natchez, the ravages of the Civil War (which produced the heroic Colonel William Alexander Percy, the "Gray Eagle"), and a return to prominence in the Mississippi Delta after Reconstruction. In addition, the author recovers the tragic lives and literary achievements of several Percy-related women, including Sarah Dorsey, a popular post-Civil War novelist who horrified her relatives by befriending Jefferson Davis--a married man--and bequeathing to him her plantation home, Beauvoir, along with her entire fortune. Wyatt-Brown then chronicles the life of Senator LeRoy Percy, whose climactic re-election loss in 1911 to a racist demagogue deply stung the family pride, but inspired his bold defiance to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The author goes on to tell the poignant story of poet and war hero Will Percy, the Senator's son. The weight of this family narrative found expression in Will Percy's memoirs, Lanterns on the Levee--and in the works of Walker Percy, who was reared in his cousin Will's Greenville home after the suicidal death of Walker's father and his mother's drowning. As the biography of a powerful dynasty, steeped in Sou8thern traditions and claims to kinship with English nobility, The House of Percy shows the interrelationship of legend, depression, and grand achievement. Written by a leading scholar of the South, it weaves together intensive research and thoughtful insights into a riveting, unforgettable story.
The George Gershwin Reader (Readers on American Musicians)
by Robert Wyatt John Andrew JohnsonGeorge Gershwin is one of the giants of American music, unique in that he was both a brilliant writer of popular songs and of more serious music. Here, music lovers are treated to a spectacular celebration of this great American composer. The Reader offers a kaleidoscopic collection of writings by Gershwin, as well as those about Gershwin, written by a who's who of famous commentators. More than eighty pieces of superb variety, color, and depth include the critical debate over Gershwin's concert pieces, especially "Rhapsody in Blue" and "An American in Paris." There is a complete section devoted to the controversies over "Porgy and Bess," including correspondence between Gershwin and DuBose Hayward, the opera's librettist, plus unique interviews with the original Porgy and Bess--Todd Duncan and Anne Brown. Sprinkled throughout the book are excerpts from Gershwin's own letters, which offer unique insight into this fascinating and charming man. Along with a detailed chronology of the composer's life, the editors provide informative introductions to each entry. Here is a book for anyone interested in American music. Scholars, performers, and Gershwin's legions of fans will find it an irresistible feast.
Father Dear Father
by Petronella WyattPetronella Wyatt writes: 'The eccentricities of my father, Lord (Woodrow) Wyatt (1918-1997), are a legend. I, his only daughter, was required to participate in his astonishing behaviour with all the enthusiasm I could muster. This resulted in a childhood of a kind unknown to the late 20th-century - a mixture of Edwardian extravagance, Victorian whimsicality and a vivid 18th-century haute sophistication. 'Father was the last of the old school. Described by his friend and former political rival Roy Jenkins as 'the ultimate original', he was a politician, writer, race-horse owner, womaniser and bon vivant - a unique product of pre-war English civilisation. His career ensured him a varied circle of friends. I grew up with such companions as Harold Macmillan, Margaret Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch, Robin Day, Sir James Goldsmith, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, the Duke of Devonshire and much of Debrett's Peerage. 'Each chapter of the book will contain personal and historically important anecdotes about the famous that have never before appeared in print and which will generate considerable news coverage. What I am writing is a waspish social document - irreverent, satirical, dramatic and scandalous, disclosing how the privileged enjoy their privileges
Brooke at the Bar: Inside Our Legal System (Timberline Books)
by Brooke WunnickeBrooke at the Bar is a candid, lively, and sometimes humorous autobiography by Brooke Wunnicke, the first woman to be a trial and appellate attorney in Wyoming and who went on to become a legal legend in Colorado. In conversational writing, Brooke provides insights from a lawyer, mentor, and educator. She advocates that, while not perfect, the United States has the world’s best legal system and that all citizens need to understand and protect their rights, freedoms, and responsibilities. Brooke shares vignettes of her early life—California in the Great Depression, college at Stanford, law school in Colorado during World War II, and the 1946 opening of her Cheyenne law office, a precedent for women in law. She vividly describes memorable and amusing experiences with clients, witnesses, lawyers, juries, and judges and explains some significant cases. She recounts important and dynamic events from her twelve years as Denver’s chief appellate deputy district attorney, an era during which she was an inestimable mentor to many young lawyers who became prominent in the private and public sectors. Brooke passionately believed “the law has been and will continue to be civilization’s hope.” In her book’s final part, she demystifies many legal terms and procedures and describes the parts of a civil jury trial—including information for jurors and witnesses—and provides an enthusiastic and clear refresher on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Brooke at the Bar is a unique and historically important contribution that will be of interest to general readers, scholars, and students interested in US law, political science, government, women’s history, twentieth-century western history, civil rights, and legal communities, including those in Wyoming and Colorado, where Brooke was “at the Bar.”
