Step inside Louis' life like never before as he turns his critical eye on himself, his home, and family and tries to make sense of our weird and sometimes scary world. His new autobiography is the perfect book for our uncertain times by the hilarious and relatable Louis Theroux. Louis started lockdown with a sense of purpose and determination. Like the generation who survived the Second World War, this was his chance to shine. Then reality set in, forcing him to ask: When did he start annoying his children? Why is home-schooling so hard? Has the kitchen become the new shed, a hideaway for men, where, under the guise of being helpful, you can just drink, listen to music and keep to yourself? And is his drinking really becoming a problem? He also describes his dealings with Joe Exotic and flies to the US to make a documentary on the Tiger King, discusses his Grounded podcast, jumps back into the world of militias and conspiracy theorists as he catches up with past interviewees for his Life on the Edge series, and wonders whether he could get rich if he wrote Trump: The Musical.

This follow-up to the bestselling songbook Come All You People offers 40 previously unpublished songs of similar variety which have been sung in prisons, on pilgrimages, at open air festivals, by cathedral choirs, and teenage and in-house music groups. They are short songs, some from present day Scotland, some from the World Church. They help people to participate and move in worship in a way that conventional hymns cannot and can be used as a tool to help create innovative styles of worship. The book includes hints on using the material and an appendix of readings and prayers for use with the songs. Agnus Dei (Aidan)Alleluia (Duncan)Amen alleluiaAmeniBe still and know (i)Be still and know (ii)Bless the LordBring your best to their worstDeo gratias (PSC)First born of MaryGive thanks, worship and praise the LordGod's eye be within meGoodness is stronger than evilHalle, halle, halle (Caribbean)Hallelujah (Korea)In love you summon, in love I followJesus Christ, Jesus ChristKyrie eleison (Bridget)Kyrie eleison (Chad)Lo, I am with you (to the end of the world)Lord Jesus Christ, lover of allLord of life, we come to youLord, draw nearLord, in your mercy (hear our prayer)Lord, you can turn all mourning into dancingMagnificat (G min)MayenziweMy eyes are dim with weepingNight has fallenNothing in height or in depthO brother Jesus (where have we left you)O Lamb of God (Constantine)O Lamb of God (Moss)On God alone, I wait silentlySanctus (Aidan)Stand firmThe peace of the earth (be with you)There is one among usThis is the body of ChristWe will take what you offer

a In late 2019 early 2020 word was coming out of Wuhan, China of a highly infectious virus being detected in the population, which sparked concern for what was about to become a global pandemic. Meanwhile in typically British fashion the general public started stockpiling pasta and toilet rollsa |why I have no idea! But it did prompt me to pick up my drawing pencil and sketch the first Corona cartoon of 2 dinosaurs stockpiling loo rolls while the meteorite plummeted to earth! Since that first toon I have drawn (and am still drawing) an account of a |.all the stupidity, heroics, tragedy, political and medical successes and failures, and the ludicrous nature, at times, of the human conditiona |..and a |.era |.Trump and Boris! A diary, a record, a chronicle, if you like, of what we all went through on our continuing quest to defeat the virus and get back to relative normalitya |a |with shelves full of pasta and toilet rolla |. Sometimes brutal sometimes thought provoking but, I hope, always amusing this is a book to keep and look back ona |. and perhaps to let your children and grandchildren read as one persona s view of life in the times of Covid. It was my way of keeping myself sane and as it turned out it helped many of my friends who in turn supported the daily Facebook toons. Read a The Corona Chroniclesa and think of those who surviveda |.and sadly those who didna ta |a |this book and ita s story belongs to all of us and serves as cautionary tale for the futurea

