Биографии и Мемуары - скачать книги или читать онлайн. Страница 321

The personal accounts of three young women who joined up in 1940.In the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone against Germany. The British Army stood at just over one and a half million men, while the Germans had three times that many, and a population almost twice the size of ours from which to draw new waves of soldiers. Clearly, in the fight against Hitler, manpower alone wasn’t going to be enough.Eighteen-year-old Jessie Ward defied her mother to join the ATS, Margery Pott signed up for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and nanny Kathleen Skin the WRNS. They left quiet homes for the rigours of training, the camaraderie of the young women who worked together so closely and to face a war that would change their lives for ever.Overall, more than half a million women served in the armed forces during the Second World War. This book tells the story of just three of them – one from the Army, one from the Navy and one from the Air Force. But in their stories are reflected the lives of hundreds of thousands of others like them – ordinary girls who went to war, wearing their uniforms with pride.

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURED DIRECTED BY AND STARRING CHIWETEL EJIOFOR.When William Kamkwamba was just 14 years old, his family told him that he must leave school and come home to work on the farm – they could no longer afford his fees. This is his story of how he found a way to make a difference, how he bought light to his family and village, and hope to his nation.Malawi is a country battling AIDS, drought and famine, and in 2002, a season of floods, followed by the most severe famine in fifty years, brought it to its knees. Like the majority of the population, William's family were farmers. They were totally reliant on the maize crop. By the end of 2001, after many lean and difficult years, there was no more crop. They were running out of food – had nothing to sell – and had months until they would be able to harvest their crop again.Forced to leave school at 14 years old, with no hope of raising the funds to go again, William resorted to borrowing books from the small local library to continue his education. One day, browsing the titles, he picked up a book about energy, with a picture of a wind turbine on the front cover. Fascinated by science and electricity, but knowing little more about the technology, William decided to build his own. Ridiculed by those around him, and exhausted from his work in the fields every day, and using nothing more than bits of scrap metal, old bicycle parts and wood from the blue gum tree, he slowly built his very own windmill.This windmill has changed the world in which William and his family live. Only 2 per cent of Malawi has electricity; William's windmill now powers the lightbulbs and radio for his compound. He has since built more windmills for his school and his village.When news of William's invention spread, people from across the globe offered to help him. Soon he was re-enrolled in college and travelling to America to visit wind farms. This is his incredible story.William's dream is that other African's will learn to help themselves – one windmill and one light bulb at a time – and that maybe one day they will be able to power their own computers, and use the internet, and see for themselves how his life has changed after picking up that book in the library.

Internationally bestselling author of The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz gives us a mystical tour of his life and calling as a “Nagual” in this gripping spiritual and autobiographical teaching novel.Internationally bestselling author Don Miguel Ruiz became a trusted and well-known teacher of spiritual wisdom through his popular works such as The Four Agreements, Mastery of Love, and The Voice of Knowledge. Now he is ready to take his students on a new journey, inviting us to confront and learn a deeper level of spiritual teaching and wisdom than he has attempted before.Using the occasion of his heart attack in 2002 and subsequent coma where it was not clear he would live, Ruiz and his cowriter Barbara Emrys have created an enchanting and mystical tale of the internal spiritual struggle Ruiz undergoes as his body lies unconscious. He must choose whether or not to come back to life. Re-experiencing the people, ideas, and encounters that have shaped him through his childhood and career, we encounter the challenges of “the way of the Nagual,”—a person who is called to teach and embody the deepest spiritual truths of the universe.In the tradition of Carlos Castaneda and other shamans who have come before him, Ruiz invites us to grapple with truths that are beyond what can be put into words but nonetheless promise to transform everything we know.

The definitive history of Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth saga, Anything You Can Imagine takes us on a cinematic journey across all six films, featuring brand-new interviews with Peter, his cast & crew. From the early days of daring to dream it could be done, through the highs and lows of making the films, to fan adoration and, finally, Oscar glory.LightsA nine-year-old boy in New Zealand’s Pukerua Bay stays up late and is spellbound by a sixty-year-old vision of a giant ape on an island full of dinosaurs. This is true magic. And the boy knows that he wants to be a magician.CameraFast-forward twenty years and the boy has begun to cast a spell over the film-going audience, conjuring gore-splattered romps with bravura skill that will lead to Academy recognition with an Oscar nomination for Heavenly Creatures. The boy from Pukerua Bay with monsters reflected in his eyes has arrived, and Hollywood comes calling. What would he like to do next? ‘How about a fantasy film, something like The Lord of the Rings…?’ActionThe greatest work of fantasy in modern literature, and the biggest, with rights ownership so complex it will baffle a wizard. Vast. Complex. Unfilmable. One does not simply walk into Mordor – unless you are Peter Jackson.Anything You Can Imagine tells the full, dramatic story of how Jackson and his trusty fellowship of Kiwi filmmakers dared take on a quest every bit as daunting as Frodo’s, and transformed JRR Tolkien’s epic tale of adventure into cinematic magic, and then did it again with The Hobbit. Enriched with brand-new interviews with Jackson, his fellow filmmakers and many of the films’ stars, Ian Nathan’s mesmerising narrative whisks us to Middle-earth, to gaze over the shoulder of the director as he creates the impossible, the unforgettable, and proves that film-making really is ‘anything you can imagine’.

