Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Biographies & Memoirs

Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, researcher and historian Oliver Lewis set out to visit all the places to have inspired and been lived in by George Orwell. Over three years he traveled from Wigan to Catalonia, Paris to Motihari, Marrakesh to Eton, and in each location explored both how Orwell experienced the place, and how the place now remembers him as a literary icon.

When war is declared, Frances and Ralph, both pacifists, turn their house into a sanctuary for friends more materially involved. Invasion seems imminent as one by one the countries of Europe fall to the Nazis. People are even told to immobilise their car engines at night in case the Germans parachute into Britain. Yet although war looms persistently over the Partridges, only a few power cuts affect them, leaving them feeling oddly isolated from it.

How a fishmonger's son from Tyneside, growing up in the 1950s with a Geordie accent, become the person who recorded more than 900 audiobooks and received an MBE from the queen in the Birthday Honours of 2017. This 'charming', 'entertaining' and 'heart-warming' memoir answers that question.

In the summer of 2008 Kimberley Motley quit her job as a Criminal Defence Attorney in Milwaukee to join a program to help train lawyers in war-torn Afghanistan. She was 32 years old at the time, a former Mrs Wisconsin (she'd entered the contest on a dare) and a mother of three who had never travelled outside the United States.

Everything you wanted to know about France but were too afraid to ask... At eighteen Lucy Wadham abandoned England and fell into the arms of a Frenchman. Twenty-five years later, having married, had children, and divorced in France, Lucy is perfectly placed to explore the differences between our two countries. Here she examines every aspect of French life - from sex and adultery to money, happiness, race and politics - in this funny and engrossing account of our most intriguing neighbour.

On a trip to Dublin, Chris Harrison falls head over heels in love with Daniela, an Italian girl with eyes the colour of Guinness - and he follows her home. He abandons his previous life for LA DOLCE VITA, with its luscious foods and sun-drenched vistas. Among olive groves and cobblestone lanes, Chris takes us on a moving, insightful and often hilarious journey into the heart of southern Italy...

One of the most comprehensive oral histories of apartheid, Mandela: An Audio History tells the story of the struggle against apartheid. It weaves together more than 50 first-person interviews with an unprecedented collection of archival sound: a rare recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in Mandela’s life sentence; a visit between Mandela and his family secretly taped by a prison guard; and pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Congress.

When Annie marries Harry after years of heartache in a London slum she believes she's found her happy ever after. But the horrors of the Blitz soon threaten everything they hold dear. The terrible sights Harry witnesses as an air raid warden bring back traumatic memories of his time during the First World War. Suddenly Annie finds herself struggling to cope not only with life in wartime and two little children, but also with a husband who seems like a stranger.

In What Is This Thing Called Love? Neill subverts our age’s obsession with introspective memoir and drills down into the fertile landscape of not only his own life but the lives of his neighbours and friends, too. Through a hilarious, keen-eyed exploration of his own abundant failings and cock-ups, you’ll be introduced to his distinctive worldview - simultaneously take-no-prisoners yet benign and benevolent....

Voices From the Hills is a history of female participation in mountain running, a development that was fiercely resisted in its early years. Steve Chilton has researched his subject deeply, interviewing many female athletes whom he rightly describes as pioneers. Thanks to them, female participation has become accepted and followed avidly in all its aspects including the long distance, high ascent runs over ranges such as the Mamores and recognized challenges such as the Bob Graham Round.

The spatter of sauce in a pan, a cook's subtle deviation from a recipe, the careful labour of cooking for loved ones: these are not often the subjects of critical enquiry. Cooking, we are told, has nothing to do with serious thought; the path to freedom and fulfilment, especially for women, leads directly out of the kitchen. In this invigorating, revelatory book, Rebecca May Johnson rewrites the kitchen as a space of infinite variety and infinite potential.

Zuzana Ruzickova grew up in 1930s Czechoslovakia dreaming of two things: Johann Sebastian Bach and the piano. But her peaceful, melodic childhood was torn apart when the Nazis invaded. Uprooted from her home, the teenage Zuzana faced a series of devastating defeats. A small slip of paper printed with her favourite piece of Bach’s music became her talisman.

In July 1964, the Sunday Mirror ran a front-page story headlined: Peer and a Gangster: Yard Enquiry. While withholding the names of the principal subjects, the newspaper reported that the Metropolitan Police had ordered an investigation into an alleged homosexual relationship between ‘a household name’ from the House of Lords and a leading London underworld figure. Bob Boothby was the Conservative lord in question and Ronnie Kray the gangster.

Roald Dahl was one of the world's greatest storytellers. He conceived his vocation as one as intrepid as that of any explorer and, in his writing for children, he was able to tap into a child's viewpoint throughout his life. He crafted tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with a moral, and filled with vibrant characters that endure in public imagination to the present day.

David was excited to be the new Vicar of the picturesque Hemsley. However, not all of his parishioners were impressed by his newfangled ways. Nonetheless, a determined David set about winning over the colourful townsfolk. There was Lord Feversham, the Henry VIII look-alike; fiery Ted, who had fought with the Polish Free Army; Frank, the 80-year-old singing shepherd; and redoubtable countrywoman Eva. All had stories of hardship and sacrifice, friendship and love.

Award-winning journalist Rachel Louise Snyder has spent her career reporting on abuse that happens under the cover of ‘private life'. And yet the story of her own troubled family is one she has always kept locked away. Snyder was eight when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious against this life, she was expelled from school, and then from home. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, she soon found herself masquerading as an adult.

Nick Compton had it all. A literal golden boy, to many observers it would seem that he was born to be a great in the sporting arena coming as he did from an incredible sporting ancestry. HIs grandfather Sir Denis Compton played cricket for England and football for Arsenal. Honed at an elite English boarding school, with a telegenic profile perfectly suited to the modern media environment, Nick appeared to be blessed with that rare ability to be able to stride out and face down the world's quickest bowlers, to survive and thrive in the danger zone at the hands of the hurtling new ball.

He fought and beheaded three Turkish adversaries in duels. He was sold into slavery and then murdered his master to escape. He was captured by pirates--twice--and marched to the gallows to be hanged, only to be reprieved seconds before the noose dropped over his head. And all this happened before he was thirty years old. This is Captain John Smith's life.

65 Roses and a Trunki: Defying the Odds in Life and Business is the extraordinary success story of entrepreneur Rob Law, designer and inventor of Trunki, the award-winning children's ride-on suitcase that’s sold millions of units worldwide. Born with cystic fibrosis, Rob watched his twin sister die from the same illness at 16. Told he could not expect to live into his 20s, he made a promise that he was going to defy the odds and live a long and successful life.

Shawnee chief Tecumseh was a man destined for greatness - the son of a prominent war leader, he was supposedly born under a lucky shooting star. Charismatic, intelligent, handsome, he was both a fierce warrior and a savvy politician. In the first biography of Tecumseh in more than 20 years, Peter Cozzens thoroughly revises our understanding of this great leader and his movement, arguing that his overlooked younger brother Tenskwatwa, the 'Shawnee Prophet', was a crucial partner in Tecumseh's success.