Smile, lift up your Voices. Life is your Play. Wander around on the stage of Life and Learn. LEARN is the fifth book by the secular philosopher bill thompson after SMILE, VOICES, PLAY, WANDER, and now LEARN. The book is for those who have had enough of Homo Sapiens and are turning to Homo Conatus who is always waiting in the wings of the greek theatres of words. Homo Conatus, wanting to exist and enhance the SELF. Individuals needing a progressive politics, a shared EARTH in order to flourish safely. This requires DEPTH, an existential that and how. A basic understanding of biology and cosmology on top of any old sapient understandings of space and time machines. This new understanding that Homo Conatus requires turns Freudianism upside down and microcosmic. Hysteria is normal. Boring is normal. In between is Play. This new deal for the children of the 21st Century has been researched by the Greeks [Aristotle], Romans [Cicero], Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Newton [not as a mechanics but] as the complexity that surpasses the understandings of the older Homo Sapiens because of quantum electrodynamics or chemistry for short. Quantum Dynamic Homeostasis. So Darwin and then secular universities around the world for our teleonomic developments, new technologies. Any chances of a maintaining a civil order whilst opening up to diverse opinionsa has to change gear from sapiens to Conatus and embrace the teleonomics of the modern synthesis [1958]. Not a lot of people know enough about this yet, and Learn is the fifth a introduction to Homo Conatusa by the secular philosopher bill thompson [who is still trying to work out what it is like to be human]. And is that not what you do on a daily basis?

This book contains catalogues, analyses, photographs and drawings of some 2,000 archaeological artefacts excavated from the Insula of the Menander in Pompeii. The catalogues, and analyses are organized by provenance - buildings, rooms, and location within rooms - so that the reader can understand the artefacts as household assemblages. The functions of artefacts and groups of artefacts are discussed, as are the Latin names which are often given to these artefacts, and the relationships of these assemblages to the state of occupancy of the buildings in the Insula during the last years of Pompeii. This study, therefore, provides a wealth of information, not only on the range and use of artefacts in Pompeian houses but also on Roman artefacts, and Roman society, more generally.

Paris Nights: My Year at the Moulin Rouge opens with a bored twenty-seven-year old Cliff Simon staring out at the ocean from his beachfront house, wishing he was somewhere else. Gavin Mills telephones him from Paris inviting him to join him at the iconic Moulin Rouge. Cliff sells everything he owns, leaving Johannesburg, South Africa for the City of Lights. He learns that his spot at the Moulin is not guaranteed and is forced to audition. Making the grade, he is put into can can school before he is allowed into the company. His adrenaline is pumping from excitement and fear, both of which he has faced before. Taking a look back, we see twelve-year-old Cliff helming a racing dinghy in the midst of a thunderstorm on the Vaal River. His father yells at him not to be a sissy, and he brings the boat back to shore alone. We then travel to London with his family escaping the tumult of Apartheid. He trains for the Olympics, but drops out, enrolling in the South African military where he subjected to harsh treatment and name calling Fokken Jood. After a honorable discharge, he works in cabaret at seaside resorts and is recruited as a gymnast in a cabaret, where he realizes that the stage is his destiny. The memoir fast forwards to Cliffs meteoric rise at the Moulin from swing dancer to principal in Formidable. Off stage he gets into fights with street thugs, hangs out with diamond smugglers, and has his pick of gorgeous women. With a year at the Moulin to his credit, doors open for him internationally and back in South Africa. He earns a starring role in Egoli: Place of Gold, and marries his long-time girlfriend, Colette. On their honeymoon to Paris, Cliff says, Merci Paris for the best year of my life.

This is the first study of May 68 in fiction and in film. It looks at the ways the events themselves were represented in narrative, evaluates the impact these crucial times had on French cultural and intellectual history, and offers readings of texts which were shaped by it. The chosen texts concentrate upon important features of May and its aftermath: the student rebellion, the workers strikes, the question of the intellectuals, sexuality, feminism, the political thriller, history, and textuality. Attention is paid to the context of the social and cultural history of the Fifth Republic, to Gaullism, and to the cultural politics of gauchisme. The book aims to show the importance of the interplay of real and imaginary in the text(s) of May, and the emphasis placed upon the problematic of writing and interpretation. It argues that re-reading the texts of May forces a reconsideration of the existing accounts of postwar cultural history. The texts of May reflect on social order, on rationality, logic, and modes of representation, and are this highly relevant to contemporary debates on modernity.