LIVES THAT NEVER GROW OLDPart of a radical series – edited by Richard Holmes – that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Gilchrist’s ‘The Life of William Blake’ is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive.This was the first biography of William Blake ever written, at a time when the great visionary poet and painter was generally forgotten, ridiculed or dismissed as insane. Wonderfully vivid and outspoken (one chapter is entitled ‘Mad or Not Mad’), it was based on revealing interviews with many of Blake’s surviving friends.Blake conversed with spirits, saw angels in trees, and sunbathed naked with his wife ‘like Adam and Eve’. Gilchrist adds detailed descriptions of Blake’s beliefs and working methods, an account of his trial for high treason and fascinating evocations of the places in London, Kent and Sussex where he lived. The book ultimately transformed and enhanced Blake’s reputation.

The 15:17 to Paris is the amazing true story of friendship and bravery, and of near tragedy averted by three heroic young men who found the unity and strength inside themselves when they – and 500 other innocent travellers – needed it most.On 21st August 2015, Ayoub El-Khazzani boarded train #9364 in Brussels, bound for Paris. There could be no doubt about his mission: he had an AK-47, a pistol, a box cutter and enough ammunition to obliterate every passenger on board. Slipping into the bathroom in secret, he armed his weapons. Another major ISIS attack was about to begin, but Khazzani wasn’t expecting Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone. Stone was a martial arts enthusiast and airman first class in the US Air Force, Skarlatos was a member of the Oregon National Guard, and all three were fearless. But their decision, to charge the gunman, then overpower him even as he turned first his gun, then his knife, on Stone, depended on a lifetime of loyalty, support, and faith.Their friendship was forged as they came of age together in California: going to church, playing paintball, teaching each other to swear, and sticking together when they got in trouble at school. Years later, that friendship would give all of them the courage to stand in the path of one of the world's deadliest terrorist organisations.

Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks brings together for the first time Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making, two volumes that explore the fascinating contents of her 73 notebooks. This includes illustrations, deleted extracts, unused ideas, two unpublished Poirot stories and a lost Miss Marple.When Agatha Christie died in 1976, aged 85, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide in more than 100 countries, she had achieved the impossible – more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.So prolific was Agatha Christie's output – 66 crime novels, 20 plays, 6 romance books under a pseudonym and over 150 short stories – it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this true? Or did she resort over those 55 years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimes?Following the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable secret was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, 73 handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations and details that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.Christie archivist and expert John Curran leads the reader through the six decades of Agatha Christie's writing career, unearthing some remarkable clues to her success and a number of never-before-published excerpts and stories from her archives. This book features Agatha's original ending of her very first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, painstakingly transcribed from her notebooks. It also includes a number of short stories from the archives reproduced in full, including the unpublished The Man Who Knew, How I Created Hercule Poirot, and an early draft for a Miss Marple story, The Case of the Caretaker's Wife.

The Empress of Crime's life was the ultimate detective story – revealed for the first time in this forthright and perceptive biography.While Ngaio Marsh had a flamboyant public persona, she was fiercely protective of her private life. And no one knows better how to cover tracks with red herrings and remove incriminating evidence than a crime fiction writer…This fascinating biography of Ngaio Marsh pieces together both the public and private Marsh in a way that is as riveting as a crime novel. Through her writing and her theatre work, Joanne Drayton assembles the pieces to the puzzle that is Marsh, proving that life can be as thrilling as fiction. Marsh wrote her first detective novel in a London flat in the depths of the 1930s Depression, bringing life to Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn in her first book, A Man Lay Dead. Through 32 novels he would establish himself as one of the great super-sleuths, and Marsh as one of the four Queens of Golden Age detective fiction, alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.In 1932, a family tragedy brought Marsh home to New Zealand, to a life divided – between hemispheres, between passionate relationships at home and abroad, and between the world of publishing and her life as a stage director. In 1949 her writing would earn her the ultimate distinction when Penguin and Collins released the 'Marsh Million': 100,000 copies each of ten of her titles on to the world market. The popular appetite for classic whodunits was insatiable and Ngaio Marsh was one of the best. But her greatest love was the stage – or was it?

