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

In 2018, award-winning lawyer and business leader Sarah Nelson Smith found herself at the heart of a corporate crisis that made headlines around the world. A distribution failure led to hundreds of KFC restaurants being unable to open, threatening the livelihoods of franchise owners and exposing the company to huge financial loss and public ridicule. Why didn't the chicken cross the road? Well, where to start....

The war introduced them—they met as blackout wardens in London. It gave them darkened streets to wander in, hand in hand, then, by sending Tony away to officer training camps, it sharpened their hunger for each other, casting a glow over his comings and goings. It turned them into schemers and wanglers against fate and army regulations. It pressed them into marriage, and when the war decided to deploy him to North Africa, it whispered the urgent question of a baby. To which Tony, thinking of the war, replied maybe not; and Zippa, thinking of the war, said yes.

Oswaldo Payá was seven years old when Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, promising to create a 'free, democratic and just Cuba.' But Castro instead created an authoritarian regime with little tolerance of free speech or thought. His secret police were trained to crush dissent by East Germany's ruthless Stasi. Throughout Cuba's 20th century history, the dream of democracy was often just within reach, only to be dashed by dictatorship and revived again by a new generation. Payá inherited this dream and it became his life's work.

A roadmap of recovery and transformation, this is the story of becoming heroic in a culture which doesn’t see heroism in the shape of a girl. At the age of 20, after a traumatic sexual assault trial, Kathryn Heyman ran away from her life and became a deckhand on a fishing trawler in the Timor Sea. Coming from a family of poverty and violence, she had no real role models, no example of how to create or live a decent life, how to have hope or expectations. But she was a reader. She understood story, and the power of words to name the world. This was to become her salvation.

The story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq is here told by its musical director, from its inception to its eventual end. The NYOI came through the most difficult and dangerous of times to produce fine music not only in Iraq but also in Britain, Germany and France. A beacon of hope and achievement, the young musicians and their tutors made bridges across their own ethnic divisions. They made great music in the most trying and tragic of circumstances and became their country's best ambassadors in 5,000 years.

As a young boy, Joseph Pearson was terrified of the weapon hanging from a hook in his grandfather’s basement, a trophy seized from the enemy in battle. When he later inherited the knife, he unlocked a story far more unsettling than he could ever have imagined. By then a writer and cultural historian living in Berlin, Joseph found himself drawn to other objects from the Nazi era: a pocket diary, a recipe book, a double bass and a cotton pouch.

Anders Bortne has a nice life in Oslo. Married to a wonderful woman, with two delightful children, his days are occupied by his creative work. Not all is well though, Anders has been sleepless for 16 years, and it is taking its toll on his life and his family. No remedy has gone untested: sleeping pills, yoga, herbs, acupuncture, hypnosis, but none has worked. What do we know about the most important hours of the day? What is the history of sleep, and how is our health affected?

In this highly personal memoir, Christopher Meyer tells the story of his father, Flight Lieutenant Reggie Meyer, an RAF pilot, who was shot down and killed over the Greek island of Ikaria. Through his mother’s diary and family papers Christopher Meyer pieces together a wartime story of love, tragedy and sacrifice.

In Winning Through Brian Irvine tells the truth about his life as a footballer. From family life in Airdrie we follow him as he realises his boyhood dreams. He becomes an international player with Aberdeen and Scotland. But he has to cope with bad times, and worse, when he is told he has a serious and possibly fatal illness. Finally, he has to come to terms with the end of a long playing career. Brian's Christian faith and strong family ties help him to cope, and to 'win through'.

"Who owns your mind?" Beginning with this provocative question, Emmanuel Jal invites listeners to claim ownership over the narratives that define their lives in order to become a force for good in the world. As a child growing up in South Sudan, Jal witnessed atrocities perpetrated against his family and community. These actions drove him to become a child soldier in a vicious civil war.