Monet: The Restless Vision
by Jackie WullschlägerA magnificent new biography of the founder of ImpressionismIn the course of a long and exceptionally creative life, Claude Monet revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Misunderstood and mocked at the beginning of his career, he risked everything to pursue his original vision. Although close to starvation when he invented impressionism on the banks of the Seine in the 1860s-70s, in the following decades he emerged as the powerful leader of the new painting in Paris at one of its most exciting cultural moments. His symphonic series Haystacks, Poplars, and Rouen Cathedral brought wealth and renown. Then he withdrew to paint only the pond in his garden. The late Water Lilies, ignored during his lifetime, are now celebrated as pioneers of twentieth century modernism.Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements, he pushed the frontier of painting inward, to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms - the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was his closest friend. Rich intellectual currents connected him to writers from Zola to Proust; affection and rivalry to Renoir, Pissarro and Manet.Monet said he was driven 'wild with the need to put down what I experience'. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
by Andrea Wulf'Elegantly written, deeply researched and totally gripping' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIOREIn the 1790s an extraordinary group of friends changed the world. Disappointed by the French Revolution's rapid collapse into tyranny, what they wanted was nothing less than a revolution of the mind. The rulers of Europe had ordered their peoples how to think and act for too long. Based in the small German town of Jena, through poetry, drama, philosophy and science, they transformed the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. They were the first Romantics.Their way of understanding the world still frames our lives and being.We're still empowered by their daring leap into the self. We still think with their minds, see with their imagination and feel with their emotions. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfilment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our role as a member of our community and our responsibilities towards future generations who will inhabit this planet. This extraordinary group of friends changed our world. It is impossible to imagine our lives, thoughts and understanding without the foundation of their ground-breaking ideas.
It Happens Among People: Resonances and Extensions of the Work of Fredrik Barth (WYSE Series in Social Anthropology #8)
by Keping Wu Robert P. WellerWritten by eleven leading anthropologists from around the world, this volume extends the insights of Fredrik Barth, one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century, to push even further at the frontiers of anthropology and honor his memory. As a collection, the chapters thus expand Barth’s pioneering work on values, further develop his insights on human agency and its potential creativity, as well as continuing to develop the relevance for his work as a way of thinking about and beyond the state. The work is grounded on his insistence that theory should grow only from observed life.
The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt Vol 5
by Duncan Wu Tom Paulin David Bromwich Stanley Jones Roy ParkWilliam Hazlitt is viewed by many as one of the most distinguished of the non-fiction prose writers to emerge from the Romantic period. This nine-volume edition collects all his major works in complete form.
The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt Vol 5
by Duncan Wu Tom Paulin David Bromwich Stanley Jones Roy ParkWilliam Hazlitt is viewed by many as one of the most distinguished of the non-fiction prose writers to emerge from the Romantic period. This nine-volume edition collects all his major works in complete form.