The Festival Cities of Edinburgh and Adelaide examines how these cities' world-famous arts events have shaped and been shaped by their long-term interaction with their urban environments. While the Edinburgh International Festival and Adelaide Festival are long-established, prestigious events that champion artistic excellence, they are also accompanied by the two largest open-access fringe festivals in the world. It is this simultaneous staging of multiple events within Edinburgh's Summer Festivals and Adelaide's Mad March that generates the visibility and festive atmosphere popularly associated with both places. Drawing on perspectives from theatre studies and cultural geography, this book interrogates how the Festival City, as a place myth, has developed in the very different local contexts of Edinburgh and Adelaide, and how it is challenged by groups competing for the right to use and define public space. Each chapter examines a recent performative event in which festival debates and controversies spilled out beyond the festival space to activate the public sphere by intersecting with broader concerns and audiences. This book forges an interdisciplinary, comparative framework for festival studies to interrogate how festivals are embedded in the social and political fabric of cities and to assess the cultural impact of the festivalisation phenomenon.

In a career that spanned nearly five decades, Dorothy Fields penned the words to more than four hundred songs, among them mega-hits such as "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "The Way You Look Tonight," and "If My Friends could See Me Now." While Fields's name may be known mainly to connoisseurs, her contributions to our popular culture--indeed, our national consciousness--have been remarkable.
In I Feel a Song Coming On, Charlotte Greenspan offers the most complete, serious treatment of Fields's life and work to date, tracing her rise to prominence in a male-dominated world. Born in 1904 into a show business family--her father, Lou Fields, was a famed vaudeville comedian turned Broadway producer--Fields first teamed with songwriter Jimmy McHugh in the late 1920s and went on to a series of Hollywood collaborations with Jerome Kern, including the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers classic Swing Time. With her brother Herbert, she co-authored the books for several of Cole Porter's Broadway shows, as well as for Irving Berlin's phenomenally successful Annie Get Your Gun. More stage hits would follow, among them Redhead and Sweet Charity, as Fields remained active right up to her death in 1974. Fields's lyrics--colloquial, urbane, sometimes slangy, sometimes sensuous--won her high praise from later generation songwriters including Stephen Sondheim and Fred Ebb, and her stellar career opened a path for other women in her profession, among them Betty Comden, Dory Previn, and Marilyn Bergman.
Meticulously researched and filled with sharp insights, this lively biography not only illuminates Fields's life but also offers unique insights into the golden ageof popular song.

By day Percy Monkman (1892 to 1986) worked in the same Bradford bank for 40 years, ending up as chief cashier. Everything else about Percy was totally unconventional. By night, at weekends, on holidays he transformed himself into an entertainer, actor, artist and cartoonist whose work was regularly acclaimed by the public and held in great respect by colleagues. Percy was highly creative, talented and energetic, a man who achieved high standards in all his artistic activities. The eldest of five boys, he was born into a humble working-class family and attended school until he was nearly 14. After a couple of office jobs, at 16 he passed a banking examination and started to work at Becketts Bank (later acquired by the Westminster Bank). Unexpectedly, the First World War gave Percy an opportunity for a new life that he grasped firmly with both hands. He spent much of the war as a comedian in an entertainment troupe that ran concert party shows for soldiers just behind the front line. Back in civilian life he continued his entertainment career with great success throughout the interwar years. In the Second World War he was back at entertaining the troops, this time groups of returning servicemen across Yorkshire. In 1935 Percy joined the Bradford Civic Playhouse and became a fixture in the cast for over 20 years. Here, in one of the best amateur theatres in the country, he played in many diverse productions, usually in comic roles. Alongside entertaining and acting, Percy developed his third creative passion of watercolour painting. He took advantage of every opportunity to paint, usually landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales. When he retired from the bank in 1952, he was able to devote all his time to this passion, which he described as 'fanatic, dedicated and impulsive'. Largely self-taught, he believed strongly in being part of a community of like-minded painters so that he could learn from them. The Bradford Arts Club gave him this network for all his adult life. He exhibited widely and sold most of his paintings. When the mood took him, he was also a talented cartoonist whose works were sometimes published. A committed family man, Percy also built a large number of life-long friends, who were a fascinating mixture of people from all walks of life, with similar passions for entertaining, acting and painting, often eccentrics and sometimes very well connected in Bradford society. His most significant friendship was with JB Priestley, his exact contemporary and England's most famous man of letters in the 20th century. Percy's extraordinary life of achievement is a unique record of social history, reflecting life in 20th century Bradford. Sadly, this is now largely a lost world. This affectionate and comprehensive biography by his grandson, illustrated with over 90 images, is both a visual delight and a joy to read, including high quality reproductions of some of Percy's most famous paintings.