Previously published in hardback as Hey Jo, this is a moving and candid memoir from the woman who married the most controversial member of the Rolling Stones, and had the strength and courage to bounce back from heartbreak.When young model and mother Jo met rock star Ronnie Wood, she had no idea what her brief flirtation with this brilliant, charismatic musician would become.A raw and rollicking narrative from the eye of the storm, Jo’s extraordinary story of life as a Rolling Stone girlfriend, then wife, mother and more, is a never-before-heard account of the heady hedonistic Ronnie Wood years – the drugs, the roadies, the tours, and the booze – and a celebration of her new-found happiness as an entrepreneur, fashion icon and beauty expert.Following the public breakdown of her marriage, Jo moved on with a dignity and lack of bitterness that won her fans across the country. Now a successful businesswoman, a passionate campaigner of pure, organic living, and a thriving name in fashion, Jo has learnt to embrace her new found vitality, and in doing so has become the heroine of everyone from 20-something fashionistas to Strictly Come Dancing devotees.This is Jo’s journey, from the breathtaking highs of her and Ronnie’s shared infatuation and love, to the devastating lows of his sudden disappearances, drug-induced mania and seizures, and how she learned to walk away without regret or bitterness, and forgive.

Following Phyllida Law’s wonderful and acclaimed ‘Notes to my Mother-in-Law’ – which comically and tenderly documented the author’s relationship with her husband’s mother who lived with the family for 17 years – we now have a chronicle of Phyllida’s relationship with her own mother who suffered from dementia. Recently widowed, bringing up her own two daughters (actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson) and working as a successful actress herself, Phyllida went up and down to Scotland to spend as much time with her ailing mother as she could manage. During the period she kept a lively and frank journal noting many of the sad yet funny examples of her mother’s faltering grip on reality. The journal includes reminiscences of her own childhood and the tragic death of her only brother.This book promises to be just as warm and moving as her first and will also be beautifully enhanced by the author’s illustrations.

What if Christopher Marlowe staged his own death, fled to the Continent and went on to write the works we now attribute to Shakespeare?'About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong.' T. S. EliotMark Twain likened writing the biography of Shakespeare to reconstructing the skeleton of a brontosaurus – using 'nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris'. We work with a handful of facts and a pile of conjecture. All biographies of Shakespeare, from the wayward to the academic, use the same few-score hard facts kneaded together with legend, then leavened by a dash of zeitgeist and a large dollop of author's imagination. Poems and plays are plundered for booty, even by those who profess scepticism as to the inferences that can be drawn about the life from the work. Like statistics, quotations can be turned to very different facts.This book is not, of course, an attempt to prove that Christopher Marlowe staged his own death, fled to the continent, and went on to write the work attributed to Shakespeare. It, however, playfully assumes that as its starting point, and swings the old bones around, viewing them from a different angle to build a different brontosaurus. It does so in a spirit of fun, and with the intention of a little saucy iconoclasm. Shakespeare's works are unassailable, and will survive any amount of subversion, but by playing with our commonplace history, Rodney Bolt argues that the quasi-religious idol the man has become is perhaps in need of the efforts of a wicked woodworm.Where other writers have looked at the evidence and deduced a story, Bolt has imagined a story, then supported it with the same sparse evidence. At this distance, the difference between deduction and speculation is paper thin. The point of the take is not only to question our view of history and the validity of biography, but to show how people travelled, how cultures crossed, and how art gets made.

August, 1755. Newcastle, on the north bank of the Tyne.In the fields, men and women are getting the harvest in. Sunlight, or rain. Scudding clouds and backbreaking labour. Three hundred feet underground, young Charles Hutton is at the coalface. Cramped, dust-choked, wielding a five-pound pick by candlelight. Eighteen years old, he’s been down the pits on and off for more than a decade, and now it looks like a life sentence. No unusual story, although Charles is a clever lad – gifted at maths and languages – and for a time he hoped for a different life. Many hoped.Charles Hutton, astonishingly, would actually live the life he dreamed of. Twenty years later you’d have found him in Slaughter’s coffee house in London, eating a few oysters with the President of the Royal Society.By the time he died, in 1823, he was a fellow of scientific academies in four countries, while the Lord Chancellor of England counted himself fortunate to have known him. Hard work, talent, and no small share of luck would take Charles Hutton out of the pit to international fame, wealth, admiration and happiness. The pit-boy turned professor would become one of the most revered British scientists of his day. This book is his incredible story.