Do Not Disturb: The Story Of A Political Murder And An African Regime Gone Bad
by Michela WrongSHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2022 ‘Superb’ The Times ‘Engrossing and revelatory' Observer ‘Powerful, compelling and meticulously researched’ New Statesman
A Fool And His Money: Life in a Partitioned Medieval Town
by Ann WroeFew books have captured the atmosphere of daily medieval life as well or as movingly as A Fool and His Money. Rodez, in southern France, was divided for centuries by a feud between two masters. This partitioned town thus acquired two distinct cultures. The story focuses on the strange case of Peyre Marques, a merchant who forgets where he has buried his gold. To read A Fool and His Money is like opening a shutter on to a sunlit medieval street teeming with characters, talk and noise - all coloured with the vibrancy of truth. --'Wroe is an excellent historian and an engaging writer with a beady eye for detail and an attractive turn of phrase. Best of all, she conveys a true feeling for the recreation of period and persons and place' Daily Telegraph --'History lives best when it is loved, and nobody who reads this book can doubt the author's love of her subject' Sunday Telegraph
Lifescapes: A Biographer’s Search for the Soul
by Ann WroeThe acclaimed biographer and obituarist for The Economist reflects on a career spent pursuing life and capturing it on the page'Lifescapes is the universe in miniature'DAILY TELEGRAPHIt is soul that I go looking for. Or, to put it another way, real life.'She's a genius, I believe'HILARY MANTEL, author of Wolf Hall'What is life?' asked the poet Shelley, and could not come up with an answer. Scientists, too, for all their understanding of how life manifests, thrives and evolves, have still not plumbed that fundamental question. Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns, or a few hundred pages, aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is.In this dazzlingly original blend of memoir, biography, observation and poetry, Ann Wroe reflects on the art and impossibility of capturing life on the page. Through her experiences and those of others, through people she has known, studied or merely glimpsed in windows, she movingly explores what makes a life and how that life lingers after.Animated by Wroe's rare imagination, eye for the telling detail, and the wit, beauty and clarity of her writing, Lifescapes is a luminous, deeply personal answer to Shelley's question.
Perkin
by Ann WroeThe story of Perkin Warbeck is one of the most compelling mysteries of English history. A young man suddenly emerged claiming to be Richard of York, the younger of the Princes in the Tower. As such, he tormented Henry VII for eight years. He tried three times to invade England and behaved like a prince. Officially, however, he was proclaimed to be Perkin Warbeck, the son of a Flemish boatman. A diplomatic pawn, he was used by the greatest European rulers of the age for their own purposes. All who dealt with him gave him the identity they wished him to have: either the Duke of York or a jumped-up lad from Flanders. It is possible that he was neither. It is also possible that, by the end, even he did not really know who he was. In Perkin Ann Wroe tells again a marvellous tale that is on the brink of being forgotten. She also dissects the official cover story. In doing so she delves into the secret corners of European history and produces a portrait of the late fifteenth century that is breathtaking in its detail.
Pilate: The Biography Of An Invented Man
by Ann WroeAlthough very little is known for certain about Pontius Pilate, the man who crucified Christ, this has not stopped writers in every age from imagining his life. In this extraordinary book, Ann Wroe recounts the lives of all our Pilates; among them the glittering medieval tyrant, devoted to gambling and getting around the law, and the wriggling modern pragmatist, whose dilemma over Jesus has been described by Tony Blair as 'a timeless parable of political life'. This is also the story of the man Pilate might have been; and the man who mirrors us. Ann Wroe shows how, in his struggles with fate and free will, Pilate's story has also become the story of ourselves.
Bumper: The Life And Times Of Frank 'bumper' Farrell
by Larry WriterThe sprawling saga of legendary Australian cop, Bumper Farrell, the most feared and revered policeman in Australia's history.Frank 'Bumper' Farrell was the roughest, toughest street cop and vice-squad leader Australia has ever seen. Strong as a bull, with cauliflowered ears and fists like hams, Bumper's beat from 1938 to 1976 was the most lawless in the land - the mean streets of Kings Cross and inner Sydney. His adversaries were such notorious criminals as Abe Saffron, Lennie McPherson, Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh and their gangs as well as the hooligans, sly groggers, SP bookies, pimps and spivs.Criminals knew just where they stood: he would catch them, he would hurt them, and then he would lock them away. He was a legendary Rugby League player for Newtown, and represented Australia against England and New Zealand.Here's Bumper Farrell in brutal, passionate and hilarious action . . . saving Ita Buttrose from a stalker; sparking a national scandal when accused of biting off a rival player's ear; beating Lennie McPherson so severely the hard man cried; single-handedly fighting a mob of gangsters in Kings Cross and winning; terrorising the hoons who harassed the prostitutes in the brothel lanes by driving over the top of them; commandeering the police launch to take him home to his beach home, diving overboard in full uniform and catching a wave to shore; dispensing kindness and charity to the poor.Bumper Farrell: lawman, sportsman, larrikin . . . legend.'fascinating . . . [a] fine biography' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD